Feedback I’ve recieved:

“I’ve enjoyed your critiques of the Michigan Daily, even though I work on the Eastern Echo (which itself is desperately in need of a kick in the ass). And sure, most of the time I’m just an entertainment writer (at the Echo or at Current Magazine), but I see the slow slide of student journalism reflected in the slip of truly respectible daily newspaper coverage as a whole.

I’ve grown up in Ann Arbor, and never known the Snooze to be anything but a provincial rag filled with wire reports and boring “aren’t things swell” editorials. And while the Detroit Free Press and News used to be fairly adept at nailing hard news stories, since the strike they’ve fallen off to the point of irrelevance. So I think that a large part of the fall of strong student journalism is a lack of clear, relevant print news sources. Certainly the Daily (or even the Echo, for that matter) is not all that inferior to the work done at the local dailies, and if they’re professional quality, obviously student quality isn’t going to have much to aspire to.

Granted, it’s easy to point to great print news organizations. The Times, The Globe, The Herald… But none of those are covering local news that reporters can relate to and learn from. I don’t know about you, but I’m always curious to see how other news organizations have covered the same stories I have, and how they did it. Often, I learn something from that.”