By Joel Thurtell
I’m having a tough time restraining my star columnist, Luke Warm, from having the first word on something I want to write about.
Warm, the renowned Professor of Mendacity at the University of Munchausen, is so excited I can see him already pounding away on his keyboard. Finally, he’s found an example of journalistic prevarication, duplicity, deceit and hauteur worthy of his plaudits.
He’s ramping up his encomiums for a veritable laudfest of recognition for the news website known as Michigan Messenger. He’s ecstatic, all because of a Messenger article about the fight between the city of Detroit and billionaire Ambassador Bridge owner Manuel “Matty” Moroun over possession of a city-owned park that sits alongside the bridge in southwest Detroit.
Luke thinks this piece of journalistic sleight-of-hand is so praiseworthy that he rooted around an old landfill until he found a rusty crockery statue of a hawk whose head had been knocked off. He says it’s going to be his version of the Tony or Emmy awards, but this trophy — a headless news hawk — will be given to a news organization that publishes the most flagrant (Luke calls it the “bravest”) example of journalistic quackery he’s ever seen.
And he’s going to call his decapitated raptor the “Messy,” after the Michigan Messenger.
Well, he’d confer this honor if I let him.
But I won’t.
Not, at least, until I’ve had my say.
Past practice at JOTR calls for me to write my column first, and then Luke weighs in to rebut me.
No reason to deviate just because the good prof is all het up.
Here’s what Luke’s so excited about: The Messenger suddenly discovered the story of Detroit’s Riverside Park a year and a half after it was first reported.
On JOTR.
It’s a story the Messenger could have had on September 22, 2008 when I wrote the first of my blog posts about Matty and his fight with Detroit.
Well, the Messenger could have had my story, except for one thing.
In August of ’08, roughly a month before I wrote that story, the Messenger fired me. I’d been working as a month-by-month free lance columnist and they decided they could invest their stipend in a more productive or interesting way.
Then came Matty Moroun and his shotgun-totin’ goon.
Rather than allude to this blog, the Messy quotes a local person saying, “The bridge company literally had a guy drive around in a vehicle and he’d let you see his shotgun.”
Amazing, isn’t it? Wonder where the source learned that one.
SHOTGUN TOTIN' GOON -- Sept. 22, 2008 photo taken in Riverside Park by Joel Thurtell
The twists that some publications make to keep from mentioning the actual source, which would be the blogger they canned.
Pretty messy.
But maybe the Messies weren’t reading JOTR.
Here’s why Luke Warm wants to confer his “Messy” on the Messenger.
They’re writing as if the story is new and they own it.
It’s an old journalistic gambit: Faking it in the slipstream of the news.
Pick up a 2008 story in 2010, more than a year after it broke. Write around a huge hole. So what if you missed the big story? Wait long enough, and maybe people will forget the facts. Let the big story slide for a while, then as the outline grows dim, feed off the flotsam and jetsam that float past you. Ignore central facts, set aside causal connections. Wait, wait, wait — and then run your story, and voila! You’re in the game, a credible reporter. You’re on the beat and nobody’s the wiser.
You hope.
Not particularly honest to readers, but hey, after all, this is only journalism, right?
It’s a gambit that puts them squarely in a league with the Detroit Free Press, a newspaper that managed to ignore the year-long Riverside Park story that led to a judge ordering Matty to relinquish a section of public park he seized for room to build a new international bridge.
We’ll give them credit where it is due.
Okay, Luke — unveil your Messy.
Drop me a line at joelthurtell@gmail.com
