Wonderful story in Sunday’s (May 18, 2008) Detroit Free Press about hizzoner’s self-dealing before he became Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. “Kilpatrick helped friends get grants,” the Page One headline blazed. Subheads tell us, “He steered funds as state rep” and “Money also trickled down to his wife, records show.”
Wait a minute. Kwame is mayor of Detroit, not a state rep. That’s right, this story happened eight years ago.
Okay, it’s still a good story: It seems that Kwame finagled a $250,000 state grant for a buddy, Bobby Ferguson. Ferguson kicked $100,000 to Carlita Kilpatrick, wife of then state Rep. Kilpatrick.
Yes, you guessed it, there’s a but. I wouldn’t be writing if I didn’t have some reservations about this latter-day scoop.
With a story this stale, it’s almost like they scooped themselves.
Here’s what intrigues me about this yarn: Wonderful as it is, the story would have been even more wonderful if it had run when it happened, in the year 2000.
Why did it take the Free Press eight years to spit it out?
Maybe they just recently found out about it.
Sure. Always a possibility. Those lazy reporters, sleeping at their Lansing bureau desks.
I don’t think so. Those guys work hard and they know a lot of good stuff.
Something tells me a story this juicy didn’t just moulder in some clandestine source’s memory bank for eight years, then find a crack and wriggle out.
I could be wrong.
Doggoned if I don’t feel a war story coming on.
Back in the day, this would be in 1994, I was covering Wayne County government for the Free Press, working in the 11th-floor bureau in the City-County Building now known as the Coleman A. Young Building. Dennis Archer had been elected mayor of Detroit the previous fall. Mayor Coleman Young was out and his chief of staff, Adam Shakoor, needed a job. He got temp work from his pal, George Cushingberry Jr., a former state representative (now back in the state House) who was then a member of the Wayne County Board of Commissioners.
Some intrepid tipster told me George had found a cushy, ill-defined job for Adam Shakoor on the county board’s payroll.
Question was, what was Shakoor doing to earn the tens of thousands of dollars the county was handing him?
I called Cushingberry. “Hey George,” I said, “What’s Adam Shakoor doing to earn that money?”
George acted astonished. Huffiily, he replied, “He’s a consultant.”
“Right,” I said, “But what does he do?”
George was aghast. “What does he do? Joel, he’s a consultant! What do you think he does? He consults!”
I thought it was a pretty good story. Nothing like Kwamegate, you know, but still, a neat nugget about friends in high places helping pals stay afloat.
How could you argue with George? It’s true: A consultant consults, what else?
As I was working on this little gem, that Free Press icon and journalistic genius Neal Shine stopped by my desk. “What are you working on, Joel?” Neal asked.
One reason I remember this incident so well is that Neal Shine was not in the habit of stopping by my desk every day to check on my work progress. It was a unique event. Rather surprising to me. But I seized the moment and excitedly I told him about Adam Shakoor’s consulting gig and Cushingberry’s remark about consultants consulting.
Neal was excited, too. “That’s the kind of journalism we used to do,” Neal said. By that time, Heath Meriwether, seeing Neal engaged with me, also stopped by my desk. Wowee! Neal Shine and Heath Meriwether checking on my story ideas. Neal explained to Heath what I was working on. Heath nodded approval.
“I can’t wait to see it in the paper,” Neal told me.
I submitted my story. My editor read it. She didn’t ask any questions. I asked her when it would run. Her answer was vague.
Neal never got to read that story.
Nor could I get an answer as to why it was killed.
I wonder if the 8-year-old Kwame self-dealing story that just surfaced in the Free Press has the same history. Maybe it was found, reported and deemed too hot to publish. Of course, this line of questioning takes us back before Gannett owned the Free Press. If this is a story of a story found and killed, the murder happened on Knight-Ridder’s watch.
It is a good story today. It would have been a better story in 2000. Who knows, maybe the Free Press would have set an investigation in motion that would have transformed the course of history.
Maybe history would have turned out a different and better mayor for Detroit, one with a name other than Kwame Kilpatrick.
Anybody know why Sunday’s Free Press story didn’t run in 2000? And oh yes, got a clue why my Adam Shakoor story was spiked? Contact me at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com
