Writing in Vice, Thomas Morton complains that the outside media's coverage of Detroit is increasingly driven by lazy clichés, often produced by "reporters who don't want anything to do with the city but feel compelled by the times to get a Detroit story under their belts, like it's the journalistic version of cutting a grunge record":
The Michigan Central Depot is a hulking, bombed-out turn-of-the-century train station that's constantly used by papers and magazines as a symbol of the city's rot. The only problem is, aside from looking the part, it doesn't have too much to do with any of the issues it usually gets plastered above. It's owned by a billionaire trucking tycoon, not the bankrupt city; it was shut down back in the 80s, not because of any of the recent crap. Nevertheless, back in December when the auto executives were in front of Congress, Time ran a photo essay to go with the story, opening and closing with shots of the terminal. Three months later they ran another spread about the city's decay, although this time they limited the depot shots to one.
In addition to being a faulty visual metaphor, the train station has also been completely shot to death. For a derelict structure, it's kind of a happening spot. Each time I passed by I saw another group of kids with camera bags scoping out the gate. When I finally ducked in to check it out for myself, I had to wait for a lady artist from Buffalo, New York, whose shtick is taking nude portraits of herself in abandoned buildings, to put her clothes back on. Afterward I was interrupted by a musician named Deity who was making a video on the roof.
The city's second-most-overused blight shot is of the mile-long ruins of the Packard Auto Plant in East Detroit.
"This is the visiting reporters' favorite thing to see," [photographer] James [Griffioen] said. "The people all come here to shoot the story of the auto industry and they love this shot because they can be like, 'See that? That's where they made the cars,' and then forget to add the footnote that the plant's been closed since 1956."
In the past month alone, the plant's been used by the New York Times, the British Daily Mirror, and the Polish Auto Motor as a visual for stories it has no concrete connection to other than occupying the same city. The Packard also shows up twice in the same Time photo spread from December, although the second picture is just captioned with the street address to make it look like their photographer visited more than three sites.
The repetition is noticeable enough to have sparked a countertrend of positive stories, but they too pose problems:
All the stories about Detroit's many, many faults have fostered a backlash of journalists who decide to come in and write the "happy" piece about Detroit. The problem is that while there's a wide spectrum of problems for the misery tourists to explore (the 50 percent literacy rate, the $1,000 houses, that YouTube video of City Councilwoman Monica Conyers calling the council president "Shrek"), the posi reporters are stuck picking from a handful of urban gardens and art collectives. From what I could tell, these types of places seem like they're about two more interview requests away from pulling their own Stranger With a Camera.
I'd already felt like a pretty massive prick driving around devastated neighborhoods all day with an enormous camera hanging out the window, but I didn't know from shitty until I pulled up at one of East Detroit's community farms and tried to talk to a couple kids who were either loading or unloading some boxes of stuff. After staring at the mic clipped to my shirt like it was a severed baby's clit, one of the main guys (I think) explained their position:
"Look, we get like 30 emails a week from people. What happens is they go off and write their story and nothing ever happens here except we get more and more requests. Now, like, Delta's inflight magazine is contacting us. I don't know what to say to Delta's inflight magazine."
Later I found out that right after I'd shuffled off with an awkward smile, the dude stormed into his house and fired off a furious email to the person I'd been driving with, accusing him of wanting a bunch of "Billyburg hipsters" to move onto their block. I can't believe I got redlined in East Detroit.
