Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Changes at the Land Bank?

Is Dan Kildee leaving the Genesee County Land Bank? The Flint Journal repeats the rumors here, complete with an intriguing quote from Kildee: "I'm not ready to announce anything yet," he said.

UPDATE: Go here for the Blogging for Michigan post that runs down how this story broke. This is a great example of the state of journalism...stories breaking on blogs and Facebook, with the understaffed Flint Journal getting involved very late in the game. And as far as I can tell, none of this is confirmed.



5 comments:

  1. The blogger from the Bloggin' For Michigan blog misspelled blog. It's "blog" not "blogg", right?

    Not saying the rumor isn't true, but just how credible is Terry's blogg? I suppose it doesn't matter, you've blogged about it on your blogg and with the Urinal mining the blogosphere as well the truth is irrelevant. Besides, Kildee isn't leaving until next year. That's like four news cycles from now. By that time bloggers will be blogging about the trial of Blago or something.

    If only Kildee had a blog we could get to the bottom of this.

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  2. No doubt that this is a weird time for journalism. As I said before, most blogs aren't even close to journalism, while some are a strange blend of reporting and speculation. How credible is Terry's blog? How credible is mine? Who knows...that's the problem. And in the good ol' days, you'd hope that a reporter at the Journal would have a close enough relationship with Kildee that the Journal would get this scoop, not some guy hanging out with Kildee at 501.

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  3. Based on having interacted with him a bit on someone's political campaign years ago, and on personal knowledge of his (sometimes lonely) commitment to honest and effective government around here over the past years, I regard Terry as completely trustworthy and his blog as credible.

    FWIW.

    Besides, Dan essentially confirmed the story directly to Laura.

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  4. So, I need some information - can anyone tell me if they have tried to buy a side lot from the LB and been turned down? If so, please email me at cindygillie@yahoo.com

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  5. I don't think this is how it reads, but just in case, I want to clarify that I didn't mean to imply that Terry's blog is untrustworthy. I was trying to say info is coming from so many different sources now — many of them that people have never heard of — that it's hard for readers to know who to trust.

    Again, in this case, it looks like a blogger filled the info void left by the struggles at the Flint Journal. Too bad we can't have all the bloggers and a local paper with the staff to cover the city. I know the Journal reporters are working hard in a very tough situation. They just don't have the resources to cover everything at this point.

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Thanks for commenting. I moderate comments, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. You might enjoy my book about Flint called "Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City," a Michigan Notable Book for 2014 and a finalist for the 33rd Annual Northern California Book Award for Creative NonFiction. Filmmaker Michael Moore described Teardown as "a brilliant chronicle of the Mad Maxization of a once-great American city." More information about Teardown is available at www.teardownbook.com.