Why I Left the Free Press

Posted on December 8, 2007 by admin

I had a great gig at the Detroit Free Press. Excuse me, at the COMMUNITY Free Press. I chose which stories I would write about, and I wrote the stories the way I wanted to. You can’t beat that. My former colleagues on the Metro and Features desks might take note – if you want relative freedom as a writer, go for the CFP.

Why, then, did I choose to leave the Free Press?

The answer is complicated, as most human decisions are, but it’s important to state that I did indeed CHOOSE to leave. Nobody forced me out. I know, there have been rumblings of a purge, and in fact by focusing the retirement offer on older workers, Gannett guaranteed that the most experienced people would take a hike. But a true purge would require management to shove us kicking towards the door. Besides, there is a logic to singling out older workers, since the company could garnish the enhanced pay offer with the carrot of pension. So, I along with 17 other staffers elected to take what Free Press owner Gannett calls a “voluntary severance plan.”

In English, they paid us to go away. Some people call it a “buyout.” I prefer to think of the nearly year’s salary Gannett will pay me as a grant. A fellowship. It’s not exactly a sabbatical, because after my 46 weeks of pay end in late 2008, my connection with the Free Press truly will be gone. There is risk in what I’ve done, then, the chance that in those 46 weeks – two weeks of salary for each of the 23 years I worked at the Free Press – I will not find gainful employment. Because, friends, although I am 62 and a half years old, I am not ready to retire. And I still need to earn money for the time when I truly do retire.

I can truthfully say that my time working on the CFP, a set of 11 Sunday supplements, each dedicated to highlighting neat things going on in 11 different areas, was the best time I had at the Free Press. Now, you will hear lots of grumbling from Free Press people about how bad the bottom-line Gannetoids are, and I agree. I sure didn’t like the way that company behaved during the strike, when I was absent from the Free Press with my picket sign for two years, three months and some days. But it’s still true that I was happier at the Free Press in my last year and a half, when I worked exclusively for the suburban operation, than at any other time in my career. And that happened under Gannett.

Just to give one example: For two and a half years while I worked for the first iteration of the Downriver CFP, I would drive from one police station to another and look over police incident reports. Now, some people complained about this assignment. Writing cops briefs was considered onerous. I looked on it as a way to have some fun while experimenting with my own peculiar style of writing. Believe me, I read some really bizarre accounts. I began writing those cops briefs as if they were fiction. Short stories. Except that everything I wrote was actual fact. Gradually, I realized that more than fiction-writing forms was influencing me. Music also was having an effect. I will be writing about that eventually, so watch for an essay called “Sonata Form and the Art of Writing Cops Briefs.” It will appear under the heading “Joel’s J School.”

Think about the experiences I had: Friends told me I was nuts to do it, but I flew with a 17-year-old newly-minted pilot right after she qualified for her private pilot’s license. By the way, years ago, I flew in the back seat of a Navy Blue Angels FA-18 jet fighter, and down the line I plan to dish that experience out for you. What a blast! What a job!

Was I crazy to leave? Maybe, but I don’t believe so. You see, there were many stories I could not do. For instance, I was the lead reporter on a Nov. 21, 2003 set of stories detailing U.S. Rep. John Conyers’ misuse of congressional resources for personal and political gain. When did you last read a Joel Thurtell byline over a story about John Conyers?

There are limits to the paper newspaper that you don’t find on the Internet. And I know well the potential of the web. When I went on strike in July 1995, I had a plan. I started a business. I’d been dabbling in used ham radio sales for years. While on strike, I had a website, radiofinder.com, and I sold a lot of radios. I shipped radios worldwide. Some day, I will write a book: I SOLD RADIOS TO JAPAN!

My radiofinder.com days were very exciting. This was my own thing, my business, mine to build or destroy. Eventually, by returning to the Free Press and discovering that I could not clone myself, I would neglect my radio business. But what I learned from doing it, and doing it successfully, is that a website can be a powerful engine for making sales and pushing ideas. I think it’s fair to say that in the heyday of radiofinder.com, my ideas, my tastes in classic ham radios, had a significant influence on that niche of the radio market. I learned plenty about the web, came back to the Free Press and noticed right away that the newspaper approach to the web was foundering. Somehow, these highly intelligent business people could not connect to the web. I began to think about what I would do if I were running a newspaper – how would I approach the web?

Then there were the books. My books. I’ve written or am writing well over a dozen of them. I finished my first novel 30 years ago. It’s sitting in boxes in our basement. I’ve written four novels, four kids’ books and two books of nonfiction. At last, I will have a book in print, it seems, next year when Wayne State University Press publishes UP THE ROUGE! It’s my narrative with Free Press photographer Patricia Beck’s marvelous photos of our June 2005 trek 27 miles up the Rouge River by canoe. I’m starting a second book about the Rouge and other troubled rivers. I’m finishing an unorthodox journalism text book, SHOESTRING REPORTER: A MANIFESTO FOR SAVING JOURNALISM, OR HOW I GOT TO BE A BIG CITY REPORTER WITHOUT GOING TO J SCHOOL AND HOW YOU CAN DO IT TOO! Finally I have time to groom my books and find publishers for them. I was too busy and laden with stress at the Free Press to pursue that dream.

The chance to experiment more with writing, pushing the envelope beyond the orthodoxies of daily newspapering, learning how to fuse television and radio and fiction techniques and yes, even music with my writing are things I can do only if I’m on my own.

The same thing I did while on strike I’m doing with my Gannett Grant – making my own job.

Posted in Beginnings | Tagged , | 2 Comments

We are on E! Entertainment – Hoffa show

Posted on December 6, 2007 by admin

By Joel Thurtell

Joelontheroad.com on E! Hoffa show

What an odd coincidence that my blog should debut on Sunday, Dec. 9, the same day I’ll be appearing on E Entertainment’s show about the fate of Jimmy Hoffa, the late Detroit Teamsters leader. The show is at 8 p.m.
Now, how did I merit being filmed as an expert on the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa? Certainly not because I AM an expert.

Pure chance. A couple years ago, I wrote a story about a Taylor cop named Jeff Hansen who wrote a crime novel set in Detroit. Jeff can write with authority about Detroit because he grew up there and was a Detroit cop after he got out of the Marines. Jeff self-published his novel, WARPATH, and I happen to be interested in people who try to break into print without the usual baggage of agent and commercial publisher. Last spring I called him to check in, see what was new. It was one of those serendipitous calls.

There was indeed something new. Jeff had developed a theory about Hoffa, He didn’t convince me his theory was correct, but he sure persuaded me to write a story about it.
I wrote the story, and it ran in the Community Free Press Detroit and Southfield editions last July 8. Sometime in September, I got a call from a producer for E Entertainment out in Los Angeles. Would I be interviewed for a show about Hoffa? Frankly, I’d never heard of E Entertainment. We watch almost no TV in our house. In the days when I was employed by the Free Press, my desk faced Susan Tompor, the Free Press personal finance columnist. I told Susan about the call. “Ever hear of E Entertainment?” I said. “Ever hear of it,” she said. “It’s a big deal.”

So I agreed to be interviewed. The producers wanted to talk to me at my desk. That posed something of a problem for me, see, because my desk at the time – and, well, at ANY time – could only have been cleared with help from a front-end loader. Jeff’s theory involved crematory ovens at Detroit’s Grand Lawn Cemetery. I cleverly suggested that we meet at the cemetery rather than at the Free Press Southfield office. I would show them the ovens. Maybe we could even drive along the streets where Hoffa’s corpse theoretically was taken to its final resting place.
I actually thought I’d sold them on that idea, and was quite relieved that I wouldn’t have to hire a moving firm to clean my desk. But at the last minute, I learned that they weren’t going to the cemetery after all. They for sure would be at my office, the producer said, preferably at my desk. TV people have this thing about reporters’ desks. Okay, I said, but NOT AT MY DESK! There was a big vacant corner office in our suite and I told them we’d have to do the interview there so as not to disturb my colleagues who were always, always, ALWAYS hard at work.

The day before the crew arrived, I got an email from the producer with a list of questions I was expected to answer. Man, this was worse than a Ph.D. general exam. In a panic, I called LA and said no way could I do this. I am not a professor of labor history. Don’t worry, I was told, you can work it out with the interviewer to kill some of the questions. I said okay, I’ll do it. But to be safe, I stopped at the Plymouth library and checked out three or four books on Hoffa. Not only that, I spent the better part of the evening trying to read them.

The next day, the crew showed up at our office. They took about an hour to redecorate the big corner office, hanging a photo of Tiger Stadium so it would be behind me, and laying out some Hoffa books I left around, thinking they might do that. I’d even started cleaning off my desk, but gave it up. Good retirement project, I figured, not realizing how soon that would be. The interviewer and I went over the questions and she agreed not to ask me some that made me uncomfortable. We went into the office, where the cameraman turned off the overhead lights and turned on a set of bright fluorescents aimed straight into my eyes. The idea was to create a macabre atmosphere. The camera went on and the interviewer began asking me questions. I battled with my memory and I struggled to keep my eyes open against those bright lights. Despite our agreement to cut some questions, she asked every one of them. I actually answered everything, but I don’t have a clear memory what I said.

Stress was the name of the game, and I was mightily relieved when that hour of quizzing and bright lights was over. But the camera people still had ideas. Apparently, my colleagues didn’t look as busy as I’d made them out. The camera people found me at my computer, and sure enough, my overburdened and sloppy desk made it onto E!

Here, reprinted courtesy of the Detroit Free Press, is the July 8, 2007 story I wrote about Jeff Hansen and his idea of how Jimmy Hoffa met his end. In the original story, I confused my and Hoffa’s whereabouts and said it happened in the Brightmoor neighborhood. Grand Lawn is close to Brightmoor, but no cigar. I corrected the story.

FORMER DETROIT COP THINKS HE KNOWS THE FATE OF TEAMSTERS LEADER

Byline: BY JOEL THURTELL

Jimmy Hoffa’s last car ride took less than two minutes.

On July 30, 1975, he rode one long block south from a two-story house at 17841 Beaverland on Detroit’s west side and turned right – west – on Grand River Ave.

He passed the greens of William Rogell Golf Course and a scenic footbridge, crossed the woodsy Rouge River, cruised past the brown brick Redford Granite Co. building and the Mt. Vernon Motel, made a U-turn and rode east a few yards on Grand River. He came to a brief stop in front of an iron service gate to Grand Lawn Cemetery.

The gates were opened, and Hoffa entered the cemetery. But the once powerful International Brotherhood of Teamsters leader did not enjoy any of these sights. He was dead, having received two bullets in the head from his trusted old pal Frank Sheeran back in the Beaverland house.

Now, whether Hoffa really met his end this way is uncertain. Sheeran, the only person who claims it went down like this, died four years ago of cancer.

But the scenario makes perfect sense to Jeff Hansen, a Taylor cop who grew up in the Brightmoor area and later worked the same streets as a Detroit police officer.

Hansen – author of the Detroit-based fictional crime book “Warpath” (Spectre Publishing, 2004) – has added a coda to Sheeran’s claim that he killed Hoffa in the Beaverland house at the command of mobsters. Hansen claims to have solved the mystery of what happened to Hoffa’s body. Rumors that Hoffa was buried under the New York Giants’ football stadium in New Jersey or under a Milford horse farm or maybe burned at a mob-controlled incinerator are baloney, Hansen says.

Hansen thinks Hoffa was cremated minutes after Sheeran dropped the murder pistol in the vestibule of the Beaverland house, either at Evergreen Cemetery at 7 Mile and Woodward, or more likely at Grand Lawn Cemetery at Telegraph and Grand River. His alleged proof: a pair of cremation ovens “a minute away from the Beaverland house” in the mausoleum at Grand Lawn, built two years before Hoffa vanished.

My drive from the Beaverland house to that gate lasted one minute, 37 seconds. I was not going fast. A minute from Beaverland to Grand Lawn? Possible. That doesn’t make Hansen’s hypothesis correct. He bristled when I called it “conjecture,” but that’s what it is. Fascinating conjecture, though.

Sheeran’s story received wide publicity three years ago thanks to “I Heard You Paint Houses,” a book by former Delaware chief deputy attorney general Charles Brandt. Brandt recorded long statements by Sheeran about his life as a Mafia hit man. Sheeran claimed he killed Hoffa at the command of Mafia boss Russell Bufalino. “Painting houses” referred to the blood left after people are shot. Sheeran also claimed to do “carpentry,” meaning he disposed of bodies.

According to Sheeran, Hoffa had more than one enemy’s house “painted.” Lured to the Beaverland house by Sheeran, Hoffa had his own house “painted” when Sheeran fired two shots into his brain.

In 2003, Brandt videotaped Sheeran’s deathbed confession to having murdered Hoffa on July 30, 1975.

A TV report on Sheeran’s confession to Brandt started Hansen thinking about Grand Lawn.

He’d worked as a cop in the old 8th Precinct, patrolling the streets around Beaverland and Grand Lawn Cemetery near Grand River and Telegraph. He wondered what Hoffa might have been thinking as the car came down Telegraph toward Grand Lawn Cemetery before he was shot. Hansen read Brandt’s book. It was the first time someone had actually confessed to killing Hoffa.

Sheeran described the area around the Beaverland house accurately, noting the Rogell golf course and precisely locating the house where he said he killed Hoffa. But the book was missing a piece of the puzzle. How did the mob get rid of Hoffa’s body?

The Hoffa file

Hoffa was a high-profile figure. He’d spent time in prison for jury-tampering. The Justice Department had restricted his union activities, even though he’d paid President Richard Nixon and his attorney general, John Mitchell, half a million dollars for a pardon. In 1975, he was threatening to reveal the mob’s entanglement with Teamsters pension funds – even though he himself turned the Central States Pension Fund into the Mafia’s private piggy bank. Organized crime wanted to shut him up, wrote Brandt.

While the FBI was busy in May 2006 digging up a Milford horse farm, Hansen was thinking about Grand Lawn – he had even called the Detroit FBI office and reported his theory.

He visited the cemetery and saw two crematory ovens in a mausoleum building. “It’s like being struck by lightning,” he said. “This cemetery was chosen because it’s near the house.”

Hansen said that Rod Milne, who managed the cemetery in 1975, told him, “We were doing cremations left and right” in 1975. Later, Hansen said, Milne recanted.

Milne’s wife, Carol, said she doubts Hansen’s theory, but admitted it might have happened. She wasn’t sure if cremations were done at Grand Lawn in 1975. Hansen said he found a Grand Lawn interment log that records two cremations the day Hoffa went missing. Carol Milne said that often crematory workers didn’t look at the bodies before they incinerated them. A burial transit permit could have been faked by a Mafia-friendly funeral parlor, Hansen thinks.

No need to take Hoffa to Giants Stadium or a horse farm at Milford.

Not a federal case?

So why is it important where Hoffa was killed and where his body went?

Charles Brandt explained that the FBI has spent many years and lots of money in the hunt for Hoffa, assuming that he was kidnapped (a federal crime) from the Machus Red Fox Restaurant in Bloomfield Township, murdered and his remains shipped somewhere out of state (another federal offense).

In all those years, the FBI has refused to release a complete, uncensored copy of the voluminous Hoffa file.

“Once they accept what Frank Sheeran said, the FBI completely loses jurisdiction of the case,” Brandt said. “They would have no reason to hold onto the file. It’s not a kidnapping. The murder occurred in the city of Detroit. Nobody crossed a state line. It’s actually a Detroit homicide.”

For more on the Jimmy Hoffa mystery, see Charles Brandt’s Web site www.hoffasolved.com or Jeff Hansen’s www.spectrepublishing.com.

Posted in Adventures in history, People | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Joel on the road — what road?

Posted on December 5, 2007 by admin

By Joel Thurtell

I’m looking for a muskrat cook.

No, wait — that’s not how I wanted to start.

Actually, what I want to do is explain — to myself first, then to my loyal readers — what this thing is supposed to be.
I thought all I wanted was a website where I could post the kind of columns, more or less, that I’ve been writing the past several years for the Community Free Press.

I told webmaster Kelly Rinne I wanted to, maybe, expand on what I did for the Free Press. Instead of limiting my essays to 210 lines, due to the physical limits imposed by paper and press, in the digital world I would have unlimited web territory. And maybe I’d post some audio recordings of interviews, maybe even some video things I couldn’t easily do at the Free Press.
They tell me what I’m talking about is a “blog.” My college son, Abe, told me that audio-video stuff is called “podcasting.”
Whatever. Looks like I’m doing it, since I’m shopping for a camcorder.

I always wanted a newspaper. My own newspaper. I wanted to call the shots, control the content, write the stories I want to write and forget the rest. Now, thanks to what I call the “Gannett Grant,” aka a buyout, I can have a newspaper that I can call my own.
Okay, so it’s not a REAL newspaper. No PAPER. No PRINTING PRESS. So much the better. No presses, no trucks, no cumbersome delivery system. Low overhead. A blog.

It’s brand new, so I can call it anything I want. That’s been a problem, believe it or not —  too many good ideas. What a shame to have your paper (there I go, using old age language: paper? No — blog!) stumble because you couldn’t decide what to call it. In my early days of newspapering, when I was editor of the Berrien Springs Journal Era, John Gillette, the co-publisher, called me a “loose cannon.”

Why? Some day I’ll regale you with my take on how having a loose cannon as an editor (and reporter, writer, photographer, darkroom tech, columnist, editorial writer, layout person and occasional ad salesman) helped boost that paper’s circulation, and about how I would have changed that paper’s name instantly if it were mine so I could quit hearing “Journal Era – Urinal Era,” but right now let’s talk about how this blog got its name. I called my buddy David Crumm, who took the Free Press buyout also and is running a religion blog called www.readthespirit.com. David didn’t think much of “loose cannon.” Your domain name needs to be personal, he said, something about you. It needs to tell readers what you’re doing, namely an extension of your column writing by other means.

Think about “joelontheroad.com,” he said.
Hmmm. Joelontheroad. I like loose cannon. I even paid for loosecannonnews.com. But I asked my wife, my kids, others, and they all voted for joelontheroad.com. So that’s what you get. It makes sense. What road? Hey, I’ll write from anywhere, about anything I choose. And maybe about what you choose, too. Hey, this is a user-friendly blog.
After signing up with SoundQue.com in Trenton for web services, I had another thought. David and his wife Amy sent us a card last Christmas in which they wrote about my columns as “Joel unleashed.”

Hey! I like that! But in the Sunday, Dec. 9 Community Free Press, I tell readers about joelontheroad. So it’s a done deal. Set in print on PAPER by a REAL newspaper. Too late for “unleashed.” But a friend observed, “You’re already unleashed. You may be free of the Free Press, but you weren’t really leashed.”
Well, yes, except most of the unleashed stuff went into a drawer.

Here’s what you can look for in joelontheroad.com:
Each week, I will try to write what I still refer to in Old Talk as a “cover story.” It will be a long feature story with photos, similar to the ones I wrote for the Community Free Press.

The operative word is “try.” Remember, folks, I’m retired. Supposedly. And I’m working on two, no THREE books. I may keep writing Five Questions features, as I did for the Free Press. And maybe not. What do you think? Do you like that feature?
What really frustrated me at the Free Press was the fact that my readers in Downriver communities didn’t get to see what I was writing for my readers in Plymouth, Canton and Northville, nor could my PCN people read what I was telling them Downstream. Unless they went looking for it on the web, of course. Now, friends, I’m afraid you’ll have to go looking for me on the web, but with this advantage: Downriver people will see the same stories I dish out to the Upstream folks.
That’s bad news for Gibraltar. It means I’ll have to repeat my jokes about those three roads, all named “Gibraltar,” that converge on a post with three signs that say Gibraltar Rd. Hilarious. I mean, if you’re having a bad day, drive down to Gib and have a look at those signs. I meant to break that habit, but blame it on Gannett and the buyout. I can’t help it. By the way, while you’re in Gib, stop in for a great lunch at a restaurant called Mirage. I like Gibraltar, so you’ll be seeing more stories about that town.
Here’s something else really neat about this blog thing. With the Old Paper, I was banned from writing about communities that didn’t receive the Sunday Community Free Press. So “Downriver” didn’t really mean Downriver. I couldn’t write about River Rouge or Ecorse or Melvindale, for instance, though they are about as Downriver as you can get. The CFP didn’t go there, so neither did I. But now, hey! I AM unleashed!

In general, you can expect to read stories about the Rouge River, about flying, about how things are done or made. Remember when I blew a vase from molten glass, played the Our lady of Good Counsel pipe organ, welded a pencil holder, rowed in a Wyandotte Boat Club shell, carved a dolphin out of ice, played dodge-ball with a bunch of kids? That sort of thing. If you have an idea for some crazy lark you prefer not to do, but might wish onto to me, please email me at joelthurtell(a)gmail.com
I will write about anything that interests me in Wayne County or anywhere I please. When I visit my son Adam in Los Angeles, I’ll post to joelontheroad.com. I won’t have the benefit of those fine Free Press photographers, editors and copy editors I got used to. In fact, I’ll be doing that work myself. Get used to typos and semantic bloopers. But I’ll be free of the newspaper bureaucracy and of a 44-mile-a-day commute. That is what it means, partly, to be unleashed.
Oh yes, I almost forgot. I will be selling ads. First it will be through online ad services, but I hope soon to sell ads to local businesses, governments, churches, schools, nonprofits and individuals. Remember this, all you advertising directors: joelthurtell(a)gmail.com.

My office manager will be Peppermint Patti, our little white fuzzball of a dog. Upstream readers may recall our $1,500 Patti from a column last year. By now, she’s the $2,000 dog. Emergency Veterinary Service will be hearing from me about advertising, believe me.
What I really want to do is have fun. If I’m curious about something, I’ll check it out. If you’re curious about something, email me. If it piques my interest, I may write it up.
Oh yes, it’s true. I am looking for a muskrat cook. No, smarty, not a muskrat who cooks. I need someone – a human! — who actively, enthusiastically, creatively and delectably prepares muskrat to eat.

What for? I have a story in mind.

Posted in Beginnings, Joel's J School | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments