IWW holds Solidarity picket in Grand Rapids for Jimmy John’s workers
Today, 10 members of the local chapter of the IWW and a few supporters stood in the rain outside of the Jimmy John’s restaurant in Eastown today to show support for a new national effort to unionize fast food restaurant chain in the US.
IWW members received primarily positive responses from people walking and driving by the Jimmy John’s location on Wealthy Street near the intersection of Lake Dr and Wealthy.
Despite sending out a Media Release to dozens of local news agencies, the only coverage of the solidarity picket came from Indy media sources, GRIID and a citizen journalist with the Rapidian. WZZM 13 did run a story about the planned picket yesterday, but no commercial news agencies showed up today, despite the obvious tie in to Labor Day.
We had a chance to interview IWW member Cole Dorsey after the solidarity picket and asked him about the campaign to support Jimmy John’s workers and related matters.
The Press wages Class War with “Right to Work” stories – Part II
Continuing our initial critique of the Grand Rapids Press series that began on Sunday, today we look at the articles the Press ran on September 6th, which is also ironically Labor Day in the US.
The Press ran an additional four stories today that are part of their Michigan 10.0 series that is for all practical purposes an endorsement of further attacking unions under the guise of a “Right to Work” policy for Michigan.
The lead article was by Business reporter Rick Haglund, which looked at where the two main candidates for Governor in Michigan stand on the “Right to Work” debate. Haglund says that neither Bernero (D) nor Snyder (R) support a “Right to Work” policy. However, Haglund couldn’t resist mentioning a recent statewide poll, which says, “51% of likely voters surveyed would favor a right-to-work law in Michigan.”
Haglund then cites a spokesperson for the Traverse City Area Chamber of Commerce who believes, “The perception out there is that the entire state is unionized.” I’m not sure what this guy means by “out there” but there is no evidence that Michigan is perceived as entirely union. Haglund does provide some numbers to dispute such a claim and says that only 18.8% of Michigan’s workers are unionized, although he does not source where that figure comes from.
Haglund concludes the article by citing the new UAW President Bob King who says that the UAW is committed to working “cooperatively with automakers to insure their success.” This sentiment by King underscores the point we made yesterday that once union conceded systemic power to the capitalist class they were doomed. What will prevent the US-based automakers from continuing to undermine autoworkers if the union is unwilling to challenge their power like they did in the early days with wildcat strikes, a tactic which made the UAW a force to be reckoned with?
Right to Work Zones
A second major article on the front-page of Monday’s Press took a lengthy look at a proposal by those in the business class to push for a “zoned” approach to a “Right to Work” policy for Michigan. In this article Press reporter Julia Bauer looks at efforts by Michigan lawmakers and their business counter-parts to push for legislation that allow for “Right to Work” in counties or regions throughout the state instead of statewide policy.
Bauer mentions that this idea gained momentum in 2008 at a regional policy conference held in Grand Rapids and has since been proposed on several occasions in the State legislature. The article includes comments from two Michigan legislators, one for and one against a “Right to Work” policy.
However, the rest of the article is an absurdly biased look at the issue beyond where elected officials stand on the matter. The source the Press reporter cites in favor of a zoned “Right to Work” approach are the Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce, a GVSU Economics Professor, President of The Right Place Inc., the National Right to Work Foundation, a corporate consultant and a University of Michigan economist, which made six different sources. The number of sources that the Press reporter cited as critical of a zoned “Right to Work” approach – one. So much for the claim of balanced journalism.
Throwing a bone to labor voices
The remaining two articles were on pages 8 and 9 of the Press. One was a short article (page 9) that just dealt with some responses by readers to the “Right to Work” poll that the Press published on Saturday.
The other article was written by long-time local labor historian Michael Johnston entitled, “Furniture City was a union city, a headline which the writer had no say in. The article is pretty decent in that it communicates important information about a rich labor history that Grand Rapids has, despite the brevity of the article.
I spoke with Michael Johnston today at the Labor Festival in Grand Rapids and he was told that they would only allow him 500 words to right about this history, a grossly inadequate amount of words to necessarily provide a more honest assessment of this rich labor history that Grand Rapids possesses. (Recently GRIID conducted an hour long video interview with Johnston, an interview we hope to have posted later this week.)
So, even though the Press allowed a short article by a local labor historian, it in no way absolves the paper of its overtly anti-union coverage for a second day in a row.
The Press wages Class War with “Right to Work” stories
Don’t ever let anyone tell you that we don’t have a class war in this country. Every day those in the capitalist class are constantly devising ways to wage war on working people, all in the name of profit.
Unemployment numbers are high and under-employment is even high, with millions of people unable to make a living off the one or more jobs that they have while a small percentage of those at the top live in excess.
Today, the Grand Rapids Press has run several articles that they believe to be objectively discussing the pro’s and con’s of whether or not Michigan should adopt a Right to Work policy. The editorial staff might argue that as part of the Michigan 10.0 series the issue is relevant in the upcoming November Elections, but one can help but wonder about the timing of these articles on the eve of Labor Day.
The lead article on the front-page of today’s Press is based on a study commissioned by the Press, which is part of the Booth News chain of paper, which is owned by the media giant Advanced Publications.
This “Right to Work” study was conducted by GVSU economics professor Hari Singh, who teaches in the Seidman School of Business. The study is not particularly well done and the sources that Singh uses are those of sources that favor the anti-union/pro-business perspective, such as the Cato Institute and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.
Besides Singh, the only other business source cited in the rest of the main article is David Cole with the Center for Automotive Research, a pro-business entity based in Ann Arbor. The article does cite four different union representatives throughout the state and one local labor historian, which could give the impression that the article is balanced.
However, the problem with seeing the amount of labor sources vs business sources as balance and objective journalism is that the article itself is framed in such a way to favor the business perspective. The article, in fact, the whole series is framed in such a way as to suggest that if Michigan was a “Right to Work” state there would be more jobs and that would improve the economy.
The sad thing is that the union voices in this story don’t have a strong argument against Michigan not adopting a “Right to Work” policy, since their arguments only address wages and to some degree standard of living. If Michigan were to lower auto industry wages then the argument goes that they could hire more people, which is an appealing notion to many working class people, especially those that are unemployed.
The problem with this line of thinking and the way the Press is presenting this issue as a whole is twofold. First, the articles do not provide any real historical perspective, besides one line from local labor historian Michael Johnston.
Basic labor history would teach anyone that any rights that workers currently enjoy – workers compensation, benefits, wages, work safety standards, paid vacations, 8 hour work day and the right to organize is because unions fought hard for decades to win those basic rights, quite often at a high price. The Press stories provide no insight into the long fought battles that working people waged in order to have these basics rights, because the capitalist class never gave them as a gift.
These basic rights were won by working people, but those who fought for them were not primarily focused on wages, rather they fought for the dignity of working people and against a capitalist system. And this is the second point about what is flawed about the way the Press series is presented and how much of the economic discussion is framed today in the news media.
Most of the people who fought for the 8-hour work day or worker rights were members of unions like the CIO, the Knights of Labor and the IWW, all more radical union groups which were a real threat to the capitalist class. They were such a threat that they were targeted by the business class with blacklisting, firings, beatings, arrests, deportations and sometimes out right murder. (See Jeremy Brecher’s book Strike! and Sidney Lens’s The Labor Wars: From the Molly Maguires to the Sit-Downs)
Once the most radical elements of the labor movement were too small in number to seriously threaten the capitalist class, the more mainstream unions like the AFL agreed to embrace the capitalist system as long as they could negotiate over wages and benefits. (See Irvin Bernstein’s two volumes The Lean Years A History of the American Worker, 1920-1933 and The Turbulent Years A History of the American Worker, 1933–1941)
This is not to say that all unions since WWII don’t serve the interest of working people, but most of them have given up much of their power by making peace with the capitalist class. However, the capitalist class has never been content with the concessions made to unions, thus there has been an ongoing effort to weaken unions beginning with the passage of the Taft Hartley Act in 1947 and continuing with trade policies such as NAFTA and the current globalization of neoliberal economics.
These are the reasons for the decline of organized labor numbers in the US, a number that represents only 12% of working people in the US. Had the Press even attempted to include the more complex aspects of organized labor of capitalism then the article about “Right to Work” would have been more honest.
The Press could have even spoke to labor organizations who fight for more than just wages and job security such as Warehouse Workers for Justice, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, the Restaurant Opportunities Center United, Justice for Janitors, the IWW and Labor Notes, which is based in Detroit. The IWW also has a chapter based in Grand Rapids.
The Press will be running more stories on this the theme of “Right to Work” and we plan to provide some analysis as they do.
Vandana Shiva: Resisting Hegemony
(This video is re-posted from Common Dreams.)
Excerpt of Vandana Shiva speaking about ‘food and seed sovereignty’ at the International Meeting on Resisting Hegemony held 2-5 August 2010 in Penang, Malaysia. The complete presentation and others from the meeting are available at the TV Multiversity channel on Vimeo.
Follow the Money – State Senate and State House races
Yesterday, the Grand Rapids Press ran a story about campaign finances for a local State House and State Senate race.
The short article provides some basic financial data for the 75th District House race between Bing Goei (R) and Brandon Dillon (D) and the 29th District State Senate race between Dave Hildenbrand and David LaGrand.
However, the financial data for both races provided by the Press is just the amount each candidate brought in during the last recording period, how much they have spent and their current totals.
As we have stated in a recent posting it is important for voters and the public general to know who is donating money to candidates and what that means in terms of who candidates give their allegiance to.
The Press reporter could easily have found out who has given to each of these candidates recently by searching the Michigan Secretary of State’s database.
For Bing Goei, the largest contributor during the last recording period was himself, where he gave his campaign $3,000. Other significant contributors were the GR Chamber of Commerce ($2,000), Matt Sterenberg ($2,000), Michael Jandernoa/Steelcase ($500), Henry Fox/Fox Sales ($500), Paul Jendrasiak/Bully Spam ($500), James Zawacki/GR Spring and Stamping ($500), John Canepa/Grand Action ($250), Diana Seager/GR Community Foundation ($200), John Loeks/Loeks Theaters ($200) and Steven Ender/GR Community College ($150).
For Brandon Dillon the largest so far are the Michigan Beer and Wine PAC ($1,500), W. Michigan Main Street Fund ($1,500), Hammel Leadership Fund ($1,000), Roy PAC ($1,000), Turnaround PAC ($750), Michigan Laborers Political L ($500), DTE Energy ($500), Troopers Political Action Committee ($500) and Blue Cross/Blue Shield ($500) just to name a few.
For the 29th State Senate race, Republican Dave Hildenbrand the largest campaign contributor in the last recording period was DTE Energy ($3,200), followed by the GR Chamber of Commerce ($3,000), Majority 2010 PAC ($2,500), Fund for Republican Majority ($2,500 twice), MI Doctors PAC ($2,000), Dow Corning Legal Action Team ($1,000), Fifth Third Bank ($1,000) and MI McDonalds Operators PAC ($1,000).
For David LaGrand the largest contributor was Whitmer Leadership Fund ($7,500), West Michigan Main Street Fund ($4,000), MI Association for Justice ($2,000), Sarah Deboer ($1,000), Micigan Laborers PAC ($1,000), Grand Rapids Firefighters Union ($800), Salvatorre Pirrotta/Lawyer ($250) and Frand Stanley/Lawyer ($200).
This is just a summary of the larger donors to each of the four candidates, but it at least provides people with a sense of who is funding them and what that will likely mean no matter who is elected. We will continue to follow these races and report on campaign finances when the data is made public.
IWW now organizing Jimmy John’s workers
(The following information is from the newly formed Jimmy John’s Workers Union.)
Service was anything but ‘freaky fast’ at Jimmy Johns today as workers walked off the kitchen floor in an unprecedented move to demand improved wages and working conditions at nine Minneapolis franchise locations. Announcing the formation of the IWW Jimmy Johns Workers Union, the workers are seeking a pay increase to above minimum wage, consistent scheduling and minimum shift lengths, regularly scheduled breaks, sick days, no-nonsense workers compensation for job-related injuries, an end to sexual harassment at work, and basic fairness on the job.
“I have been working at Jimmy Johns for over two years and they still pay me minimum wage and schedule me one-hour shifts,” said Rikki Olsen, a union member at the Block E location. “I’m working my way through school and can barely make ends meet. I’d get another job, but things are just as bad across the service industry. Companies like Jimmy John’s are profitable and growing, they need to provide quality jobs for the community.”
The Minneapolis franchise, owned and operated by Miklin Enterprises, Inc., pays the federal minimum wage of $7.25/hr, offers no benefits, and has no full-time positions outside of management. Jimmy Johns corporate website lists $264,270 as the average yearly net profit for operating a franchise. Union members estimate that Rob and Mike Mulligan, owners of Miklin, Inc. made an annual profit of at minimum $2.3 million in the last year alone. The Miklin franchise plans to open four new locations this year at an estimated cost of over $1.2 million.
Jake Foucault, a delivery driver at the Riverside store, said, “ If Mike and Rob Mulligan have the money to open four new stores, then they have the money to pay us more than minimum wage. We hope Rob and Mike do the right thing and come to the negotiating table.”
A negotiating committee of Jimmy Johns workers plans to meet with the Mulligans at the Block E central office of the franchise to begin discussions at 4:00pm today.
The fast food workers’ move to unionize is emblematic of mounting frustration amongst US workers with the sluggish pace of recovery from the Recession. With unemployment rates hovering around 9.5%, many workers view low wage service jobs as their only option. Employment in the food service industry is expected to grow 8.4% from 2008 to 2018, higher than the 7.7% rate predicted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics for all industries. Wages and working conditions in the fast food industry are widely regarded as substandard; in 2009, 25% of workers in the service industry made less than $7.55 an hour, the highest percentage of any occupational group.
The union campaign at Jimmy Johns could hold deep implications for other companies in the fast food industry, a sector known for the lowest rates of unionization- and lowest wages- in the United States. Only 1.8% of food service workers were represented by a union in 2009, far below the nation-wide figure of 12.3%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The question of unionization of the food and service industries is assuming greater focus as employment in these non-union sectors increases, while manufacturing, the traditional stronghold of unionization, slides further into decline.
The Jimmy Johns Workers Union, open to employees at the company nationwide, is affiliated with the Industrial Workers of the World labor union. Gaining prominence in recent years for organizing Starbucks workers, the IWW is a global union founded over a century ago for all working people.
As an act of solidarity, the Grand Rapids branch of the IWW will be holding a Solidarity picket at the Eastown Jimmy Johns, Monday, September 6 (Labor Day) from 12pm-1pm.
ACLU Action Alert – Protect Privacy
(This is re-posted from the national office of the ACLU.)
Tens of thousands of supporters added their names to the ACLU’s Protect Our Privacy Petition—calling on Congress to update and strengthen the decades-old Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA).
But now, the Obama administration is proposing its own changes to ECPA aimed at weakening—not strengthening—your personal privacy.
ECPA is one of the few laws that can protect our privacy online, but the administration’s proposal would warp this crucial law—expanding the government’s power to collect Americans’ email and internet use records in national security investigations.
That’s a huge step in the wrong direction for personal privacy even as we’re trying hard to advance our privacy protections.
Sign our petition and demand changes that strengthen, rather than weaken, our personal privacy.
The administration’s plan would do exactly the opposite by allowing government officials to obtain more of your personal information using warrantless National Security Letters, without going to court and without any suspicion of wrongdoing. That means more secret requests for your personal information—and more gag orders to stop companies from disclosing what they were forced to turn over.
Congress has already held hearings on updating ECPA, and the issue will soon come up again. We must make sure that any changes to our laws come down on the side of protecting privacy.
Add your name to the petition and tell Congress to strengthen our privacy laws.
We can’t sit back and let our privacy protections be replaced by new privacy invasions. Please raise your voice today.
Museum piece: what is and what ain’t
As a kid growing up in the Grand Rapids area, some of my favorite times were spent with my grandparents, parents and big brother, Larry, at the Grand Rapids Public Museum on State St. NE. I still remember the proximity of the huge whale skeleton overhead, stroking the wooly mammoth’s smooth bones and feeling a part of the wildlife taxidermy animal scenes. I still have the small bronze animal figures I collected one at a time from the museum gift shop in my living room.
Fast-forward to the 80s and I was bringing my four little boys through the exhibits. I believe the admission price was 50 cents or a dollar. Something a young family could afford any given Saturday afternoon. (Now it’s $8 for adults, $3 for kids plus an extra charge for special exhibits.) My kids loved running wild though the cobblestone street of the old Grand Rapids exhibit and marveled at the huge, rotating globe of the earth outside the planetarium.
I have to admit that since the museum moved to its new digs, I’ve never felt the same excitement. In part, that’s because my memories aren’t there. In addition, many of my favorite items are no longer on display. Sources say that only 2% of the museum’s holdings are on display in the current museum building. While I realize that 100% of them probably weren’t on exhibit at the old building, it seems like a lot more were.
According to the its Web site, “The Grand Rapids Public Museum has been collecting objects of local and inter-galactic significance for over 155 years, and has amassed a collection of almost a quarter million artifacts and specimens. The collections span dozens of categories, from automobiles to zoology, from furniture to fossils, and beyond. While only a small percentage of the Museum’s holdings are on exhibit at any given time, this website is intended to give our customers a more complete look at the scope and depth of the collections.”
People are invited to peruse some of these treasures online. On special occasions, the museum actually invites the public to come to the old building to view them. However, this invitation does not make these items accessible to the children visiting the “real” museum with their school groups and families. In fact, I bet a very small percentage of Grand Rapids area residents have taken the museum folks up on their offer to visit the old site. Out-of-towners certainly won’t.
Since the current, expansive museum building only has room to display such a small percentage of its holding, it’s baffling that it dedicates approximately 1,000 square feet to an Amway exhibit. While I don’t know if this exhibit was created specifically for the museum or if it’s a trade show leftover, one thing is certain. It’s a 1,000 square foot advertisement for a multi-level marketing corporation that sells products manufactured in China. Since pictures speak a thousand words, take a look at these few shots I took during my last visit to the museum. I say few because they in no way represent the totality of the exhibit.
On Wednesdays in August, museum patrons could also attend Amway Nutrilite Presentations, where they could “join a representative in the Amway exhibit to learn about Nutrilite. This free and interactive presentation includes free samples of Amway products.”
It’s all well and good that well-heeled area residents bless us with their philanthropy. And it’s well known that such donations are given with the intention of honoring those making them. However, such blatant , overblown promotion of a company and its products has no place in the public museum―especially when space strictures allow so few of its treasures to be shared.
Statement to Senator Levin read by activists before arrest
(Below is the statement read by an activist during a public meeting with Senator Levin in Big Rapids a few weeks ago. Just after the statement was read, another activist hit Levin with a piece of pie. Both of the activists are facing serious charges for confronting the Michigan Senator on war crimes.)
Senator Levin,
There’s no doubt that you are one of the most respected senators in the United States. Coupled with three decades of senatorial experience and your role as Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, this respect translates into great influence in policy making, especially in regard to US foreign policy.
Despite your relative popularity, I sincerely doubt that many of your constituents know the extent of your contributions to increasing human suffering around the world.
How many people know that you were an enthusiastic supporter of the primarily Clinton-era US-led sanctions on Iraq during the 1990s–sanctions which likely killed over one million innocent people by way of starvation, disease, and denial of medicines? Who were these victims? Certainly not Saddam Hussein and his regime–their grip on the besieged population was strengthened as a result. The victims were poor people, children, the sick, and the elderly. Publicly available declassified government documents now reveal the murderous (and ultimately successful) intentions of the US government to destroy Iraq’s water system and then to systematically ban the importation of crucial items such as chlorine– the effects of which were designed, according to top officials, to unleash “disease epidemics” which were predicted to affect “children in particular.” The result? Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children were deliberately murdered, perhaps up to half a million, according to mainstream estimates. Their blood is on your hands.
For three decades you have been the strongest supporter of Israeli war crimes against the Palestinian people. While the record is far too long to run through here, it is worth mentioning that just two winters ago, the Israeli military slaughtered some 1,400 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Over 1,000 were civilians according to leading Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups. Over 300 were children. Israel used F-16 fighter jets paid for by us; they used guns and ammunition, paid for by us; according to Human Rights Watch, Israel dropped white phosphorus–a chemical weapon supplied by US taxpayers which burns the flesh at 1500 degrees Fahrenheit–on Palestinian schools and incinerated children and noncombatants alive. Your response to these atrocities was to co-sponsor a Senate resolution praising the US-organized bloodbath. In fact, for years you have worked diligently to make sure that US taxpayers subsidize these campaigns of murder and oppression against the Palestinian people. Perhaps this is why you receive more pro-Israel lobby money than any other senator aside from Joe Lieberman. The blood of thousands of Palestinians living under military occupation and apartheid is on your hands.
You have repeatedly voted to allocate billions of dollars in funding for the US invasion and occupation of Iraq; an occupation and invasion which has killed, according to conservative British estimates, well over one million human beings. It might behoove you to remember that according to the ruling at the Nuremberg Tribunals following World War Two, an aggressive war is “the supreme international crime” because it encompasses and is ultimately responsible for all of the crimes and suffering that comes about as a result of the aggression. This funding–our money–is the lifeblood of a brutal military occupation which has killed, maimed, caged, tortured, humiliated, devastated, impoverished, and otherwise destroyed the lives of millions and millions of people. But you don’t care how many Iraqi mothers bury their sons; you don’t care how many tears are shed over the unfathomable amounts of death, destruction, degradation, and humiliation suffered at the hands of the US and its surrogates. This blood, too, is on your hands.
And power learns no lessons about human suffering. Today you urge more taxpayer support for the war in Afghanistan and for a so-called government in Afghanistan which is run by, in the words of Human Rights Watch, some of the “most notorious warlords in the country,”; warlords and criminals who killed some 50,000 Afghans during the early 1990s after the US and Russia had systematically destroyed Afghanistan in a nasty game of imperial Cold War politics. The blood spilled in every house raid and every air strike on civilians is on your hands.
Today, you continue to call for more murderous attacks in the region. You have prominently called for increasing US drone strikes in Pakistan. These cowardly bombings–which are carried out by robot planes guided by Americans sitting at computers on an Air Force Base in Nevada–have killed several hundred civilians, including women and children. Not only are these bombings wildly immoral because of this, but they also inflame and incite, quite understandably, hatred against the United States. Pakistani blood will continue to drip from your hands as long as the bombings continue.
You remain hawkish and aggressive in your posture towards other sovereign nations as well. For example, your position on Iran–a country that, in stark contrast to Israel, hasn’t attacked its neighbors for centuries–is that “all options, including military options, should be on the table.” In plain terms, this is a threat to bomb Iran, maybe even with nuclear weapons. Such threats are flagrant violations of the UN Charter, if anybody cares. If and when the US or its Israeli client attacks Iran, that blood, too, will be on your hands.
Senator Levin, reasonable people can disagree on policy and politics. BUT, reasonable people CANNOT disagree on basic human principles of justice and decency. It is both perverse and shameful that you claim to uphold values like freedom and justice while actively taking part in the murder, mutilation, repression, and infliction of suffering on millions of Iraqis, Palestinians, Lebanese, Afghans, Pakistanis, and many more peoples living under the whip of US imperialism, from Latin America to Africa, to Asia and the Middle East.
And back home in Michigan, you treat the people you purport to serve with equal contempt. While you go to sleep in your Detroit mansion as a millionaire each night, nearly 20,000 human beings in the same city go to bed homeless, on the streets. Do you have even the slightest idea what being homeless entails? These people could be housed with money you prefer to spend on war, or money you prefer to spend on yourself. While you sit self-righteously in Washington making laws to protect power and privilege, the police systematically brutalize and imprison our state’s African-American population at rate nearly THREE TIMES that of South Africa during the years of apartheid.
The truth is that, on principle, you are no different than every other senator in the U.S. and I don’t respect you. And I’m not the slightest bit interested in hearing your entirely predictable response, replete with the same old dastardly lies and apologetics for heinous crimes against humanity. If there was any justice in this country or in this world, you would be in prison and I am going to say it straight to your face.
Dogs, Cows, Ice Sculptures and Governor Candidates
It must have been a slow local news day at the Grand Rapids Press. Today’s front-page story is about the Labor Day weekend weather and gas prices.
Not to be out done the front page of the Region-section from top to bottom featured a story about a dog, then a cow, the filming of ice sculptures and at the bottom a story about Democratic Gubernatorial candidate Virg Bernero meeting with people in Grand Rapids.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I am all in favor of animal welfare and the story about the cow and dog did mention the mistreatment of animals and an animal sanctuary. However, if the stories were to explore in more detail the realities of animal abuse and resources and services available in this community, then those stories would have been more compelling.
The ice sculpture was a bit more ridiculous, since it was in many ways a promotional piece for a local ice sculpting business, who’s work is being featured on the agribusiness TV channel, the Food Network. This article has garnered 3 pictures compared to just one each for the other 3 articles on the front page of the Region-section.
The article about the gubernatorial candidate in Grand Rapids was as short as the dog story, maybe even a few sentences shorter. The article tells us that Democrat Virg Bernero and his running mate Brenda Lawrence were in Grand Rapids yesterday to meet with voters.
The story did include a comment from the gubernatorial candidate, but only one of the voters’ concerns was included. This is frustrating in that even that story stated that the candidates, “sat for more than an hour……fielding questions and concerns” from people. It would have been nice to know what the concerns are of people. Instead, the Press reporter decided to include commentary about recent polling on the Governor’s race.
As readers of this site know, GRIID has been monitoring the local news for the past 10 years. We are not surprised by the kind of journalism that the Press and other news agencies practice, but we think it is important to continue to critique this kind of journalism, especially since there is so little independent news available that focuses on West Michigan.
Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy 