Bloggers vs. Blight

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Comment from: 7561milton
I wanted to add my voice of support for all the work people are doing for the old neighborhood. I joined the service and left Michigan. I recognized some of the names in the blog and just want to say “Hi” to all those working hard at Fletcher Field. Community service is a tough job to do, just want to say, hang in there.
Joe Sokolowski

Comment from: michael zielinski
Over the years I’ve been through the old neighborhood. And to tell the truth it made me sick to my stomach to see or not see most of the houses in the area. But I don’t want to dwell on the negative. Ever since my brother called me and told me about this site, I’ve been poring over the letters and pictures. Thinking about the way the old neighborhood used to look and the great friends I had back then really hits home.

In the year since Going Home has been live, Happy, Morgan, and a team of community leaders have mobilized those who feel a tie to the neighborhood to clean up Fletcher Field, turning it from urban wasteland to playable park. They have formed an advocacy operation, Friends of Fletcher Field, to ensure that the park remains a safe place for kids to play. They are taking steps to register Friends as a nonprofit. They have organized a neighborhood reunion, enlisting many of those who attended to dedicate time and money. They have asked the Rotary Club and other service groups for money and resources. They have arranged for groups to speak at City Hall on the neighborhood’s behalf. They spend so much time, in fact, either in the neighborhood or thinking and writing about it that when they laugh with each other about their wife (Happy) or their girlfriend (Morgan) leaving them over their “other woman,” they’re only partially joking. It’s common to see a Going Home post time-stamped 2 a.m.

Ask Happy and Morgan what Going Home is, fundamentally, and they’ll tell you that it’s journalism—a logical extension of the work they do and the skills they’ve developed as professional reporters. But Going Home is more than storytelling. It is community building. It is advocacy. Happy and Morgan aren’t just reporting the neighborhood’s story. They’re affecting the story. In some ways, they are the story.

To Happy and Morgan, journalism isn’t just about telling stories; it is about using those stories to affect people and effect change. And credibility, they believe, lies in caring, actively, about sources and stories.

“Michael got involved in something and wanted to share the power of what he could do through this blog with others, and got other people involved,” says Nancy Hanus, who was his editor but has since left the News. “I don’t think we do hardly anything that resonates so deeply with people anymore.”

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