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Making someone completely disappear is a very difficult feat.
Letter from the Editor Dear Reader, Ryan Stanton was pretty spry Tuesday morning, given that he’d covered an Ann Arbor City Council meeting the night before. Some of those sessions last seven hours, after all.
“It was just a work session last night – two hours,” Stanton said. Still, the hopper is full for the reporter who covers Ann Arbor city government for MLive.com and The Ann Arbor News. Some upcoming assignments: A Q&A with the city sustainability manager; Coverage of a City Council debate over new rules for Airbnb, plus allegations that an Airbnb investor may have offered a bribe; Digging deeper into the details of Ann Arbor's new transportation plan; A closer look at $1.4B in projects in Ann Arbor's new capital improvement plan; New real estate developments planned for Ann Arbor; The ongoing discussion on the Center of the City Park and Commons; The latest on the Gelman dioxane pollution plume.“All those are issues that we'll keep chipping away at, and telling readers what they need to know about each of them,” Stanton said.
COVID, elections and politics, and social justice issues have justifiably owned the headlines and our attention the past year. But the demands of running our communities have not diminished, and local government decisions impact your life in a much more tangible way.
Stanton is one of the many MLive journalists covering local government for our readers in communities across the state. That includes county, city and township governments; K-12 schools; colleges; and taxing authorities like DDAs.
Covering meetings remains a fundamental duty of the beat, even in the virtual era brought on by COVID. But the job also requires knowing a community’s history on key issues; researching stories, interviewing stakeholders; and being present and invested in the community.
“I live in the Old West Side … and I walk and bike everywhere,” Stanton said. “I'll get stopped on the sidewalk and people give me story tips; I'll see a sign posted outside a building that leads to a story. Being part of the community is definitely a big part of being a journalist for me.”
Another important part of being a journalist that Stanton also applies effectively is the Freedom of Information Act. In the past year, he has used the “sunshine law” to provide transparency to our readers on two stories – the firing of a city manager, and police discipline records.
In the first, Stanton overcame tight-lipped city council members by obtaining emails between them that showed a battle between factions over the manager, and shedding light on why he ultimately was dismissed. In the latter, Stanton fought for six months to get documents showing what discipline was handed down to officers named in citizen complaints.
That came in the wake of demands for police accountability after the George Floyd death at the hands of Minneapolis police. Even Ann Arbor’s citizen Police Oversight Commission hadn’t been able to get the documents, and its chairwoman thanked Stanton after we published his work.
Without FOIA, Stanton said, “we wouldn't have the democracy we have, and we wouldn't have a society we have. We would have government officials who got away with a lot of things without being held accountable for them.”
I know our readers are grateful for this kind of coverage. A great percentage of our digital subscribers live in the eight communities that we have had a newspaper presence for 150 years or more. They are engaged in our work because they are deeply interested in local issues and decisions that affect their lives.
And ultimately, we’re all connected a larger world, and larger issues. The fallout of the Floyd death hit streets in all of communities, and steered discussions about police oversight and standards. The issues of safe and fair elections resonated locally. COVID dominates every facet of our daily lives, right into our living rooms.
So when Ann Arbor leaders debate an issue to be carbon-neutral and have 100 percent sustainable energy by 2030, Stanton and his fellow journalists become critical to making global issues meaningful at a local level.
“It is really fun to be a city government reporter in this town, that is really punching above its weight class and trying to tackle the problems of the world,” Stanton said.
🎧 To hear my extended interview with Ryan Stanton, click here. We discuss current issues facing Ann Arbor; how journalists use FOIA to dig up information; and being a reporter in the COVID era. To hear all the stories behind the stories, click here and subscribe to our Behind the Headlines podcast.
Editor's note: I value your feedback to my columns, story tips and your suggestions on how to improve our coverage. Let me know how MLive helps you, and how we can do better. Please feel free to reach out by emailing me at editor@mlive.com.
John Hiner Executive Editor Vice President of Content Mlive Media Group
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