Detroit: Send a poet, not a reporter

The Michigan Central Station is a sad reminder of  Detroit's former glory.

Detroit — It wasn't so many years ago that Detroiters called their booming town "The Third City." They proudly bragged that when American cities were listed in order of greatness Detroit had a firm hold on third place after New York and Second City (Chicago). And those Detroiters would have been right. Back then Detroit was also known as "the Paris of the Midwest". But that was then and this is now.

It is all too sad. And, for me, it's an eye-opener. As a child I wondered how the Roman Empire, so big and so powerful, could collapse so quickly and so completely. It was unfathomable. From my perspective, so many centuries after the fact, it seemed to have happened almost overnight.

Today I have the answer. The urban fabric is fragile. For proof, I simply look at Detroit. It was the perfect city of my youth. It offered something for everyone. It was, in the words of today's city planners, one big example of placemaking.

An abandoned dental office in Detroit.

What makes Detroit stand out is the utter collapse of its economic underpinnings. Proud buildings were abandoned essentially over night, and with no money to demolish them they were left to slowly decay.

Along with the economic collapse, there was a vast upheaval in the social fabric of Detroit itself. As jobs left, the upper and middle class left. Poverty and the problems associated with poverty became the blight.

Detroit neighborhoods suffering from the blight rotted and died. And the blight was infectious; It spread into adjacent neighbourhoods. Hardly a neighbourhood was spared.

On the 25th anniversary of the Detroit riots, The London Free Press sent a reporter and me to Motown to discover what had changed with the passing of two and half decades. The reporter didn't have a feel for the Detroit of the past. He didn't share my sense of loss. It was an assignment for a poet and not a reporter. He missed the story.

I took this shot back in the mid '60s in Detroit.

Please take a look at the posted pictures from a new book, The Ruins of Detroit. Read about the authors in this The New York Times post. The accompanying NYT slide show is good but it duplicates some of the shots from the first link. Or read Ruin with a View, a NYT review of two books examining the collapse of a Detroit: The Ruins of Detroit and Detroit Disassembled.

Quoting the last paragraph of the NYT review:

"Ruins are a loaded subject, one that puts metaphor within easy reach. Marchand and Meffre show us a flag lying on the floor of a deserted church. The images here constitute a requiem for an American empire in a state of precipitous decline. Both books feature the same clock on a classroom wall, its frozen hands and melted face right out of a Dalí painting — as if time in Detroit had ticked to a halt, distorted, when in fact, with our gridlocked government and blind faith in our own exceptionalism, time is passing us by."

London train station build in1886-7 and demolished in 1937.

Truth be told, most of us don't have to look as far as Detroit to see the fragility of our civilized world. We only have to look at our own cities and towns. Try to recall what has been ripped from your city's fabric over the years. I warn you this can be tricky; We have very short collective memories.

Documenting my own city's disappearing heritage is far harder than documenting Detroit's. In some ways it is even harder than documenting the losses suffered by ancient Rome. In London, Ontario, we tear down and replace and then tear down again. The station pictured above stood at the south-east corner of Clarence and Bathurst Streets and was designed by F. H. Spier, a famous Detroit architect. It was demolished in the '30s.

Waiting room of '37 station

After the loss of this little jewel, CNR built a passenger station nearby in 1937. The new station had "broad landscaped station grounds extending from Clarence to Richmond streets. It has a semi-circular concrete driveway and walkway approach to the main entrance. It has shrub-topped terraces . . . "

This new jewel didn't last three decades. It was replaced by a couple of structures, one being the 10 storey CN Tower Building, which has now also been demolished.

Today London has a new station, and it has already undergone changes since its opening. Few remember the now gone food counter which graced the new station on its opening, even fewer recall the rich history of prior railroad stations. I doubt many passengers realize the underground route to the VIA trains is a last, lingering memory of the long gone '37 station.

On the bright side, the newest London station, although possibly influenced by fast food restaurant design, is a better train station than many found in Canadian cities.





One last note: This post sat queued, forgotten and unposted for many weeks. I have to thank a Montreal reader for jogging my memory. This reader sent me a link to the Quebec blog Ma Revue. Many of the photos of Detroit shown in that Ma Revue post are ones I had linked to earlier. Thank you D.N.

Deadlines in the 140 character world

While reading The New York Times op-ed columnist Maureen Dowd, I thought about the similar constraints affecting newspaper writers, Twitter posters and Internet bloggers. All face the constraints of time and space.

With the Internet there is a great push to get it, whatever it is, out there immediately. There is a rush to publish. Newspapers suffer from this same pressure. Newspapers have even given this rush to publish a name: The deadline. Putting out a paper is no different than putting out any other product from a highly automated plant. To deliver the product on time, in this case the newspaper, one must meet deadlines.

Dowd quotes Nicholas Carr, author of “The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains.” Carr claims technology amplifies everything, good instincts and base. While technology is amoral, he says, our brains may be rewired in disturbing ways.

“Researchers say that we need to be quiet and attentive if we want to tap into our deeper emotions,” he said. “If we’re constantly interrupted and distracted, we kind of short-circuit our empathy. If you dampen empathy and you encourage the immediate expression of whatever is in your mind, you get a lot of nastiness that wouldn’t have occurred before.” 

One would never describe newsrooms as quiet spots of gentle contemplation. The best newsrooms are high energy places, pressure-cookers for ideas. Dump ideas in, turn up the heat, and serve almost immediately. The results may not be perfect but the system is fast and what is served, the daily news, is amazingly "nutritious" for a "fast food."

Now add the constraint of space to the constraint of time and you have the ingredients for a serious problem. If you have every found yourself hamstrung by the 140 character limit imposed by Twitter, you have gained a small insight into the problem newspaper writers face daily.

On returning from a story a reporter may be told, "Quick. We're ten minutes from deadline. Give me seven inches. Maybe we can expand your story for City." (But reporters know that editors can only redo a limited number of pages for City. If the other pages are more important, the original seven inches will be it. So, reporters must do the best job they can in eight minutes. A few minutes must be left for editing and placing the copy on the page before being released to the back shop.)

I often hear folk talking about the 24-hour news cycle. Just last night I had a guest for dinner who works in the media industry and he blamed the 24-hour news cycle for a lot of the problems facing the industry today. Maybe, maybe not.

He also said how once something is up on the Internet is there forever. Maybe, maybe not. When I left The Free Press I started a blog that I soon took down and it is gone. Not even I can bring it back. It has vanished from the blogosphere.

Today newspapers should enjoy a 24-hour addition and correction cycle. Deadlines should be dead. Post just the minimum and then "Think." The Internet is always open to revision.

Unfortunately, many newspapers have not realized this fact and once they post something, even if it later proves to be balderdash, they feel they are stuck with it. They aren't. Newspapers can keep a record of changes made to a story, and I suggest this is a good idea. But truth and accuracy should have a path to the top.

As for the uncalled for nastiness that sometimes creeps into copy, enabled by too little time spent thinking and before speaking, maybe the years of meeting deadlines have rewired the brains of newsroom folk. Maybe its time for some new wiring, some new thinking, in the newsroom.

Dowd ended her piece:

"Leon Wieseltier, literary editor of The New Republic, recalled that when he started his online book review he forbade comments, wary of high-tech sociopaths.

" 'I’m not interested in having the sewer appear on my site,' he said. 'Why would I engage with people digitally whom I would never engage with actually? Why does the technology exonerate the kind of foul expression that you would not tolerate anywhere else?' "

When it comes to my newspaper, I am sometimes appalled by the nastiness I find there. Why would I engage with people over my breakfast table who voice the kind of foul, angry expression that I would not entertain anywhere else?

Who is Eric Duhaime, freelance editorial writer for The London Free Press?

Today's Free Press carries an editorial on the Comment page: "Right-wingers aren't the scary ones." It was written for the paper by freelancer Eric Duhaime.

I've been suspicious of right wing-left wing labeling since watching Mort Sahl on the family black and white television decades ago. I sat transfixed, sitting on our patterned faux carpet, it was actually linoleum, while watching Sahl explain and clarify the right-left political divide using his trademarked blackboard.

Saul would quickly scribble a name above a line representing the political continuum, placing the name to the left or right of centre as demanded by the person's stated political beliefs. As I recall, the simple exercise soon expanded past the boundaries of the original blackboard and two more boards were brought on stage to handle the overflow. (Maybe Glenn Beck could be hit for copyright infringement.)

In the end, the names written on the far left and far right of the original board appeared more central after the addition of the two extra blackboards, one to the right and one to the left of the original board.

To add to the chaos, as Sahl recalled more statements from well known politicians he would erase their names and reposition them. Sometimes Sahl found it impossible to simply place a person on one point on his line. For these folk Sahl wrote their names on the political continuum line in several places. On this issue they were right but on this one left and on this one they were really on the extreme right.

I decided to google Eric Duhaime.

I discovered that Eric Duhaime is not a Londoner. He's a Montreal-based writer. The Toronto Star says "Duhaime is currently a political consultant and columnist for Quebecor’s papers." I wondered why The Free Press didn't say so.

If you are interested in knowing more about Eric Duhaime, here is a link to the Toronto Star article:
Quebec's 'Tea Party" is born

I also found an attack on Duhaime, but it is way more personal than I like. Still, I found one line in the post on Sister Sage's Musings that made me think. I had read: "Eric, in your right winged world, folks are supposed to work for a living, but it helps if there are actual jobs; companies that are hiring."

This brought to mind the more than 250 workers at Le Journal de Montreal who are now well into their second year of a lockout at the hands of the media giant Quebecor that controls The London Free Press

I thought how the largest French language newspaper in North America has been published for the past two years in what many argue is in defiance of the Quebec labour laws in order to maintain a lockout. I understand many in Quebec see Quebecor's use of its QMI news organization as an end run around labour laws written decades ago, before the birth of the Internet.

Click on image to enlarge and view.

If this sounds like a big story, it's not. Or at least, it is not a big story in the eyes of The London Free Press. The Le Journal de Montreal story has gone almost totally unreported in my local paper. I can't help but wonder if this story is dead because of its negative Quebecor connection.

If interested, you can read a recent article in The Montreal Gazette: Péladeau would welcome Labour Code changes to trim union power.

Now, what was it that Duhaime was saying about right-wingers not being the scary ones?

Free Press not accepting any blame for fluoride controversy

One angle to the present fluoridation controversy missing in the recent Patrick Maloney and Ian Gillespie articles is the part played by what is now called the Main Street Media in this whole messy argument.

There are people who  fear fluoride because they get very mixed messages from the media about fluoridation's value and it's dangers. These concerned readers don't have to look farther than the pages of Sun Media and the QMI news group.

According to Canoe health expert and Sun Media columnist Dr. Gifford-Jones, the fluoridation of water is useless and fluoride toothpaste is a dangerous biological poison. This newspaper columnist said in a Quebecor Media distributed story that several studies involving as many as 480,000 children found fluoride provided no protection against tooth decay.

Gifford-Jones even went so far as to raise the spectre of childhood death in his column. He claimed a 3-year-old died after swallowing fluoride at a dental office.

Gifford-Jones argues many European countries do not fluoridate their water and yet have have rates for dental carries that are comparable to ours. He fails to mention that many large European countries fluoridate salt and milk.

Click on image to read.

I'm posting the whole article here as I sometimes find links to Free Press stuff broken. Please click on the image to enlarge. Once enlarged you may have to click on it once again to make legible.

Some of those opposed to fluoridation are extreme; No doubt. But many others are simply people old enough to remember lots of half researched stories in the media which were written in support of stuff that later proved to be bunkum.

If you believe in fluoridation, then you accept the arguments for putting fluoride in tap water. If you are concerned, often the answers do not seem so convincing — especially as the answers keep changing.

According to online information which I downloaded just today and published by the Ontario Dental Association, the maximum acceptable concentration of fluoride in the United States is 4 ppm and in Canada 1.5 ppm. This huge divergence of opinion as to what is safe causes concern in those opposed to fluoridation. (Many would argue that the ODA is wrong, and way on the high side, when they claim 4 ppm is acceptable in the U.S.)

Last month the EPA in the States, along with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), lowered the recommended maximum acceptable level for fluoride in tap water to .7 ppm.

The joint HHS/EPA announcement only fanned the flames of doubt in the fluoridation opposition by stating: "The new EPA assessments of fluoride were undertaken in response to findings of the National Academies of Science (NAS)" in order to avoid the unwanted health effects from too much fluoride.

Moves such as this make fluoride opponents worry that adding fluoride to our water may be a decades old practice but it is still not one that is totally understood. For them this is not good enough.

On giving your head a shake

There are those who believe I don't like newspapers because I often blog on published stuff that I see as downright shoddy. Those folk are wrong.

Recently a columnist for The London Free Press mocking those who use the Internet as a research tool wrote, "if you do more Internet 'research', you'll also discover 'experts'. . ." With less than 10 words and four quotation marks Ian Gillespie mounted a full frontal attack on the perceived foe of the newspaper industry: The Internet. With those quotation marks he questioned the validity of Internet research and the knowledge of those experts found on the Internet — at least the research and experts not in agreement with the clearly well thought out views of reporter Gillespie.

And what is the source of a lot of the information on the Internet? Newspapers. And who are the experts being quoted? Newspaper writers. And because of the way the Internet works, it is not uncommon for the ideas expressed by newspaper writers to be picked up, repackaged and republished online by someone else who may not properly credit the source, but that is a whole other post.

Years ago newspapers flogged what was fanned into a major story: UFFI (urea formaldehyde foam insulation.) I covered a lot of UFFI stories at the time and took a bigger than usual interest in the stories as I had had UFFI blown into the exterior walls of my home.

The media — newspapers, television, magazines — all got the story wrong. They also got the story right. But the correct story was buried in the back pages of papers or hidden in articles in the Home sections of newspapers. (If any reporter wants to argue this point, I still have some of hard copy from those days. Some day I may blog on the UFFI story and run pictures backing up my position.)

One reason why the UFFI story was, and still is, so poorly reported is that papers do not pay enough attention to what is in the newspaper. The well-known investigative journalist I.F. Stone knew this. He broke some very big stories not by having WikiLeaks style informers but by simply reading daily papers very carefully with an eye for the details being missed by what is now called the Main Stream Media (MSM.)

Back in the early '70s I worked at a small, northern Ontario newspaper, the family-owned Sault Daily Star (now called  just the Sault Star.) That little paper had a newsroom of more than 50 editorial employees. Today, thanks to massive cutbacks endured under the ownership of both Sun Media and Quebecor, the mighty London Free Press has a newsroom about the size of the Sault Star's from 40 years ago.

Newspapers are bit full of themselves — puffed up with self-importance. But this is to be expected. How could they function if they didn't have almost unbridled confidence? And, to some extent, their big egos are not misplaced. Newspaper folk, including Ian Gillespie, are awfully bright people.

But sometimes they are blinded by their very own brightness. This is why it is so important to have lots of folk, especially thoughtful editors, working in a newsroom. The Free Press, like so many papers, has slashed the number of editors.

Ian advised those who disagreed with him on fluoridation to "C’mon folks. Give your head a shake." This is what good, feisty editors do to reporters. They give cocky reporters a head-shaking.

A solid library staff is also a prerequisite for a good newsroom. The once incredible Free Press library is now just a memory; It's functions now handled out of Toronto.

Ironically, when Ian Gillespie needs to do some research, he must use the Internet.

An open Letter to the Editor of The London Free Press, a Sun Media newspaper

This is an open Letter to the Editor of The London Free Press.

Click on image to enlarge.

According to Canoe health expert and Sun Media columnist Dr. Gifford-Jones, the fluoridation of water is useless and fluoride toothpaste is a dangerous biological poison. This newspaper columnist went on to say in a Quebecor Media story that several studies involving as many as 480,000 children found fluoride provided no protection against tooth decay.

The QMI "expert" even raised the spectre of childhood death in his attack on fluoridation. I wrote expert in quotation marks to indicate my disdain just as Ian Gillespie did to indicate his disdain for some supposed "experts" in his recent column.

It is time for Gillespie to take his own advice and give his head a shake. The Free Press columnist need not look to the Internet for "ignorant fear-mongering at its worst." I think it is clear from the above that he can find it in the pages of his own news operation — Quebecor Media Inc.
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The beauty of the Internet is the free flow of ideas and information. If you can't get a letter to the editor published, post it.

Use enough hooks and someone using Google, or another search engine, will stumble upon your letter. Also put links to your Facebook page and Twitter account in your post. If you get enough hits your blog post will gain importance and may appear near the top of the list returned by a search engine query.

Ian Gillespie asks, "What next? Fluoride killing polar bears?" According to The Free Press, the answer may be young children.

Aiming his well-known wit at the anti-fluoridation folk, Gillespie misses mark.

A recent opinion piece by The London Free Press journalist  Ian Gillespie has further muddied the already murky fluoridated waters.

I was very disappointed by his ad hominem attacks on those with whom he disagrees. Instead of using facts to disprove the anti-fluoride position, Gillespie attacked those holding those beliefs. He painted them as crazy conspiracy believers. And in cases where his opponents based their arguments on expert opinions, Gillespie ridicules those experts as well.

Ian mocks London city councillor Denise Brown for suggesting to The Free Press, "If you do any research on the Internet, you’ll find scientists believe there are health risks.”

Click to enlarge.

Ian's witty retort: "And if you do more Internet 'research,' you’ll also discover 'experts' who argue that aliens hijacked the Voyager 2 spacecraft, Paul McCartney died in a 1966 car crash, Elvis Presley is alive and the Apollo moon landing was a hoax."

And if you, Ian Gillespie, do more research you will find the following published by Sun Media, written by Canoe health expert and columnist Dr. Gifford-Jones, and found on The London Free Press Internet site:

"It's shocking that 25% of North Americans over age 43, and 42% of those over 65 years of age, have no teeth!

"(The doctor featured in the article carried by The Free Press) Dr. Judd also believes that the fluoridation of water and the use of fluoride toothpaste is a useless, dangerous biological poison. He says calcium fluoride seeps into enamel, making it weak and brittle, destroying 83 enzymes along with adenosine diphosphatase.

"I couldn't agree more. (Dr. Gifford-Jones writes.) Look at the warning on fluoride toothpaste. Parents are told to watch children under six years of age while they brush their teeth. To be safe, only a tiny amount of toothpaste is used, and none should be swallowed. That should tell you something! In 1974, a three-year old child had fluoride gel placed on his teeth. The hygienist handed him a glass of water but rather than rising out his mouth, he drank it. A few hours later, he was dead.

"If fluoride toothpaste is the answer to dental decay, why is it that 98% of Europe is fluoride-free? Sweden, Germany, Norway, Holland, Denmark and France stopped using fluoridation 29 years ago. These are not backward, depressed nations.

"The sole argument for fluoridation is that it reduces tooth decay. But several studies involving as many as 480,000 children found no beneficial evidence between fluoridated and non-fluoridated communities.

"Dr. Hardy Limeback, Professor of Dentistry at the University of Toronto, says children under three should never use fluoridated toothpaste or drink fluoridated water, and mothers should never use Toronto tap water to prepare baby formula."

I want to go on record as saying I am not frightened by the amount of fluoride being put into London's water. I believe dangerous concentrations of fluoride are only found in drinking waters contaminated with unregulated, naturally occurring fluorides. London is very conservative when it comes to the amount of fluoride added to our drinking water.

But many people are concerned. As long as papers, such as The London Free Press, are telling them a young child died from a fluoride treatment, some folk will use bottled water rather than tap and try their best to stay clear of all fluoride -- even that found in toothpaste and mouthwash.

At one time, it was believed that fluoride only worked topically. It was said that once ingested, as in drinking water, its ability to fight dental caries was curtailed. That belief is now in question.  But,when I worked at The Free Press the only-works-topically mantra was still being repeated. I chatted with a professor at the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry at Western University who confided that putting fluoride in water was inefficient as it only works topically. But he would not go on record with such a view. The whole issue was simply too emotionally charged.

My point? The anger, distrust, public ridicule surrounding this issue all work to prevent discussion. Journalists are a big part of this problem. And that is sad. Journalists should be advocates of reason and independent thinking. Instead, all too often journalists are herd animals.

I expect more from my daily paper and I certainly expected more from Ian Gillespie. The Free Press is a paper sadly in need of some thoughtful writing and solid editing. This column of Gillespie's should have been spiked. Wait. The spikes left with the editors.
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As I said, I am not concerned about the amount of fluoride found in London Ontario tap water. Just last month the EPA in the United States lowered the maximum recommended concentration of fluoride for drinking water. London was ahead of the EPA. Our fluoride level is inline with the new proposed U.S. guidelines.

But, and it is a big but, if you are already frightened by fluoride in your water, the recent move by the EPA does nothing to allay your fears. Learning that after decades of use the correct amount of fluoride to be added to drinking water without causing any health problems is still being adjusted is downright worrisome. These people need their fears addressed in an adult manner. Condescension is not called for nor is it productive.

Gillespie quotes UWO professor Tim Blackmore, who teaches media and information studies:

“Ignorance is a lot easier and a lot more convincing than knowledge. Knowledge takes time, it takes thinking and it takes figuring. Ignorance doesn’t take any of those things. It just takes belief.”

Ian, I think the professor may have been talking about you.