Tech Town chief and entrepreneur Randal Charlton urges journalists to dig deeper and find the good things going on in Detroit.
Excerpt:
Journalists have been visiting Detroit on a regular basis to report on its demise and the British Broadcasting Corporation is the latest to dispatch a correspondent to chronicle our death.
The past Sunday the BBC website described Detroit as “Car Crash City” and ran a story headlining "
Motor City in Mourning for GM."
On one level the story is accurate. he reporter describes looking out of his hotel room on the 45th floor of the Renaissance Center, the headquarters of GM. He is as confused as anyone has the right to be that Canada is to the south, and even more bewildered by the poor design of the lower business floors of the building. The reporter, Greg Wood, chronicles the urban decay, the deserted office blocks, a closed church, the odd car and the lack of pedestrians. All true. What he may have missed is the spirit of Detroit.
I would like to invite the BBC’s Greg Wood to come back to Detroit on June 24th when we are kicking off a historic new effort to create 400 – yes 400 – new companies in the next three years. That means helping to give birth to about one new company every two to three days. The multi-million dollar effort is backed by the New Economy Initiative and is supported by the Kauffman Foundation, who are the world’s experts on entrepreneurship.
Read the rest of the Detroit Free Press story
here.