So while I was putting on my lamé pants over my baby rib briefs, I had the chance to read "Something, Something, Something, Detroit" by Thomas Morton.
An excerpt:
For a while James was getting four to five calls a week from outside journalists looking for someone to sherpa them to the city’s best shitholes, but they’ve finally begun leaving him alone since he started telling them to fuck off.ha.
“At first, you’re really flattered by it, like, ‘Whoa, these professional guys are interested in what I have to say and show them.’ But you get worn down trying to show them all the different sides of the city, then watching them go back and write the same story as everyone else. The photographers are the worst. Basically the only thing they’re interested in shooting is ruin porn.
The Michigan Central Depot is a hulking, bombed-out turn-of-the-century train station that’s constantly used by papers and magazines as a symbol of the city’s rot. The only problem is, aside from looking the part, it doesn’t have too much to do with any of the issues it usually gets plastered above.
It’s owned by a billionaire trucking tycoon, not the bankrupt city; it was shut down back in the 80s, not because of any of the recent crap. Nevertheless, back in December when the auto executives were in front of Congress, Time ran a photo essay to go with the story, opening and closing with shots of the terminal.
ruin porn.
In my mind, the interesting term reflects a journalist's desire to document and show off the less-desirable sides of a community over and over and over again without presenting the entire complexity of circumstances within that community.
ruin porn - you know it when you see it.
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So does the inability for reporters or media production specialists to tell the whole story at times produce some of the community angst that simmers to the surface?
Being a journalist is hard work.
As the Vice piece highlights, reporters are often dropped into a situation for a limited amount of time and told to produce good work with limited resources.
I remember the discussions and negative pushback after Presidential candidate John Kerry visited the Mahoning Valley in 2004. After finding a rusted hulk of a building to use as a background, his crew set up a well-framed camera shot of Sen. Kerry.
People were disappointed.
The campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton did not make the same decision in 2008.
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By no means should the media stay away from Youngstown.
Generation after generation, the place has an important story of America to tell the world.
Just don't come looking for a cheap set of images. No one likes being treated like a backdrop.
again, from the article:
“Look, we get like 30 emails a week from people.
What happens is they go off and write their story and nothing ever happens here except we get more and more requests. Now, like, Delta’s inflight magazine is contacting us.
I don’t know what to say to Delta’s inflight magazine.”
1 comment:
Interesting read. I love abandoned places and forgotten structures but from the point of view that things were here, alive and vital and now the world has moved on. It's all very Stephen King Dark Tower-ish.
This BS you're writing about, though, is exactly what you called it; ruin porn. It is lazy journalists who want pretty pictures to go with the story they already have written before they ask the first question. They just want a prop to help validate their view that the rust belt is full of dying cities and a ruined economy.
What they fail to understand is that people can transform these places. These areas aren't stuck in time. They can be smashed and rebuilt, recycled on a societal level. That's the real story but they aren't going to write that.
I guess it will be up to the people who live here.
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