TELLING DETROIT'S STORY - TAKING CHARGE OF OUR STORY: WHERE THE DETROIT REGION HAS BEEN, WHERE WE ARE AND WERE WE INTEND TO GO.

The conversation is going fast and furious this afternoon… the topic is “Telling Detroit’s Untold Stories.”

So far, suggestions have ranged from more focus on Detroit’s positives like culture and the arts, sports, opportunities for young people, urban gardens… Here’s the deal, though – I see these kinds of stories reported every day. Panel moderators Bill Mitchell and Nichole Christian asked Jennette Pierce of Inside Detroit, one of the participants in the conversation, where she thinks responsibility lies – is it the media’s responsibility to inform people, or do people have a personal responsibility to inform themselves? Pierce says both. As any reporter will tell you, you can write stories until you’re blue in the face, but you can’t make people read them…

Another participant, the Rev. Simmons (whose first name I didn’t catch) just raised an interesting question – how do you talk about Detroit’s warts? Simmons, who lives in Brightmoor, says he doesn’t see his reality reflected in mainstream media coverage. He says his life is neither rah-rah electronic music and sports nor Dodge City, get your guns… and most of the coverage he sees lies on one extreme.

I would like to add a caveat here, though as a Crain’s Detroit Business reporter I probably shouldn’t be promoting another publication - a writer named Detroitblogger John, in my opinion, consistently does some of the best journalism in Detroit. His byline often appears in the Metro Times. John is a faithful chronicler of the soul of Detroit, and his love for the city and its people comes through in everything he writes.

I think this is an example of the question Bill and Nichole were asking… if a journalist does great work, but no one is there to hear the tree fall…