PLANK JULY 9, 2012
-
Read Later
READ LATERAvailable only to subscribers. SUBSCRIBE TODAY
-
Listen
ARTICLE AUDIO
- Font Size
A few years ago, national journalists discovered Detroit—or, rather, discovered that the city of Detroit was a dream subject. Its ruins of abandoned buildings made for astounding photo spreads of an apocalyptic wasteland, and writers big and small tried to wrestle with the question of how the former auto capitol of the world could have turned into this shell of a city.
Detroiters hate these stories, say they’re the journalistic equivalent of rubber-necking. But what about when one of their own covers the blight and produces some seriously depressing reports about the state of the city?
Charlie LeDuff—Pulitzer-prize winner and former New York Times reporter—has been doing just that since he quit the Times and moved back to Michigan, first to write for the Detroit News and now with the local Fox station.
LeDuff’s first Fox report on the sorry state of the city’s EMS became an instant classic. And he produced another winner last week, golfing 18 miles across the length of Detroit, often down the middle of deserted thoroughfares, to produce the most unique city profile you’ll ever see.
(As a native Michigander, I feel a responsibility to point out that Detroit is also now home to all sorts of new awesome things, like this, this, this and of course this.)
3 comments
Detroit fascinates me, in part because the great migration to Detroit has ended with the great migration from Detroit, ending where it started, where I am and always have been. In the mid-1980s I worked on a General Motors project in Saginaw (home to the steering gear division). I have several very distinct memories. First, where I usually stayed, a mansion, turned into a bed and breakfast, on the Saginaw River. A beautiful place. Second, the Detroit-based advisor on the other side, who must have weighed over 400 pounds. Harvard-educated, he was very smart and cultured. And he drove a Corvette. Something I had to see. The steering wheel was modified so that it was on the dash, sort of like the steering wheel on a big truck. Closing his door required special "arrangements", but it worked! The Corvette may have listed to the left, but it didn't bother him, or me. It was this man's determination that ultimately led to a successful transaction for Saginaw. Third, Michigan gave away its tax base to the car companies. It's as though they were operating much like tax exempt organizations. But even that very bad public policy couldn't stop the inevitable. I see the history of Detroit as a harbinger for the future of my home state. The great migration south, like the great migration north, has about come to an end. And the ending, I fear, won't be any better than it was in Detroit. One day we will all be Michiganders.
- rayward
July 9, 2012 at 5:19pm
Time Magazine put 3 writers in a house in Detroit for a year and never got anything like what Charlie got here, an instant classic.
- CRS9TNR
July 9, 2012 at 6:09pm
I think the whole thing is in bad taste. What next, play flag football at Auschwitz? There is no immutable law that once a city is built it must remain as it always was. I predict in 20 years Phoenix will be a ghost of itself as it becomes unlivable due to lack of water and oppressive heat. Shall we then make light of that then?
- blackton
July 10, 2012 at 1:34am