This mayoral election season, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan has been hard at work dispelling the notion that he neglected the city's neighborhoods during his first term in favor of spurring development in the city's affluent Midtown and downtown. There have been at least weekly announcements of some initiative or another aimed to help struggling Detroiters in the city at large, with some appearing undoubtedly beneficial (yesterday's unveiling of the newly upgraded Randolph Vocational Center, where an expanded skilled-trades training program will get 1,800 people job-ready in three years) and others looking as if they might be no more effective than a wet band-aid (this month's announcement that the city will spend $5 million boarding all vacant homes not slated for rehabilitation or demolition in the near term).
One of the latest tools to come out of the mayor's office is one whose merits have been hotly contested: an unprecedented news website in which city employees are paid to "tell the stories of Detroit's neighborhoods."
"If you don't at least smell trouble there, your nose isn't working,"Free Press columnist Nancy Kaffer wrote after the site's coming was announced in May. Area P.R. man Matt Friedman noted the information gap left in the wake of cuts to the news industry in an interview with the Detroit News, saying that while organizations have been starting to look for ways to tell their own stories, "It's a great irony that the city of Detroit coming out of bankruptcy is spending funds in this way when businesses won't."
And yet, even when considering the timing of the site's launch, even when considering the fact that the four-person team behind the website is getting paid a total of about $200,000 a year, with additional funds going toward equipment and freelance work — when the sitewent live Tuesday, almost all criticism was cast aside.
Crain's Detroit's Chad Livengood took to Twitter to declare the website more than just fluff.…