By Joel Thurtell
It occurs to me as I think more about newspaper redlining that in addition to discriminating geographically and demographically, the practice by newspapers is a form of censorship.
The newspaper, without a formal announcement, tells a region or a segment of the population that what’s important to those people will not be covered by the newspaper. But the same kind of news from a region the paper’s owners deem important will be covered.
Is there another word for that besides censorship?
As I pondered Detroit Free Press coverage of Kwamegate, I realized that the newspaper was talking to the largely white suburbs, and not to Detroit, which is largely black. How do I know this? As a staff writer for the Free Press until last November, I know from my reporter’s marching orders that the Free Press simply doesn’t circulate in large areas of Detroit.
It’s a very practical knowledge, learned by having editors turn down story ideas about Detroit for no other reason than that the proposed stories would be focused on Detroit issues and Detroit people who would never see the story.
I also listed some Wayne County towns that are part of the Free Press news blackout. I’d forgotten Oakland County, though. Yes, indeed, on the list of embargoed communities are some in tony Oakland.
After my last column, a reader wrote to tell me of his experience pitching stories to the Free Press:
“Joel, a few years ago I was inquiring about free-lance writing at the Free Press and suggested several stories about Royal Oak. I was told by the annoyed-sounding suburban editor that Royal Oak was also one of those cities the Free Press wasn’t interested in. Imagine that, one of the fastest-growing cities in the region. Instead, they wanted me to write about development in Rochester — the usual kind of story they were running at the time: Urban sprawl versus the locals who were opposed to new roads, sewer systems, higher taxes, etc. It was a story worth pursuing, but every one the Free Press published sounded like the last one, just change the name of those involved. Anyway, the justification was the paper wanted to grow readership there.”
Right: I’d forgotten how the paper shut down several of its weekly Community Free Press editions, including the one that covered Royal Oak, Huntington Woods, Pleasant Ridge, Oak Park and one or two others. Told those towns their stories, their people, don’t count.
I remember sitting through a meeting a few years ago with a top Free Press editor who’d made sticky-note labels marked “platinum,” “gold,” etc. She stuck them on a map to let us know the hierarchy of editors’ desire for news. Communities like Pontiac were on the blacklist, while towns like Bloomfield Hills and Bloomfield Township were “platinum” communities.
I’ve been trying to remember when this started. Did redlining exist at the Free Press before 1989, when the Joint Operating Agreement went into effect? Maybe somebody out there with a better institutional knowledge of the business history of the papers can help me. I suspect redlining was imported by Gannett.
I started reporting for the Free Press in 1984. I remember getting an order once that said we would write about every homicide in Metro Detroit. No homicide was too unimportant for us to cover. It was impossible, of course, with hundreds of murders every year in Wayne County alone. And the commitment was less than wholehearted. I remember chasing a Detroit News story about the bodies of two women found in a Detroit Dumpster. The Free Press editors were hot for the story till I told them the dead women were prostitutes. “Free Press readers aren’t interested in what happened to a couple of whores,” an editor told me.
There was a long period in the late 1980s when it was clear the Free Press had no interest in Wayne County, though it was highly focused on Oakland County, with the highest per capita income in the state. But I never heard of “platinum” towns till Gannett showed up.
Once the Free Press, owned since 1940 by Knight and later Knight-Ridder, was joined at the wallet with the Detroit News, bought in the 1980s by Gannett, the Free Press and News were locked together in production. Gannett dominated the JOA and what it wanted for the News, Knight-Ridder had to swallow for the Free Press.
I remember a big meeting in 1991 when Heath Meriwether, the executive editor, lectured us on how we needed to pander to the so-called “cosmopolitan” reader. We needed to appeal to the younger readers. Studies showed that younger readers were not buying the paper, while older readers were, so this put the paper in the position of playing up stories that appealed to people who were not buying the paper while playing down stories that appealed to real paying customers. That is a form of redlining that is self-defeating and it may well account for overall declines in readership.
But my point is that 1991 — when we were told to aim at the younger and cosmo readers — was post-JOA and post-Gannett, and the idea of sucking up to supposedly sophisticated and suburban readers I suspect was planted by Gannett. Gannett played the tune and the Free Press danced.
In some of the Kwame stories published by the Free Press, we heard the paper — now throughly saturated with Gannett-think — proclaiming itself as representing the public interest. I wonder: How can an institution that discriminates against segments of the population hold itself up as a protector of the public interest?
I realize that applying the term “redlining” to newspapers’ discrimination is a step beyond the usual definition of the word. But I think it’s appropriate. In the past, financial institutions like banks and insurance companies have been pilloried — rightly — for denying loans or coverage, or jacking up rates to certain areas or certain kinds of people. Why not apply the same descriptive term to newspapers if they choose to abandon geographic or demographic segments of the population? I think it’s appropriate.
What’s more, I think newspaper managers need to think about the effect of their behavior on the communities they claim to serve.
The situation came clear for me as I watched this newspaper with its cadre of white male reporters and editors (the one top editor who is black is taking a buyout; wonder why?) with their bully pulpit aimed squarely at the burbs because they don’t deliver to the vast areas of the city whose citizens elected the mayor the newspaper worked so hard to depose.
Do other newspapers practice redlining? Does the New York Times play the discrimination game? The Washington Post? Los Angeles Times? Chicago Tribune?
Is it strictly a Detroit practice, or, as I suspect, a trick imported by Gannett?
Any ideas?
Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com
