Breathe easy, Gannett execs

Posted on June 3, 2008 by admin

By Joel Thurtell

Bet some Gannett news execs are heaving giant sighs of relief that their company lost their case in the arbitration of my $500 donation to Michigan Dems in 2004.

Turns out nearly 30 top Gannett honchos did the same thing I did in 2004 — contributed money to political parties or partisan causes.

When Free Press execs belatedly caught wind of my donation in June 2007, they quickly re-wrote the paper’s ethics policy to ban political contributions. That didn’t stop Editor Paul Anger from donating $175 to the Detroit Regional Chamber Political Action Committee a couple weeks later. But Anger is only one of a bevy of Gannett execs who’ve contributed to political campaigns, candidates or causes in the past few years. Thanks to my arbitration ruling, all of these malefactors can rest easy. While I was told I’d face discipline up to an including termination if I made another donation, no such sanctions will await them.

Thanks to arbitrator Paul Glendon, who set aside the new rule and called it “null and void,” those Gannetoids who made political gifts can’t be disciplined for violating their company’s ethics policy.

Of course, I’m kidding, since it was clear the company didn’t consider managers covered by the ethics rules in the first place. Otherwise, they’d have brought Anger up on ethics charges when I first revealed his transgression here months ago. Wouldn’t they?

Neat, huh? One standard — actually no standard — for the brass, but a high bar for the grunts.

But the real concern for these Gannettoids should not be with their toothless and vague ethics pronouncements. It should be with federal law. Paul Anger’s donation to the chamber’s PAC appears on the Michigan Secretary of State website. You would assume the $175 gift was from Anger. Not so. Apparently, Gannett wrote the check. That’s what he said when he testified during my Jan. 18 arbitration hearing.

“It was a company expense,” Anger testified.

Hmmm. Isn’t that what brought on Geoffrey Fieger’s woes? Federal prosecutors accused him and a partner of reimbursing employees’ donations to John Edwards when he was running for president in 2004. According to Anger, the Free Press bypassed that middle step. Gannett paid directly for the donation. Fieger was acquitted of reimbursing political contributions made by his employees, which is a felony. But all that means is the jury didn’t buy federal prosecutors’ case against him. The acquittal didn’t legalize the practice.

Oh, I know, Freepsters claim the money was for a ticket to dinner at last year’s Chamber shindig on Mackinac Ialand. One dinner for a hundred seventy-five smackers? Come on. the rubber chicken costs ten or twelve bucks. The rest of the moolah is gravy ladled into a huge trough of funding the Chamber directs to its pro-business, anti-labor political causes.

But in any case, the contributions by Editor Anger, Executive Editor Caesar Andrews ($175) and Detroit Media Partnership President David Hunke ($350) are dwarfed by gifts made by Gannett muck-a-mucks like Gannett Broadcasting CEO and President Craig Dubow, who donated $10,250 to the National Association of Broadcasters, a lobbying group, between 2003 and 2005 or Gannett Senior Vice President John Jaske, who gave $2,000 to presidential candidate John Kerry in 2004 or Gannett Chairman Douglas McCorkindale, who donated $1,000 to George W. Bush and $1,000 to the Federal Victory Fund in 2003. Last year, Gannett general counsel Kurt Wimmer donated $2,300 to presidential candidate Barack Obama and in 2006 Gannett Human Resources Vice President Jose Berrios gave $2,000 to Hillary Clinton.

In a quick check at www.opensecrets.org, I found 28 Gannett higher-ups who made this kind of donation.

Now, here’s my question: Did Gannett execs dig deep to make these political gifts, or did Ma Gannett cover the costs?

If it should turn out that this was what Paul Anger terms “a company expense,” Geoffrey Fieger might want to ask why the federal government prosecuted him so diligently (he was acquitted) while letting a big media company slip through their fingers.

Could be quite a company expense.

Contact me at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com

Posted in Arbitration, future of newspapers, Joel's J School | 3 Comments

Dowd too “over the top” for public editor

Posted on June 2, 2008 by admin

By Joel Thurtell

 Well, Clarkie’s been at it again.

 I was hoping that after a couple of my punitive columns, New York Times public editor Clark Hoyt would have seen the light.

 After my onslaughts, I can’t understand why he hasn’t backed off on his heavy-handed literary assaults on writers for the Times.

 Well, doggone, he doesn’t seem to hear me.

 But Clarkie’s most recent sniping misfired, at least for me. I found it funny that he should describe the writing of Times columnist Maureen Dowd as “over the top.”

 I’ll bet Dowd, by far the most acerbic of the Times pundits, was laughing, too. Well, then again, maybe not.

 I mean, what does Clark Hoyt think Dowd gets paid for — boring her readers?

 If they want to fall asleep, Times subscribers can always turn to the National or Business sections, two of the finest soporifics invented by humankind.

 For that matter, other than Frank Rich, Paul Krugman and William Kristol, and, of course, Dowd, Times columnists fall definitely under the top, to purloin and pervert Hoyt’s metaphor.

 The public editor was responding in his June 22, 2008 Times op-ed column to claims by supporters of failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton that sexism marred much of the media coverage of Senator Clinton’s campaign.

 The National Organization for Women has created a “Media Hall of Shame” for writers whose Hillary coverage NOW considers sexist.

 NOW placed Dowd and Kristol in their Hall of Shame. Kristol was honored for comments he made outside the Times. For that reason, presumably, Hoyt ignores Kristol in his column.

 Hmmm. The public editor chooses to ignore the transgressions of the male columnist who’s been pilloried for his allegedly sexist remarks? He focuses exclusively on the female columnist? Again, hmmm — because the woman’s rants appeared in the Times and the guy’s ravings showed up somewhere else?

 Any old excuse to pick on a female.

Maybe NOW needs to add Hoyt to its Hall of Shame.

 But I digress.

 Hoyt indicts Dowd for writing columns “so loaded with language painting her (Clinton) as a 50-foot woman with a suffocating embrace, a conniving film noir dame and a victim dependent on her husband that they could easily have been listed” in a June 13 Times article about sexism in political coverage that did mention Kristol along with other journalists like Chris Mathews, Mike Barnicle and Tucker Carlson.

 Apparently the June 13 Times writers let Dowd slip through their fingers. Hoyt was not about to let her skate. He assigned his assistant along with some journalism school types to analyze Times coverage to see if it was sexist. Overall, the academics opined, it was not, other than for a reference to Clinton wearing a “no-nonsense pantsuit” and another that said she “shouted” into a microphone. Or there was the comment in a Times story that Hillary “may not have passed the commander in chief test” in the minds of voters. Oh my.

 In other words, nada. But nonetheless, Hoyt requested — and got — justifications from editors.

 At the Detroit Free Press, when top editors or the publisher would pretend to critique the paper, staffers’ written responses to the brass’s queries were called “forced confessions.”

 And yes, Hoyt presents several forced confessions, including one from Dowd herself.

 “From the time I began writing about politics, I have always played with gender stereotypes and mined them and twisted them to force the reader to be conscious of how differently we view the sexes. You are asking me to treat Hillary differently than I’ve treated the male candidates all these years, with kid gloves,” Dowd told Hoyt, who passed it on to us.

 A fair enough response. But I’m sorry she made it. Readers likely are unaware that Dowd really had no choice: She was compelled to respond to Hoyt. She is — despite being a highly visible Times columnist — still an employee whose paycheck is cut by people who demand obeisance, even from tart-tongued commentators.

 What about Dowd’s First Amendment rights? Hah! Glad you asked. Talk about Halls of Shame. Newspapers and media in general have managed to deceive people into thinking their reporters are personifications of First Amendment principles. That they have created that illusion is their true shame.

 Yes, the public has been deceived into thinking that newspapers like the Times are pillars of First Amendment righteousness. In fact, while the OWNERS of newspapers enjoy free speech rights, their employees do not. In fact, I have a letter from the management of Gannett, owner of the Detroit Free Press where I worked until a few months ago, stating unequivocally that employees (reporters, editors, photographers, et. al.) of private institutions like the Free Press (and yes, these words apply to the Times, too) do not enjoy First Amendment rights.

 So Dowd did not have a right to refuse comment, which would be the inverse of the First Amendment. In other words, if you have First Amendment rights, you have the right to express yourself, or not.

 The “or not” — the “no comment” option — is not in the equation for newspaper employees, and woe unto an employee who speaks his/her mind in a way that annoys management.

 So here we have the outspoken columnist who projects an aura of untrammeled freedom of expression actually being coerced into making a self-defending statement.

 Demeaning, but in the newspaper owners’ worldview, necessary to placate vocal interest groups.

 Finally, in Hoyt’s column, after all the phony “analysis” by sanctimonious academics, forced confessions by editors and Dowd herself, Hoyt pronounces his dictum: Dowd, “by assailing Clinton in gender-heavy terms in column after column, went over the top this election season.”

 I’m sorry to say, I don’t have an assistant. I don’t have access to a university journalism department for freebie research services. And I certainly can’t mentally bludgeon anyone into responding to my queries.

 But still, I’d like to know: What does it mean for a journalist to go “over the top this election season”?

 Would “over the top” be something different in another “election season”?

 What it boils down to is this: The Times pays Dowd to write a witty, saucy, cantankerous and highly entertaining column. Pissing people off is her job description.

 Why? Because it wakes readers up. They may not agree with her. She may annoy them. But she makes them think.

 For chrissake, Clark, isn’t that what it’s about?

Why not just show some guts and tell interest groups like NOW as well as the Christian right — all of whom are pursuing some political agenda — to take their halls of shame or whatever their political gambit du jour might be and stick it where the sun don’t shine?

 Contact me at joelthurtell@gmail.com

Posted in Joel's J School | Leave a comment

Political gifts okay at Detroit Free Press, says arbitrator

Posted on May 30, 2008 by admin

An arbitrator has ruled there was nothing wrong with my $500 donation to Michigan Democrats in 2004.

Last year, Free Press managers told me they might fire me if I continued to give money to political parties.

The Newspaper Guild filed a grievance, and the managers denied it. Early this year, there was a hearing for the binding arbitration that is called for in the union contract with the Free Press.

Arbitrator Paul Glendon ruled late in May that I didn’t violate Free Press ethical guidelines when I made the contribution to a political party. He set aside a new management edict in June 2007 that was specially designed to ban the kind of donation I made. The new company rule is “null and void,” Glendon wrote. The Free Press ethics policy in effect until June 2007 didn’t prohibit political donations.

Free Press staffers are now free to make political contributions in this highly political presidential election year. Want to give to your favorite GOP or Dem? No problem. No need to ask permission of editors. Surprise! Journalists are citizens, too. It’s my contention that we always had that right.

In an ironic twist, the ruling clears Free Press Editor Paul Anger of having violated his own ban on donations. A couple weeks after the new rule was announced, Anger contributed $175 to the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce Political Action Committee. In his testimony during the arbitration hearing, Anger tried to minimize the importance of his donataion. It was paid for by Gannett, owner of the Free Press, he said. “A company expense,” he called it.

In June 2007, Free Press managers learned about my donation in an MSNBC report about journalists’ contributions to political causes. I’d made no secret of it. My contribution was listed on the Michigan Secretary of State website. I never told editors about it because I believed it was none of their business.

Reacting to the MSNBC report, Free Press editors re-wrote the paper’s ethics policy to prohibit donations like the one I made. They also told me that if I made another political donation, I’d be subject to discipline up to and including termination.

Glendon’s order that the Free Press repeal its anti-donation rule was good news to me, since I believe that journalists don’t give up their constitutional right to take part in the political process when they enter the profession. When I was interviewed by MSNBC’s Bill Dedman, I pointed out that I hadn’t violated the Free Press ethics policy. Nor had I violated the professional integrity section of Guild’s labor contract with the Free Press.

“Whatever the Free Press policy is,” I told Dedman, “I actually have my own policy about that: I’m a citizen of the United States. I have a right to support whatever candidate I like.”

The arbitrator agreed.

Before my case with the Free Press, there was no precedent in this area. Now we have a ruling that says journalists are free to make political donations. I hope the ruling will have an impact on restrictive ethics policies around the country.

Guild attorney Duane Ice argued during the hearing that Article XI, Section 7 of The Newspaper Guild contract with the Free Press guarantees the employer can’t meddle in workers’ extracurricular activities so long as those activities don’t harm the paper’s integrity: According to that section, “There shall be no limitation upon the outside activities of any person employed by the Free Press, except that no such person shall engage in any activity that compromises the integrity of the newspaper.”

I got the good news in an email from Lou Mleczko, president of Local 22 of The Newspaper Guild.

“We won!” Lou told me. “Arbitrator Paul Glendon ruled in our favor on our political contribution grievance. Although Glendon dismissed the portion of our grievance that the warnings issued to you violated the contract, he ordered the new rule prohibiting political contributions for all editorial employees set aside and declared null and void retroactive to the date when it was promulgated, June 25, 2007.”

“It was a seven-page decision,” Lou told me. “Glendon said the Free Press failed to show any evidence that your political contribution compromised or affected the integrity of the Free Press in any way.”

“The Company presented no such proof,” Glendon wrote. “In fact, (Executive Editor Caesar) Andrews … conceded the Company did not possess or even look for evidence that the MSNBC revelation of grievant’s 2004 contribution to the Michigan Democratic Party compromised the Free Press’ integrity. Even in the terms in which management chose to view this (namely, risk of harm to reputation) it failed to make its case, because it had no evidence that even one reader complained.”

Andrews testified he was not aware of the professional integrity section in the Guild contract.

Because I retired before the case was finished, Glendon rejected the Guild’s argument that editors had disciplined me and threatened me with firing if I made another political donation. By retiring while the grievance was pending, I made my “individual complaint moot,” he wrote.

This wasn’t so much about me as it was about establishing that citizens have rights that employers can’t erase just because they chose to be journalists.

Contact me at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com

Posted in Arbitration, Joel's J School, Unions | 1 Comment

How many reporters does it take to count a lake?

Posted on May 29, 2008 by admin

After virtually drumming Detroit’s mayor out of office, you’d think the town’s vigilante press would let up once in a while. Nope. The ever watchful Detroit Free Press maybe thought they’d pound another nail in the coffin of this area by alleging in a May 27 story that Wayne County is nearly a lakeless patch of real estate.

Now, I never thought of Wayne County as the land o’ lakes, exactly, but when I read that story, which claimed the county where I live has only three lakes with names, I nearly spilled my coffee. Without looking at a map, I reeled off the names of Wilcox, Phoenix, Newburgh, Nankin, Waterford, Northville and Belleville — seven named lakes which I quickly confirmed on my trusty Huron-Clinton Metroparks map.

Already, that’s more than twice as many named lakes as the Free Press gave Wayne credit for and I wasn’t even started. My next stop was Bulletin No. 82 of Clifford Humphrys’ monumental “Michigan Lake Inventory”, aka “Michigan Lakes and Ponds,” the bible for us lake nuts since it was published by Michigan State University’s Department of Resource Development in 1962. Humphrys realized that lakes are very important in Michigan’s economy, and he believed that to better understand the resources, a catalog of lakes was needed. I’m lucky to own a copy, because it confirmed mu suspicion that the Free Press had rather under-estimated the number of water bodies near me.

Three lakes with names in Wayne County? How about 44?

Agreed, these are mostly not your typical tourist meccas, but lakes they are, nonetheless.

How about the Turning Basin, part of the Rouge River at Ford Motor Co.’s massive Ford Rouge plant? It’s a 30-acre lake, as I know very well, having paddled across it in a canoe. Or how about the mill pond behind the powerhouse dam at Henry Ford’s Fair Lane mansion in Dearborn?

I’m sure the Free Press wasn’t thinking of those two tailing ponds on Zug Island at the mouth of the Rouge, but lakes they are, too.

It’s not all gloomy, ugly industry, either — the Inventory records a lake named “Swimming Pool,” and its size — one-half acre.

What about the ponds at Waterworks Park?

And, of course, there’s Belleville Lake, at 1,270 acres only 10 acres shy of Oakland County’s Cass Lake at a whopping 1,280 acres.

What is this Free Press thing about “named lakes,” anyway?

First, they’re wrong not only about Wayne, but also about Macomb and Oakland. The paper claims Macomb has only three named lakes, but Humphrys’ Inventory lists 23.

I suspect the fixation on named lakes comes from the Oakland County Sheriff’s marine Division. They told the reporter Oakland has “450 named lakes.”

That’s curious, because when I covered Oakland County lakes as a beat a few years ago for the Free Press, Oakland marine deputies were claiming 450 navigable lakes.

I always wondered what they meant by “navigable.” Capable of being traveled by motorboat? By sailboat? By canoe? I suppose a chunk of tree bark floating across a lake could be said to “navigate” a waterway. In other words, the term “navigable” was as meaningless as the number — 450 — they gave me.

For the record, while the Free Press under-counted named lakes in Macomb and Wayne counties, it exaggerated their number in Oakland. By my reckoning, again based on the Humphrys Inventory, there are 408 lakes with names in Oakland.

That doesn’t mean all 408 have different names. Three lakes are called “Dollar,” two are “Cass.” There are three Cranberry Lakes and one Cranbery Lake. Three Dark Lakes, two Fish Lakes, two Clam Lakes.

The king of lake names is “Mud.” There are 14 Mud Lakes in Oakland and one Mud Pond.

Named lakes are not nearly the whole story, though. The total of lakes and ponds bigger than 1/10th acre in Oakland is 1,857, according to Humphrys. That’s right — one thousand, eight hundred fifty seven. That makes Oakland second only to the Upper Peninsula’s Iron County for total lakes. Iron County has 2,175 lakes.

Sorry, I refuse to count the names of Iron County’s lakes.

This is not news at the Free Press. I used those numbers in stories I wrote for the paper. “The Detroit Almanac,” published by the Free Press, has a section on inland lakes on pp. 144-145 that lists the top 10 Michigan lakes ranked by number of lakes and ponds and by total lake and pond acreage. I know the figures well, because I wrote that section.

The Free Press notwithstanding, Macomb and Wayne are no slouches when it comes to lakes. Macomb has 278, and Wayne has 298.

True, most of them — and this is true also of Oakland — have no monickers.

I’m still trying to decide how to count one lake in Wayne: Is it a named or an unnamed lake? What do you think?

It’s called “No Name Lagoon.”

Contact me at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com

Posted in Joel's J School, Lakes and streams | Tagged , | 1 Comment

More equal than others

Posted on May 23, 2008 by admin

I was still trying to digest Eric Alterman’s long, thoughtful article in the March 31, 2008 New Yorker about the demise of American newspapers when I noticed the March 29, 2008 Detroit Free Press Page One story from Mackinac Island.

Mackinac Island in March?

Who’d want to be there when there’s snow on the ground in Detroit?

But the paper sent a photographer and reporter to the Straits to investigate that oh-so critical question of whether island businesses will suffer a labor shortage because immigrants can’t easily get green cards.

Incidentally, the story is very good. But it’s the economics of the thing that concerns me here. I’m figuring the budget for that story. Let’s see, mileage for two cars, meals for two days (assuming a one-night motel stay) and probably some over time. Two staffers could easily ratchet that story well over a thousand bucks.

Now let’s see, where was I? Oh yes, the New Yorker’s fears for our Democracy should the subscription on newspapering as we know it expire.

According to Alterman, newspapers are willing to pay for hard-hitting investigative reporting. Internet news outlets are not. Take away paper newspapers and you take away all that important journalism that our nation depends on.

I’m not saying the labor situation on Mackinac Island in March isn’t important.

But I don’t think the Republic would fall for want of that report.

And I know the Free Press is spending lots of money in legal fees as it investigates Kwamegate. True, they no doubt expect to be reimbursed at city taxpayer expense when judges assess their Freedom of Information Act court costs back to the city Treasury.

Still, it takes an up-front investment of money and guts to do that reporting, and we don’t see it happening on the Web.

But at the same time they’re investigating Kwame and the state of the Straits, other Free Press reporters are told to spend not more than $20 a month on lunches, books, photocopies, whatever it takes to report. There are plenty of important stories that are not being reported because resources aren’t shared equally.

Kwamegate is the news from Detroit right now. What about other parts of Wayne County? Oakland County? How’re those beats covered?

By reporters with $20-a-month expense accounts? Afraid all too often that’s the way it is.

According to the New Yorker, ads on the Internet don’t pay nearly as much as newspaper ads. The papers are having to make do with far lower revenues from the Web.

Web-only news outlets are making do with the same puny ad returns. The difference is that they don’t have the overhead that comes from printing and delivering paper newspapers. They also don’t have the overhead that comes from investigating Kwamegates.

So the argument goes.

But how much of that Free Press news budget is being drained by the Kwame probe? Proportionally, it’s probably minute compared to the budget for covering the Detroit Tigers, Pistons, Lions and various other sports teams.

Would the Republic fall if we crossed off out-of-town travel by reporters and photographers to cover games?

I hear the screams, but hey, why not write a few of those sports stories, and maybe that Straits of Mackinac article, by phone?

I doubt it would save our Democracy, but it might save a newspaper or two.

Contact me at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com 

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The governor and history — John Swainson’s house in Plymouth

Posted on May 21, 2008 by admin

Revised November 20, 2024 to note Swainson-related stories HISTORY ONCE LIVED HERE and PICKING UP THE JUMBLED PIECES

Here is the speech I gave Wednesday, May 21, 2008 to Friends of the Plymouth Library:

Pontiac has its Governor Moses Wisner house. Today, it’s the town’s museum.

Farmington has a governor’s house, too — it’s the old Fred Warner house. It’s also the city’s museum.

And in Plymouth, we have the historic Gov. John Swainson house.

Wait a minute. The what? Who was John Swainson? Who says his house is historic?

Those were the reactions I got from Plymouth historians two years ago when I reported in the Detroit Free Press that Gov. Swainson’s house, curiously situated on Gov. Bradford Street in Plymouth Township, was for sale.

I wasn’t the only one who raised eyebrows trying to assert the historical importance of this less than imposing ranch house in an otherwise nondescript, shady subdivision a block west of busy Sheldon Road. The owners of the house then were Joan and Bob Marquard. They’d tried to persuade their real estate agent that playing up their home’s historical significance might help sell the place. The agent wasn’t having it. I asked her why. She gave me what amounted to a telephonic shrug and said she’d never heard of John Swainson.

I got roughly the same message when I called the Plymouth museum. They’d never heard of Swainson and argued that his house, built in 1956, wasn’t old enough to be historic.

I don’t see it that way. History is not a subject where you can say, “Okay, this thing is 25 or 50 or 100 years old, therefore its age alone makes it important.” If you accept that history is whatever is past, then the very syllables I just uttered are historic. Except that they may not be very important. Every historic event occurred in the present and had its recent past. Some historic things are recognized as such right away. The British certainly knew they’d set Bonaparte back as soon as they heard news of the battle off Trafalgar. And Napoleon knew instantly that his big fleet had been pummeled. That battle was historic as soon as it was over. On the other hand, there may be factors that are hugely important that go unrecognized. Historic unknowns.

In Plymouth, John Swainson is a historic little-known, but he’s not forgotten and he’s not insignificant. The real estate agent’s response surprised me. Maybe she felt like the historical angle, which the Marquards pointed out to her, was a piece of luggage that might complicate the sale. After all, there is scandal in the Swainson story. Or maybe she was just lazy, like a dull student who simply didn’t want to learn the facts of history.

The reaction of the local historians did surprise me. Maybe it shouldn’t have. Years ago, when I was a graduate student studying history at the University of Michigan, my professor warned me that studying and writing about history can have political consequences in the present. His specialty was colonial Mexican history, and he told me he recommended his students focus on early history to avoid the political repercussions writers of modern history sometimes encounter.

I’m not sure the professor’s formula works. Last summer, I got in hot water with local historians on Grosse Ile when I criticized their recently published book of historic local photos for deliberately ignoring a topic the book’s authors knew about but found uncomfortable — namely, that the first white owner of Grosse Ile, William Macomb, owned more slaves at the time of his death in 1796 than any other Michigander, and he had slaves living and working on Grosse Ile. I’d offered the Grosse Ile historians use of my photos of entries in the posthumous inventory of Macomb’s worldly goods, which included the names of 26 human beings — slaves, along with their estimated values in New York currency. The island historians told me they’d determined there were no slaves on their island. After I disagreed in my review of their book, they promised that next time I come to Grosse Ile, they’ll be lobbing eggs and tomatoes my way.

History as contact sport. I’ll where a helmet when I go to Grosse Ile.

By omitting slavery from their book, the Grosse Ile historians probably think they’ve somehow protected the good name of their community from a blemish of history. I wouldn’t count on it. And  they can’t win. The documents recounting slavery in and around Detroit are safe in the Burton Historical Collection of the Detroit Public Library. I was tipped to slavery on Grosse Ile by another historically-inclined reporter, Bill McGraw of the Detroit Free Press. Bill plans to write a book about slavery around Detroit. Time — history — is working against those historians-in-denial on the big island.

I don’t know why it is that so few people in Plymouth are aware that a governor once lived here. Is it because he was a Democrat and Plymouth was solidly Republican in those days? He had his house built on Gov. Bradford Street in 1956, the same year he was re-elected to the state Senate. Swainson was known as the “boy wonder” of Michigan politics, because he was the youngest senator ever elected. In 1958, campaigning from that house, he was elected lieutenant governor while G. Mennen “Soapy” Williams was still governor. In 1960, campaigning again from that modest ranch house, Swainson was elected the youngest governor in the 20th Century. He and his wife, Alice, continued living in that house while he was governor. In those years, it was the norm to see a state limousine with a state trooper body guard park in the drive of the house at 44525 Governor Bradford.

There was a barbershop on Ann Arbor Road where you could hear the governor loudly arguing politics while he got his hair cut.

In 1962, Swainson was defeated by George Romney. But he stayed in the Gov. Bradford house and was elected a judge on the Wayne County Circuit Court.

It may be that the local amnesia about Swainson stems from his indictment on bribery charges in 1975. Personally, I think the blackout was already in place. No doubt about it, though, the indictment by itself ruined Swainson politically. A jury acquitted him of bribery, but found him guilty of perjury — lying to a grand jury. As Swainson once told me, he was found guilty of lying to cover up a crime the jury found didn’t exist. But the fact remained that he had been convicted of a felony. He lost his license to practice law for three years. He was not only destroyed politically, but he was financially devastated.

I am convinced that from the historical perspective, the indictment, which amounted to political assassination of an up and coming national Democrat, will prove to be the most important part of Swainson’s life. It may not have seemed that way for a long time, but then in the past couple of years we’ve been learning about the seven fired U.S. attorneys. Why were they fired? For failing to aggressively prosecute Democrats. Meanwhile, obedient federal prosecutors were busily indicting Democrats.

John Swainson was the victim of hardball, below-the-belt politics. Before he was caught up and eventually forced to resign or himself be indicted, then President Richard Nixon used the grand jury to prosecute political opponents. In those days, Swainson was considered a shoo-in for the Democratic nomination to run for departing U.S. Senator Phil Hart’s seat. Under Attorney General John Mitchell, the allegations of bribery were first investigated and found without merit. It was on the watch of President Gerald Ford that a swashbuckling assistant U.S. attorney was sent to Detroit with instructions to get Swainson. It may have seemed more urgent then to derail Swainson before the 1976 election.

The link between Swainson’s case in the mid-1970s and the current case of the fired U.S. attorneys is a strong one and deserves to be explored by jurists and historians. That kind of original historical work could be based right here in Plymouth if there were recognition of his importance in local, state and national history.

The indictment by a grand jury in Detroit federal court was a low point in a life that had already seen a very low spot. It happened in France in 1944, when the 19-year-old Swainson, an infantryman, was struck by the blast of a German land mine. He lost both his legs below the knees. Yet when I spent time with him in 1985, I could easily have forgotten he was walking or driving with artificial legs. He spent time with injured people, particularly veterans, trying to buck up people, give them courage to go on. It was not uncommon for the boy wonder to drop his pants to show a wounded soldier his wooden legs. It was also not unusual for him to tap dance beside a limbless person’s bed.

Now, why do I care about John Swainson? I was in high school when he was elected governor in 1960. When he was defeated in 1962, he went off my radar screen. In 1976, I read an article in The Nation, “The Perverted Grand Juries,” by Sam Pizzigati, a former newspaper editor. Pizzigati described how the Nixon White House had subverted the grand jury, turning it into a tool for destroying political opponents. He wrote about Robert Ozer, the assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted Swainson after giving a speech in which he described his methods as “investigation by terrorism.”

It seemed to me that Swainson had been seriously wronged. He was the victim of a political hatchet job. I wanted to know more about him, to tell his story.

In 1984, I was hired as a reporter at the Detroit Free Press. One of my beats was Washtenaw County. In those days, that county’s Road Commission wanted to cut down a huge bur oak tree near Manchester. Residents tried to stop the cutting. I discovered John Swainson living near Manchester. He was one of the people trying to save the tree. I wrote a story about the tree. The tree was not cut.

I wanted to learn more about Swainson. We spent hours talking, and I wrote a long story about the ups and downs of his life.

A few years later, I was working on a story about Red Squads — efforts of city, state and federal police to do surveillance on the political lives of law-abiding citizens like me and John Swainson. Yes, it turned out we both had Red Squad files. While interviewing him for that story, Swainson asked me if I still lived in Plymouth. I said yes, but I’d moved to the township. Where? he asked. On Priscilla Lane, I said.

Swainson told me about his house. I could see it from my place, he said. He had a bit of a tiff with township building officials because he wanted to use reclaimed brick. Eventually, they agreed. The house is unique, because it’s barrier-free — a new concept in 1956. Ramps in the garage and on the front and back porches allowed him to get in and out with a wheelchair. Extra wide hallways and doorways were passable for him on a wheelchair. Dressers were built in, too.

When I saw the “for sale” sign in front of the old Swainson house the summer of 2006, I decided to write a story. I wanted to see the place inside. Recently, I learned from the current owners, Lorrie and Richard Bruce, that our Free Press story made them aware of the house and excited them to want to own it. It worked like a real estate ad, and I’m glad.

It’s great that the house is owned by people who appreciate its history, because one concern expressed by Plymouth native and state historical preservationist Laura Ashlee was that a new owner might build a second story on it or even tear it down to build a bigfoot place.

But there’s even better news. Bob Christensen, who oversees applications for the National Historic Register in Lansing, told me the Swainson house could be on the register. A couple months ago, I sent preliminary application materials to the state and was waiting for Bob to make a determination.

“We certainly do feel that it’s eligible,” he told me a couple days ago. “I think the most interesting thing about it is it’s obviously the home of a governor, which plays into our considerations. He was probably the only governor of Michigan who’s also been in the judiciary and the Legislature. That’s pretty interesting. And the fact that the house was specifically designed and built for him with his special needs in mind. All those things kind of went into it. It’s certainly not as old as most things we would consider historic, but the only age requirement is that it be 50 years old and even that — if it has specialized significance — can be reduced a little. You look at the house and think, ‘This can’t be historic,’ but you look at who lived there and its historic merits certainly are strong enough that there’s no question in my mind we would be able to list it.”

So there you have it, and it’s not just coming from me. Straight from a state historian. John Swainson was an important figure in Michigan history and the house he built is a unique part of our collective past.

Next time you’re driving around, go have a look. Turn west off Sheldon onto Gov. Bradford and proceed slowly a bit more than a block. Look on your left for a house with different hues of bricks and ivy clinging from trees in the front yard. Picture a black limo out front with a state trooper lounging on the front seat and you’re looking at a mental picture of the house when the governor of Michigan lived there.

Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com

Posted in Adventures in history, People, Places | Tagged , | Leave a comment

American Axle is ‘big bad wolf,’ says worker

Posted on May 21, 2008 by admin

The burn barrel was cold and deck chairs overturned Tuesday morning where UAW picketers for a dozen weeks had struck the giant American Axle plant in Hamtramck.

In theory, picketers are still standing watch at the gates on Holbrook near I-75, but most workers were home or hanging out in morose clusters outside the United Auto Workers Local 235 office a stone’s throw from the plant in the shadow of a Kowalski sausage plant. They’re awaiting the outcome of voting on a contract offer most thinks stinks.

The big question for American Axle workers Tuesday was whether to vote yes or no on a contract laced with concessions to management. Some workers already have voted.

“Right now, the big bad wolf got us,” a worker said. “If you can’t beat it, you gotta join em.”

The worker, who like most wouldn’t give his name, called the contract a bad deal, but one he couldn’t afford to reject.

He predicted a majority of union members would approve the agreement. “If you vote it down, it’s still gonna pass.”

“We’re all in shock right now. We gotta eat their crumbs right now.”

But down the street, people were circulating fliers calling for rejection of the contract, which they called “economic terrorism”.

It’s not just the concessionary contract that troubled the workers on Holbrook Street. A dearth of other jobs and rising fuel and food prices have workers worried, too.

“You used to have twenty dollars in your pocket and you could say, ‘I can get through the rest of the week. You need fifty or sixty dollars now,” one worker said.

Adam, an American Axle worker from Howell, said he drives 120 miles back and forth between home and his job at the plant. The contract cuts his pay by $10 an hour, from $28 to $18. “At eighteen dollars an hour, with four-dollars-a-gallon gas, I work two hours a day just to pay for my gas.”

Adam and three buddies hanging out across from the burn barrel said they all had at least 10 years seniority and are eligible for a $140,000 buyout. The big question for them is whether to give up their jobs for a pile of money that could dwindle before they find other work.

People with less than 10 years on the job could take $85,000 buyouts, though some close to 10 years are bitter they aren’t getting the bigger sum.

Adam and his buddies Karl and Frank (none would give last names) said they don’t expect the big plant to be open when it’s time to bargain another contract in four years.

“It’s ugly,” Adam described workers’ mood. “They’re pissed.”

“There’s a lot of talk of leaving, but we’ll see,” said Karl. “There’s nothing out there” in the way of alternative jobs.

“That’s what people are looking at,” said Frank. “I’m 33 years old. I’ve got a wife and two kids. I’ve got to look at security for them. If you can get out, get out. But if you can’t, you end up going to the next contract, and we don’t know if this place will be around in four years.”

Still, the company is offering money to cover tuition for training in other fields. Something to think about, they agreed.

It’s clear, the men said, the plant’s forge unit will be closed. That work will be done in Mexico or more likely in a non-union facility in Ohio where pay ranges between $10-13 an hour but the company has much more control over the workplace.

“It’s cheaper — they don’t have to deal with the union,” said Frank.

Some of the fault lies with General Motors, which sold this plant and four others in 1994 allowing formation of American Axle. GM kept producing its highly profitable $50,000 SUVs even as gas prices climbed and the public began demanding vehicles with better fuel efficiency. Bad judgment, in hindsight.

“They’re fantastic vehicles, but you’re looking at eighty-five to a hundred ten dollar fillups,” said Frank.

At the UAW Local 235 office, former local president Wendy Thompson was handing out yellow fliers headlined, “Is This the Best We Can Do?”

According to the flier, “After striking for 12 weeks, Local 235 members are being asked to vote on a tentative agreement. Thirty GM plants are down, GM dealers are crying over the problems they are having — just last week the Detroit News cararied a story about how one dealer had to take an axle out of a brand new $58,000 vehicle in order to make a repair.”

The flier, which Thompson was handing out to anyone who stepped into the Local building Tuesday morning, continued: American Axle CEO “Dick Dauch is a good poker player, but he ‘s playing with lives not cards. He has threatened to take production to Mexico and China, but as much s he’d like to do that, he can’t. Axles are too big and subject to damage to truck from Mexico or ship from China!

“We have sacrificed over the last 12 weeks. Now that we have reduced GM’s inventory, let’s not stop putting the pressure on, but accelerate to preserve our wages and benefits! Let’s remember solidarity crosses the generations of workers — we have what others struggled for. We can only keep what we are willing to fight for, and pass it on to the next generation of workers. The solidarity we have deepened over the last three months on the picket lines makes us strong — let’s stay strong and reject Dauch’s economic terrorism.

“No, this tentative contract is not the best we can do. Send the negotiators back to the table! We demand justice and a decent livelihood!”

The flier is signed “Shifting gears, Newsletter by and for the UAW/AAM Rank and File.”

Posted in Unions | Leave a comment

Great story, but…

Posted on May 20, 2008 by admin

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

Posted in Kwamegate, People | Leave a comment

Cradle to grave — Birth and death of cars on Rouge River

Posted on May 8, 2008 by admin

There was a time in the 20th century when Henry Ford’s Rouge car factory literally started at one end from scratch with iron ore, limestone and coke and at the other end rolled out finished automobiles. Sort of a nativity scene, with newborn cars delivered there on the Lower Rouge.

That piece of history is well-known. What most people don’t know is that a few miles upstream from the Rouge plant, cars have been abandoned, lying submerged in the river, sitting askew on the banks or just resting on the floodplain.

The Rouge is a birthplace for cars, but it is also a car graveyard.

I discovered this feature of the Rouge three years ago when I was still a reporter with the Detroit Free Press. Together with my old friend and colleague Pat Beck, a Free Press photographer, I paddled a canoe up the Rouge River, starting at Zug Island where U.S. Steel makes iron that eventually goes for cars and many other products. We decided to go upstream because that’s how early European explorers would have seen it, arriving from Lake Erie.We paddled past the Rouge plant, where the steel mill now belongs to a Russian company. And for five days we kept at it, forcing our way over, around or through 72 logjams, four dams and spotting along the way 16 junk cars. I dictated their locations into my audio recorder.

My story and Pat’s photos, including amazing shots of junk cars in or along the Rouge — ran in the Detroit Free Press Oct. 19-20, 2005. The following spring, I got a call from Sally Petrella, public involvement coordinator at Friends of the Rouge. Would I be so kind as to show her where those cars are? A Livonia company, Aristeo Construction, had offered workers and heavy equipment to remove them.

By now, it’s gotten to be a yearly thing. Last week, for the third time, I got out the transcript of the audio log I made as Pat and I paddled up the Rouge June 6-10, 2005. I knew where the volunteer crews had already pulled 10 1/2 cars out in 2006 and 2007, so I didn’t bother looking at my comments for those areas. n 2006, six and a half cars were yanked from River Rouge Park. Last year, three cars were pulled out in the half-mile of river north of Fenkell Street. But according to my log, we spotted another seven junk cars in the last half mile, roughly, before Six Mile. Some were near the river, above the banks, while others were right in the river.

In June 2006, during Rouge Rescue, the Aristeo workes, led by Rick Lewandowski, slowly brought front-end loaders through the woods to the river in Detroit. The statistic six and a half comes from the fact that they got enough parts at one spot to make half a vehicle. Invariably, whoever dumped the cars scraped vehicle identification numbers off, so it’s impossible to track down ownes. In 2007, I showed Rick and Sally four cars just north of Fenkell. Aristeo got three of them. The fourth is still there, buried in the bank under the Fenkell Street bridge.

On our hike last April 29, with Sally and Cyndi Ross of Friends of the Rouge, we found the seven cars Pat and I spotted from the canoe, plus three more.

It was an amazing sight from the canoe. Your vision takes in the river and its banks nd the woods that rise up from the banks. What you don’t see are the lanes and streets that end close to the river. It’s those neighborhoods and their streets that populate the Rouge car cemetery.

But there is some good news. All of these cars are rusty and look like they’ve been there for years. It doesn’t look to me like more cars have been added to this sad pre-owned car inventory.

Is word getting out that this is a bad practice, this junking of old cars in the river?

The bad news, though, is that in the neighborhood to the east of this area, I saw many more burned-out houses than were there in previous years. No people, no junk cars? Maybe.

On Saturday, June 7, Aristeo will be back with front-end loaders, ready to yank more car carcasses out of the drink. I’ll be there again to watch and report.

Removing trash that may have come from that factory downstream is a wonderful step towards making this river more like the pristine gem it was when white explorers found it centuries ago.

Friends of the Rouge are always looking for more people to help with their annual Rouge Rescue. For more information, see their website at http://www.therouge.org/Programs/PI/River%20Restoration/Rouge%20Rescue2/RougeRescue2008/Rouge_Rescue_2008.html

Contact me at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com

Wayne State University Press is publishing a book by Pat Beck and me about our Rouge canoe trip. There will be dozens of Pat’s photos with a discussion of Rouge issues and trip narrative written by me. It’s called “Up the Rouge! Paddling Detroit’s Hidden River.” It’s to be for sale in early 2009.

Posted in Adventures on the Rouge | Leave a comment

A challenge to the council

Posted on May 7, 2008 by admin

Go ahead, prove me wrong.

I predict that Detroit’s City Council never will remove Kwame Kilpatrick as mayor. That long opinion they paid attorney Bill Goodman to write, which supposedly excoriated the mayor for his behavior in the text message scam, was a great show. Full of thunder and lightning.

In sum, it amounts to nothing.

The council could remove the mayor, but that would take time and cost money, supposedly.

Therefore, the council most likely will bounce their problem to Gov. Jennifer Granholm and ask her to fire the mayor for them.

Why not do it themselves? Don’t want their fingerprints on this one.

Meanwhile, we hear that maybe the council will “censure” hizzoner.

Censuring him won’t get rid of him.

So that means nothing again.

And the governor isn’t likely to bounce him for the same reasons the council doesn’t want to touch him.

Despite all the nasty headlines and despite the prosecutor’s criminal charges, Kilpatrick is a young man with plenty of political future ahead of him. He’s the scion of a powerful political family. His mom’s a congresswoman, no less, and his dad has been prominent in public office and as a Democrat for many years. Then, too, we’ve seen the Council President Pro Tem, Monica Conyers, switch to support for Kwame. I’ll bet she had a talk with her hubby and changed her mind about the mayor. She’s married to U.S. Rep. John Conyers Jr., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and one of the most powerful politicos in the country.

With the Conyers and Kilpatricks on his side, nobody with any brain will gun for Kwame.

Except Kym Worthy, the Wayne County prosecutor. And if she screws up the prosecution and Kwame skates free, his name and connections will assure him some public office, maybe even more years as mayor, for a long time.

There is a long shot. Questions about his misuse of a city credit card could smell like an ongoing pattern for deceit, possibly involving electronic transfers. Maybe the feds will weigh in with wire fraud or racketeering charges.

Don’t hold your breath.

Those people on the Detroit City Council know this. They know memories can be as long as grudges.

That’s why I think Kwame’s safe where he sits.

Okay, council members, prove me wrong!

Posted in JC & Me, Kwamegate | 1 Comment