I just saw one of the latest “Pure Michigan” TV ads on MSNBC. In case you have not seen them, the Pure Michigan ads are travel spots put out by the state’s tourism bureau.
The latest ad reminds us that we humans only have 25k or so mornings in our life – and asks us to spend some of them in “a place where a simple sunrise can still be magical.”
When you’ve got nothing left to sell, advertise the sunrise.
With a $3.5 billion deficit, can Michigan really afford to be running such sentimental ads? Doesn’t the state have things to do, like keep the lights on?
Here’s the Free Press’s take on the top 10 most embarrassing moments in Detroit city politics. The scene captured below—in which veteran City Councilwoman Barbara-Rose Collins sports a tiara at a council meeting—comes in at number eight.
Michigan Radio, the public radio service at the University of Michigan, raised $620,000 in pledges and exceeded its spring fundraising drive goal by 15 percent.
The goal for the March 27 through April 3 on-air campaign was $540,000.
The $620,000 was also 5 percent more than 2008’s spring drive.
One would have thought the massive unemployment in Michigan and the collapsing auto industry would have taken a toll on the fundrasing efforts of Michigan’s premier NPR affiliate, but it looks like that was not the case.
Note to the newspaper industry, perhaps member supported media is counter cyclical.
In the interests of full disclosure, I’ll admit that I was one of the first time givers to Michigan Raido this spring. I just hope that $125 dollar T-Shirt is worth it.
A Weekly Standard author tackles the question. The article is old, but it’s worth reading if you haven’t already.
An excerpt:
How bad is Detroit? It once gave the keys to the city to Saddam Hussein.
Over the last several years, it has ranked as the most murderous city, the poorest city, the most segregated city, as the city with the highest auto-insurance rates, with the bleakest outlook for workers in their 20s and 30s, and as the place with the most heart attacks, slowest income growth, and fewest sunny days. It is a city without a single national grocery store chain. It has been deemed the most stressful metropolitan area in America. Likewise, it has ranked last in numerous studies: in new employment growth, in environmental indicators, in the rate of immunization of 2-year-olds, and, among big cities, in the number of high school or college graduates.
Men’s Fitness magazine christened Detroit America’s fattest city, while Men’s Health called it America’s sexual disease capital. Should the editors of these two metrosexual magazines be concerned for their safety after slagging the citizens of a city which has won the “most dangerous” title for five of the last ten years? Probably not: 47 percent of Detroit adults are functionally illiterate.
On the upside, Detroit ranks as the nation’s foremost consumer of Slurpees and of baked beans on Labor Day. And as if all of this isn’t humiliating enough, the Detroit Lions are 0-14.
Michigan is losing a family every 12 minutes, and the people leaving are the ones the state needs most to keep, the Detroit News reports.
Those leaving Michigan are the people the state most needs to keep — young and college-educated. The state suffered a net loss to migration of 18,000 adults with a bachelor’s degree or higher in 2007 alone — the equivalent of half the staff of the University of Michigan crossing the state line.
