Monday, April 20, 2009

Jobs, please

Rochelle Riley has a telling column on a Renaissance High and Harvard grad who chose to move back to Detroit but can't find a job in his field of choice, urban planning and development. The point here is pretty obvious. In a state rapidly losing population and half of its own college grads, shouldn't local businesses and agencies do everything they can to recruit and retain the local talent that actually wants to stick around? Yes, Detroit has a small, thriving do it yourself culture, and young entrepreneurs regularly kick off cool new businesses and non-profit projects, but let's be honest, that path is for the courageous few. Something needs to be done to keep the other 95% in town, starting with a clear path to whatever good, steady employment remains in our post-auto economy.

3 comments:

Marc Couillais said...

Detroit is not a place for the job seeker, but for the job maker. Detroit's gift is low overhead, lets find those willing to take advantage of it.

Diana said...

Question: This doesn't have to do with job creation in Detroit, but I was curious - how has the Free Press and the News' decision to make their viewers pay for archived articles affected you as a blogger? Do you feel pressured to only use the articles within the past two weeks? Or have you been paying for their subscriptions?

Cooper said...

When I post, I only use active links to free content. So I use the News and the Free Press, even though I know the links won't work in a couple weeks. I don't use Crain's Detroit at all anymore because almost all their articles now require a subscription. It's a shame, because they often have better reporting on the city proper than the dailies, but I won't use sources that other people can't access.

As for me, no, I don't have subscriptions, although I have access to Lexis/Nexis for paid content. But I would pay for old articles if the pricing scheme weren't crazy. Right now, the Free Press charges $2.95 per archived article. Um, who are they kidding? You should be able to buy, say, $10 of credit, and deduct a quarter for every archived article you choose to read. Very few individuals would ever pay more than that, especially given that these archives can be had for free at just about every library and university in the state.