Joel Thurtell
Some Michigan court files removed from public view
Wayne County deputy clerk knows where they went but won’t say
One mayor like a rock star, one sinking like a rock
[Commentary]
Eat your heart out, Kwame.
You won’t see this in Detroit: A mob of people swarming the mayor, acting like he’s some rock star.
Like Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa had an affair and survived, though his marriage didn’t. What’s the difference?
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An even bigger scandal than Kwamegate
[COMMENTARY] There’s a thing in architecture called perspective. Look at a five-story building by itself, without comparison to other structures, and it looks big. Stand beside it, and it seems gigantic.
Build a 60-story tower next to it, and look again.
It seems tiny.
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Big media monopoly, not ad dollars, behind Free Press canning popular community papers
[COMMENTARY] News late last month that the Detroit Free Press will print its last editions of the Community Free Press on Aug. 1 stunned the reporters, editors, photographers and myriad freelancers who’ve diligently worked to make those mini-papers popular with readers.
In Detroit and 10 suburban areas where they circulate, the CFPs have managed to give [...]
They held the story, and won the prize
[COMMENTARY] How often has Columbia University bestowed its coveted Pulitzer Prize for national news reporting on reporters who DECLINED to publish a huge story?
At least once. It happened in the case of Clark Hoyt and Robert Boyd, who received the 1973 Pulitzer for their gumshoe work uncovering the psychiatric hospitalizations of then U.S. Sen. Thomas [...]
You’ve gotta believe I’m me
I was just kidding when I said my birth certificate might cast doubt on whether I’m me.
A clever little kicker to a mildly sarcastic story about the need — post 9/11 — to prove unequivocally who we are.
Planning a trip to Canada in late May and unable to find my passport, I realized no longer [...]
Beat reporting squeeze at Free Press, but Kwamegate rocks
[COMMENTARY] I was still trying to digest Eric Alterman’s long, thoughtful article in the March 31, 2008, New Yorker about the demise of American newspapers when I noticed the March 29, 2008, Detroit Free Press front page story from Mackinac Island.
Mackinac Island in March?
Who’d want to be there when there’s snow on the ground in [...]
Ex-aide of Conyers’ wife claims fed probe is way to get the congressman. Is he right?
[COMMENTARY] Is Sam Riddle right? I don’t think so.
He thinks the FBI wants to embarrass U.S. Rep. John Conyers Jr. by investigating his wife.
He’s convinced that’s why the feds reportedly are investigating Detroit City Councilwoman Monica Conyers, as part of a larger corruption probe into how the city entered a new $47 million sewer sludge-processing [...]
Writing’s sins of omission (and addition)
Back in late 2007, when I was still a slave to newspaper deadlines, I got worked up about a thrashing delivered to New York Times Magazine writer Deborah Solomon by the paper’s hired dean of conformity, Public Editor Clark Hoyt.
Solomon was pilloried by Hoyt for doing what the paper, through its unwritten code of deadlines [...]
Think Kwamegate is big? A bigger story is out there
Sometimes small is big.
And sometimes big is small.
The steam rising from the Detroit Free Press’ revelation of the text messages between Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and his former chief of staff and former paramour Christine Beatty has really roasted the mayor, what with allegations and now charges of perjury and the threat that his lies-under-oath, [...]