How one Grosse Pointe public entity
found a new way, and why it matters

After a year of drama tempered with a great deal of wonkish financial analysis, the Grosse Pointe Public School System Board of Education approved a budget last night. The meeting at Parcells Middle School was sparsely attended, and while I had to duck out before the PowerPoint barrage concluded, I'll assume the clouds did not part and no heavenly beam shone down on the proceedings when the final vote was cast.

But this budget, and its cornerstone, the recently ratified contract with teachers, represents something special. If we can't wrangle a choir of angels, this column will have to do. read more...

Time to get the wheels turning
on Grosse Pointe bike routes

The introductory meeting to discuss the idea of designated bike routes in the Pointes Wednesday night was sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce and set for only an hour, which ought to tell you something right there, and it did. The Live Well in Grosse Pointe initiative contains nothing that should alarm anyone in these skittish communities, and the meeting at Beaumont Hospital might as well have ended with a group hug.

Of course, nearly everyone there was, if not a cyclist, then someone who sees bike-friendly public policy as a good thing. Presumably there are some out there who would disagree. But for now I'd like to believe that the very modest proposal laid out by the Chamber, et al, could find approval across the five municipalities, and I'll tell you why. read more...

Comment: The war is over,
or haven't you heard?

For many years, center-left people like me knew who the bad guys were – the religious right. We learned to recognize their code words, their iterations and mash-ups of "family," "values," "faith" and "life." (They, in turn, knew ours – "diversity," "tolerance," "embrace" and the all-important "people of" usage.) I suppose, in the back of my mind, I knew the pendulum would swing away from them someday, but as long as they could get respect from the people who spent my tax money, the watchword was vigilance.

What I didn't expect was the emotion I felt watching the strange, bumbling comedy at the War Memorial Thursday night (March 25), where a little-known Grosse Pointe Farms group called Point of Relevance sponsored a presentation by one Linda Harvey, a Columbus, Ohio woman whose group, Mission: America, seeks – quoting from their website here – "to equip Christians with current, accurate information about cultural issues such as feminism, homosexuality, education and New Age influences." Harvey came expecting to speak to the like-minded Point of Relevance. But they were outnumbered by a crowd of my people, scrambled via social networks and email, holding signs and itching for a confrontation.

As a journalist, I've seen many such divided crowds, taunting one another. But I've never looked at the other side and felt this: Pity. read more...

Comment: Notes on bike diplomacy
as we face the winter ceasefire

Our recent spell of Indian summer notwithstanding, cycling season is just about over. It’s a bittersweet time for me. Bitter: It’ll be months before my next fine jaunt down to the Village on two wheels, wind in my face, the top-of-the-world feeling exercise can bring filling my heart. Sweet: Barring a truly freak accident in spinning class, I’ll be a lot less likely to suffer compound fractures or other blunt-force trauma for the next few months. read more...

Reader comments are open,
but please, keep the water clean

When I was a kid, my best friend's family installed a swimming pool in their backyard. Before we went off the diving board the first time, her father gathered us around for a rule briefing. He wrapped up by telling us he'd added a chemical to the water – odorless, colorless, completely safe to swim in – that had the effect of turning urine bright purple. Unless we wanted the embarrassment of having everyone know who did it, we were advised to use the bathroom in the house.

It was years before it finally occurred to me there was no such chemical. But he'd made his point. In a small pool, you really don't want anyone peeing in it. How do you enforce good behavior? Make it public.

We launched GrossePointeToday.com with the intention of allowing reader comments on stories. We want this site to be a product of the community, not something delivered to it. As of today, all stories are officially open for immediate feedback: Registered site users are welcome to post comments, and encouraged to do so. They will appear under whatever user name you chose. They won't appear instantly after you submit them. We -- I, along with my partners Ben Burns and Sheila Tomkowiak — will moderate them, closely at first and probably less so, as time passes. Needless to say, we will not approve comments that libel anyone, use abusive language, name-call or otherwise spoil the atmosphere of vigorous discussion. read more...

Won't you be my Tweetie?

There are two pictures of Twitter cycling through the mainstream media these days. In one, the "microblogging" social network is the greatest thing since movable type. In the other, a columnist is scratching his or her graying head, saying, "I don't get it. This is dumb." read more...

Everybody rows on this boat

If at the beginning of my career you’d asked me to sketch the Platonic ideal of a journalism career, I’d have probably drawn it this way: College internships lead to a start on the city desk at a small paper, where you spend a year or two learning before making a move up in circulation and prestige, lather rinse repeat, ending up in either a management position at a big-city daily or maybe a juicy writers’ spot as Paris correspondent or chin-scratching columnist, complete with your picture on the side of the delivery trucks.

This suggests how old I am, as well as how many times I’ve seen “Sweet Smell of Success.” Sketches are done in pencil for a reason; the finished picture rarely looks the same.

And so those of us who chose journalism as a career find ourselves in the same boat with millions of others who discovered what happens to the best-laid plans. The Detroit dailies no longer offer seven-day home delivery. Other cities are at risk of losing their newspapers entirely. There are new lines around the eyes of even local TV anchors, as one media outlet after another sees its revenues fall and its audience drift away. “Falling,” “drifting,” “going under”–the jargon suggests the last moments of “Titanic,” with more slipping into the water with every sickening lurch of the deck.

The internet is the iceberg, of course, the tip of which didn’t even begin to suggest the destructive power under the surface. But if you’ll let me to torture the metaphor a little longer, those of us who remain on the ship or alive in the waters surrounding it have gone beyond blame, because how can you blame a force of nature? Our luxurious ship is sinking and we’re clinging to whatever floats, hoping we can stay alive until someone plucks us out of this very cold water.

Which brings us to our little lifeboat, GrossePointeToday.com.

I and my partners, Ben Burns and Sheila Tomkowiak, believe that just because one ship sinks, that’s no reason to give up going to sea. Veteran print journalists all, we believe that people living in communities want, need and deserve quality information. We believe in its power to make life better for everyone. But we also know there’s a reason the ship is on the bottom of the ocean, that the old business model no longer works, and that if GrossePointeToday.com is going to be the news and information source it has the potential to be, it’s going to require a lot more than the three of us.

No news staff, no matter how experienced or well-connected or vast, can cover a community alone. We’re relying on you to tell us what you want to see on our site, and what’s more, we’re counting on you to provide it. One of the miracles of the internet is how easily it connects us, how effortless it makes sharing our lives. Our site is set up to take advantage of that, to make our readers partners in this experiment. This is very much a cooperative experiment. We’re counting on you to tell us which of your neighbors is doing something others should know about, who’s getting married, who died, who has an exciting new business that needs publicity. Tell us if you have a favorite Grosse Pointe blog. Contribute to our reader forums. We welcome other tips, too—e-mail them to submissions@grossepointetoday.com. With so many recently severed and bought-out journalists thick on the ground, we welcome anyone who wants to contribute copy, help with editing or otherwise join us as we figure out web journalism from the ground up.

Our plans are ambitious, but our hopes are high. We’re sorry to see the big ship go down, but this little one floats pretty well, and we’ll say this for it–it’s sure a lot easier to change direction. But we have a lot of water to cross. So grab an oar, and let’s get started.

Nancy Nall Derringer is an editor at GrossePointeToday.com, and blogs most days at nancynall.com. E-mail her at nderringer@grossepointetoday.com read more...