Joe Grimm’s review of Detroit Free Press veteran John Gallagher’s memoir, ‘Rust Belt Reporter’

Stories from a Journalist Looking for Signs of Detroit’s Comeback

Review by JOE GRIMM
Founder of the MSU School of Journalism Bias Busters project

Click on the cover to visit the book’s Amazon page.

John Gallagher went off in search of good stories and found some great ones.

In his memoir, Rust Belt Reporter, Gallagher shares a lot of his best ones about Detroit and the Detroit Free Press, where he wrote them.

Gallagher accepted a reporting gig at the newspaper in 1987, attracted by the gritty charm he saw in Detroit and wanting to indulge his passion for urban affairs. The city and the “characters” in the newsroom intrigued him. While he was never what one would call a character himself, Gallagher was a wry observer of what went on around him. I worked with him at the Free Press from his arrival until I left in 2008. Gallagher’s modus operandi was to punch out solid, insightful copy without drama.

That same talent makes Rust Belt Reporter a fun, informative read.

Gallagher writes that, when he started at the Free Press, the newsroom had a payroll of 320. When he retired in late 2019, the staff had been hollowed out to fewer than 100. Readers—and the ad dollars they attract—had fled to the web.

The Free Press seemed like a small reflection of the City of Detroit, which hit a high-water census tally of 1.85 million residents in 1950 and fell to 640,000 in 2020.

While it took the city 70 years to lose nearly two thirds of its population, newsroom staffing at the paper fell further and twice as fast. It shrank by more than two-thirds in Gallagher’s 32-year tenure. People with institutional knowledge were bought out, laid off or fled. Departments once deemed essential for quality journalism were cut or outsourced. The traditional business model of great newspapers was trashed.

As this happened to them, Gallagher and his colleagues chronicled the siphoning of jobs and wealth from Detroit to the suburbs, the South and overseas. They detailed the disintegration of city services and education, drug wars, auto company bailouts, the imprisonment of a corrupt mayor and the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history. Houses, stores and factories were abandoned and razed. Once-grand schools, the largest department store in the world and a hospital were left open to scrappers and demolished.

The details of the Free Press’ swoon were no less dramatic. It shackled itself to its former rival, The Detroit News, in the nation’s largest Joint Operating Agreement. The newspapers combined most departments while insisting they were still competitors. The arrangement contributed to a grinding 19-month strike. Gallagher walked the picket line with colleagues from both newspapers and was later talked into being union president. The papers’ landmark buildings were sold, and workers shuffled off to ever-smaller rented quarters. Their industry-leading owners, Gannett and Knight Ridder, swapped papers with each other and eventually, to save money, stopped delivering the paper daily.

Gallagher wrote books about architecture and how Detroit and other cites could be—had to be—reimagined on a smaller scale. Visitors seeking photos of Detroit’s infamous “ruin porn” asked him for tour tips.

Gallagher kept picking away at the rust. And eventually, he wrote, “in my daily work covering the city I saw more and more encouraging signs. And these disparate elements would set the stage for what the world finally noticed was a remarkable urban turnaround.”

This year, reports by other journalists say Detroit is showing its first population growth since the 1950s. Positive signs are shining through in many places. “Detroit” and “comeback” are showing up together in headlines, though many end with question marks.

The Free Press, struggling with industry-wide challenges, has not yet had a turnaround moment. Early in 2024, the Free Press and News newsrooms moved to smaller quarters in their rented building. On Oct. 1, the Free Press reported that the newsrooms must move again this year. They will be in another space in 2025, the year their Joint Operating Agreement is scheduled to end.

Gallagher and I overlapped at the Free Press for almost 20 years. His workmanlike professionalism and quality surprised me so often that I remember asking him how he did it.

He shares his secrets as a journalist and author in this book. One Gallagher habit that stumped me was that no matter how difficult or intricate his assignment was, he always seemed to make deadline and be out the newsroom door at a reasonable time. He addresses that in his book: “…the first draft? Blast through that. That’s where you’ll save a boatload of time. Your editors will think it’s spooky. And your dinner will still be warm when you get home.”

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Comments

  1. Chris Stepien says

    Thanks, Joe, for knocking the rust off my memory of the good old days of newspapers and Detroit, the city that put the world on wheels. So good to see Detroit resurrecting. It would be wonderful to see a revival in journalism.

    • Joe Grimm says

      Oh, we had some good times newspapering in the latter half of the 20th century, Chris, and we DID some good. I am afraid, though, that a lot of fun has been run out of the business — as well as a lot of good journalists.