I am writing today to announce the closure of the Michigan Messenger. After four years of operation in Michigan, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news into a single site, The American Independent at Americanindependent.com. This is part of a shift in strategy, towards new forms [...]
An abstinence-only presentation provided to numerous school districts in Calhoun and Eaton Counties in October of this year provided false and misleading information to students about HIV, experts allege.
Two county registers of deeds filed a class action lawsuit Monday on behalf of Michigan’s 83 counties alleging that the Mortgage Electronic Registration Services owes millions of dollars in property title transfer taxes.
Despite evidence of the impact of mercury on children and public health, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette last month joined with 24 other state attorneys general in filing a lawsuit to scuttle new EPA regulations that would reduce mercury emissions from power plants.
Messy and raw, often lacking in adequate context, text messages between former Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, his staffer and lover Christine Beatty and other members of the mayor’s administration are now open for public perusal, thanks to the Wayne County Clerk’s Office which released the messages on Monday. The Detroit Free Press and several other news outlets have republished them at their own Web sites.
Not only is it a lot of content to go through — 6,000 or so text messages is a lot even for hardcore teenage text message senders — but it’s like picking through the debris field of a fatal train wreck. What are family members thinking and feeling as complete strangers rubberneck and rifle through the messages for purposes that have little to do with helping the City of Detroit or the other collateral victims of this mess?
Where the news value is in re-publishing every jot and tittle of this kind of information? Or is the real value only in the traffic it brings?
At least one piece of news did emerge from the text messages, although one might wonder if this could simply have been reported without republishing all of the text messages. Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox is mentioned numerous times in the text messages, in relation to the investigation of the 2002 Manoogian Mansion mayoral residence party. Cox spent considerable time today with media trying to explain the circumstances surrounding his role in the text messages. This merits further monitoring since Cox is a likely gubernatorial candidate in 2010.
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