worky worky worky

Yesterday, I was in Wixom, MI to interview Ford workers who just got told their plant is closing. That was fun. One guy shouted out his truck window, just before peeling out of the parking lot, "Tell those people in California to buy American!" Consider yourself told.


Friday, I put together a piece on the former Motown headquarters in Detroit, which was just torn down. The building had been abandoned since about 1972 when Motown moved itself to L.A. But there was still tons of stuff left inside the building. I went into it about a year ago for a story on "urban exploring" and I actually found an old .45 that had never been played. I wanted to do a long ass documentary on the building, and all of the relics that were still there. But then the city of Detroit decided it wanted to make that space a parking lot for the Super Bowl in a couple of weeks. So I just had to throw something together at the last minute. And, suprise, I've been getting a bunch of emails about the story, from people who were upset that they're tearing the building down. I even got a call from some official state archive department, who was considering having the governor halt the demolition. The building sat completely empty for more than 30 years, and no one did anything. And then, two days before they tear it down, everyone starts whining. Crazies.

If you have real player, you should be able to click here to listen to the piece.

Anyway, this is what journalism is like in Michigan: plants closing, buildings being torn down. Contrast that, say, with Florida, where the big problems of the day are building enough schools to keep up with growing populations, or widening roads, or using smart planning to prevent everything from becoming one big suburb.

Everything there is growth, everything here is decline.

And yet, I'd much rather be covering these stories than those ones.