I do not know about other states but there's a strange thing about Michigan journalism. When I grew up and decided to become a newspaperman they did investigations and held people, regardless of party affiliation, to a higher standard. That has totally changed.
Most of our press whether its newspapers or radio/TV are owned by large conglomerates. They are interested primarily in selling ads. We believed there was a wall between editorial and advertising but it has been torn down. Politicians have discovered that if a journalist challenges the narrative all you have to do is ban them, call their editor and threaten to pull your advertising.
So as a result the only useful journalism being done is by independent media. I have never met this lady but I respected the online publication she started highly. Looking forward to whatever she starts next.
We do not have a lot of people in Michigan who have BHAG (big hairy audacious goals) and that is why this stands out to me. If they could raise $50 million there's a good chance they can succeed. If they do, it this idea could be a template used by other communities.
I grew up in Detroit in the fifties and sixties. Although I no longer live there it still feels like home and I return home.
From the beginning of the crack epidemic in the mid-eighties through the city's bankruptcy in 2012 Detroiters refer to those as the lost years. Everything slowly started falling apart and then it sped up. This story is about the human toll that happened. Things are a world better but the city is still slowly, determinedly coming back.
The imagery of 1969, I remember it well. The Vietnam war was the first war that was televised. Everyone would watch the nightly news at 6:30 pm (take my word for it) and hear the choppers, gunfire and real life screams of people.
I thought it was sheer genius that Hendrix was able to subtly bring that into the national anthem which made it resonate so well with those purchasing his music. But without that background reference I never supposed that younger generations would hear it entirely differently.
> "The imagery of 1969, I remember it well. The Vietnam war was the first war that was televised. Everyone would watch the nightly news at 6:30 pm (take my word for it) and hear the choppers, gunfire and real life screams of people."
Slightly off-topic--
Before my time, but my professor* recalled to our class his experience watching a _live_ news report from Vietnam. Something shocking happened during the broadcast. As a visual-media scholar he contacted the station to obtain a copy. No go. He remarked how he never saw that footage ever again (at that time it would have been over 15 years ago). In our modern digital age it's difficult to imagine anything going live to the nation, and then disappearing.
* (Charles Chess, Introduction to Film, SJSU, c1992)
He might want to search the Marion Stokes collection once the Internet Archive has it all digitized. She recorded thirty years of TV for most of the major networks.
The thing which blows my mind is that the NIC handle database is simply gone. This was the database of everyone who was responsible for some internet asset (typically a domain name) in some fashion such that it was recorded for operators' use. You could look it up, it was public. Now it's simply gone. (I'm FWM6)
Been following Andy long before he bought the car factory. The story omits his largest customer for his bus company. He does all the transportation for the Detroit Public Schools. He pitched the school system which is always resource constrained that he could take over transport for less than it cost for them to d do it.
I had the great honor of knowing long time Lansing builder and Michigan State trustee Joel Ferguson. He ran Rev. Jackson's 1988 presidential campaign in Michigan. Much to the media's great shock Jackson won the state.
This will go down as one of the most significant acquisitions of the AI era. Sam Altman outmaneuvered everyone. I know Mark Zuckerberg was one of the two finalists.
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