Up on Main Street, Down on State Street
We’ve long been aware that National Review’s Jay Nordlinger is not exactly filled with warm feelings for his hometown. After reading yet another A2-themed item of his, discussing an Observer piece on campus conservatives (among other things, he found the Observer’s fairly standard use of “chair” instead of “chairman” to be unbearably PC,) we became curious just how deep his Tree Town antipathy went, and we were not disappointed. A list of his A2 mentions rivals this site in documented, obsessive Ann Arbor hate. Among the highlights:
- Mayor Hieftje wrote Nordlinger to correct what he said was an inaccuracy, that Hieftje had hugged a woman who called the U.S. a terrorist state. Hieftje went on to clarify that “he hails from ‘Main Street Ann Arbor,’” not what he implies is the more leftist “campus Ann Arbor.” All that campus leftism really gives a bad rap to the anti-Patriot-Act-resolution-passing, “European” Ann Arbor that National Review would just love if they gave it a chance.
- Apart from New York, A2 is the city with the highest rate of New York Times subscribers.
- There is or was a “leftist grocery store” in Ann Arbor called the Village Corner, or VC, whose politics extended to “enjoying the different connotations of ‘VC.’”
- Nordlinger’s stint working at The Little Professor bookstore, which he claimed refused to stock conservative magazines, was a painful but decisive point in his political development.
“But then we have the Ann Arbor News — which makes the Times look like . . . well, National Review!”
No, the NYT makes the AA News look like 10x the journalistic joke it already is. In a town that is supposed to be literate, you’d think the paper would be better.
posted by Leighton on September 1st, 2004 at 8:27 amLeighton, Leighton, it sounds you’ve spent too much time in front of a microfilm reader, immersed in nostalgia for the active journalism of 50 years ago. I think you have impossibly high standards for a small city daily paper in 2004.
There are plenty of good reasons people hate the Ann Arbor News. Still, sad to say, it’s by far the best daily paper I know of for a city that’s much smaller than Detroit.
Ignore the execrable web site, and look at the actual hardcopy paper. The Ann Arbor News at least still makes an effort to cover local events and politics, which is more than you could say about the Lansing State Journal or many other papers, which stopped bothering about twenty years ago.
For a community this size, given today’s brutal economics, the Ann Arbor News is about as good as journalism gets.
posted by Larry Kestenbaum on September 1st, 2004 at 10:44 amI have to say that I heartily, but respectfully, disagree with Larry. The Ann Arbor News is a terrible newspaper by almost any standards. You can’t tell what’s going on in many of the articles covering important issues. Let’s take an example: the article about a proposed Toyota plant in Ypsi (viewable via link from Ypsidixit). They dutifully reported that there was a proposal, and a competing offer, and that it was controversial. They also mentioned that there was hope for job creation, but also that the other proposal included “mixed-use” and that there might be a tax break involved for Toyota. But they left out so many details, that someone trying to become informed about the issue by reading the article was not given nearly enough information. For example, what would the taxes be after the proposed tax break of 50%? How many jobs would be created? What kinds of jobs? What was the company’s position on, and more importantly, committment to, local labor, versus how many people would be imported? What level jobs? What were the other developer’s plans? What were the drawbacks, environmental impact, etc. etc. etc. Instead of filling the article with content, they simply had lots of quotes — fluff.
This was an important big story, and AA News totally missed the ball. They might not have been able to cover everything in a single article, but they should have been able to include some of the above.
This article was totally typical of the type of coverage AA News gives to important issues. I’ve lived in a pretty wide range of places, and my experience has been that there are many better local newspapers out there.
posted by Anna on September 1st, 2004 at 11:24 amHm, well, having known a few a2 news folks, and puzzled over lack of coverage, I guess the problem I see with the Ann Arbor News is not so much the bad writing/reporting (which is definitely the case for some reporters at least), but the politics. The editor is really conservative, and opts to bias/not cover many events/issues that go against his beliefs. Having been involved in campaigns for a variety of progressive issues, I’ve found that the A2 News has worked to actively discredit us on some campaigns, and in other campaigns, just not cover us.
Other cases of ‘politics’ includes not covering businesses that don’t advertise, even if they celebrate, say, 70 years of business and 3,000 people show up to celebrate (among many other examples).
Not to mention that there are things that the Ann Arbor News chooses not to cover that truly, objectively, are news. I feel bad for the people who actually think what they read in the paper is an accurate representation of what goes on in the town…
posted by A2NewsNote on September 1st, 2004 at 11:57 amOh, absolutely there is bias. Ironically, the bias is a sign that they still care — a sign of life, if you will.
And sure, the Ann Arbor News is a terrible newspaper by the newspaper standards of 50 years ago. Unfortunately, those standards are no longer achievable today. There is a steep economic disincentive to do any local coverage at all beyond reprinting press releases.
I don’t like the Ann Arbor News any more than y’all do, but I’m glad some of the reporters still occasionally venture outside the newspaper office durnig the day.
Admittedly, that kind of archaic frivolity will probably be done away with after the next merger.
posted by Larry Kestenbaum on September 1st, 2004 at 2:27 pmWell, you all know I like to mock the News, but I’m not sure what to compare it to. Cambridge is about the same size as A2, but I never read the Cambridge Chronicle, and, anyway, the News has no Boston Globe to compete with. My local paper in the Chicago ‘burbs, which is actually called “Suburban Life,” is definitely worse than the News, but I’m not sure that’s a fair comparison either.
I really don’t see that much bias in the News - not just of the liberal/conservative sort, but even anti-student bias is less common than you might expect. I have to agree with Anna, though, on the experience of reading a News story and thinking, “Okay… And…?” (For someone who lives nowhere near Michigan, Anna, you know a scary amount of detail about that Toyota thing.)
posted by ann arbor is overrated on September 1st, 2004 at 2:56 pmWhile I think the Toyota land deal was not reported very well, some of the things mentioned by Anna are probably impossible to know at this point. I doubt anyone knows beyond a very rough amount the taxes Toyota will pay. Toyota probably has a fairly good idea how many and what type of jobs they will place there, but they probably do not know what the mix of local versus imported labor will be. That depends entirely on the skillset and availibility of the local labor pool, which is variable depending an many factors. It also takes time to develop an in-depth story like that, but the News no doubt wanted to get the story of the state’s rejection of Toyota’s offer published the day it happened.
posted by tom on September 1st, 2004 at 3:32 pmHaving said all that, I am not a big fan of the News, but I agree with Larry that it does cover local issues better than other papers I have seen in similar-sized towns .
aaio,
posted by tom on September 1st, 2004 at 3:35 pmsome of the links are broken (NYT subscribers, leftist grocery store, stint at Little Professor).
Thanks, tom, good catch.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on September 1st, 2004 at 3:42 pmWell, AAIO, I try to remain informed on important local issues — whether they’re local to me or not
(there was a link from Ypsidixit, and I was interested because a famous book — The Three Christs of Ypsilanti — was set at the mental hospital that was in the location of the proposed plant. I’ve always wondered what they were going to do with the land).
posted by Anna on September 1st, 2004 at 4:50 pmOh, and I mentioned this on Ypsidixit, but here’s a local news coverage comparison: When IKEA wanted to come into my town, there were months worth of articles in our local paper discussing various aspects of the deal — the tax breaks, versus the length of the committment, the proportion of local people who would be employed versus brought in from other locations, etc.
The newpaper’s coverage was actually pretty important in sweetening the deal for the city, because they laid out all of the important variables so that people could know whether they really favored or opposed the deal — which lead to pressure on the city, which lead to lots of negotiation to make the deal more favorable. So, we didn’t just get cheap Swedish furniture (and meatballs), but we actually got job training programs through the local community college and a large proportion of hirees from the town.
I think that our newspaper, while not the most fun or interesting read, does keep me pretty abreast of important local issues.
posted by Anna on September 1st, 2004 at 4:58 pmWe only recently stopped getting the hard copy of the “News” in the last few weeks. I think one could gain about 4 extra hours a day by not having to sift through crap for the story.
Ypsidixit informed us of this typical case of missing the whole story (the irony of placing “Cool Cities” banners all over downtown, just as 4 businesses either close or relocate):
http://www.mlive.com/news/aanews/index.ssf?/base/news-2/109387682553550.xml
That AA “News” article is about as hard hitting as space plasma @ 1mph.
posted by Leighton on September 1st, 2004 at 11:03 pmA2 snooze does a terrible job reporting local crime also, unless it was a riot that cannot be ignored or a titallating flasher they go right along with the PD lines who say such things as “we dont have a gang problem in A2″. I have seen or heard of, so many not covered incidents…… even the Belleville papers do better than that
posted by stella on September 2nd, 2004 at 1:49 pmStella’s comment above regarding the lack of crime reports in the A2 News is quite similar to that of San Diego’s Union Tribune. In fact, having lived in both A2 and San Diego, I must say they share similar downfalls. Any city, such as San Diego does, that self-proclaims themselves as, “America’s Finest City” must have many skeletons in their closet…and trust me they do! I am by the similarities in attitudes between the two cities. BTW, people tell me all the time that San Diego is their dream locale…make sure and read this book before making that move. (http://www.thenewpress.com/books/undersun.htm).
posted by bleen on September 2nd, 2004 at 10:01 pm