Detroit News Puff Piece Ignores Poisoned Dirt Piles at Northland

Southfield — If the publisher of The Detroit News were to suddenly donate his salary to charity, he'd still be over-paid.

Sir, it’s time to retire.

Over the past few years, The News under his stewardship has honed a reputation as a lapdog for corporate and political interests. Now he has removed all doubt with The News’s latest journalistic atrocity.

The above the fold headline in Tuesday’s paper (available your local gas station for $3.49) read:

“Northland site redevelopment coming together in Southfield”

Say what? The place won’t be opened for years… if ever.

I used to be a columnist at The News, so I know they are familiar with my work. It’s no secret I've been working on a series of stories about the environmental scandal surrounding the redevelopment of the old Northland Mall site in the city of Southfield, a poisoning so big that it may rival the Flint water debacle.

Some quick background: Southfield city leaders bought the site 10 years ago thinking they had the brains redevelop it. They did not. There are miles of subterranean tunnels on the site, and Mayor Ken Siver invited area contractors to dump their construction debris there to fill the tunnels.

Siver claims the dirt was clean, though the city never tested it. But numerous contractors and city officials say otherwise.

It all came to a head last year, after Michigan Enjoyer published a series of stories featuring whistleblowers who claimed that the new Northland developer—Contour Companies—had diverted the contaminated soil into Detroit’s demolition sites. Much of the “dirt” had come from freeway and sewer jobs.

Tests conducted by the City of Detroit showed that the Southfield dirt is too toxic for human contact. It will cost tens of millions to clean up.

Executives at Contour could not be reached. The corporate telephone line was not accepting messages today.

Meanwhile, mountains of the stuff still sit at the Northland site blowing in the wind. This week, we filmed workers moving the mounds of it around the site, rearranging it like peas on a plate. They were dumping it right across the street from a hospital and a child daycare center.

The scandal is so profound that in February the Detroit Police Organized Crime unit forwarded the case to the FBI.

This is commonly known. Even the Detroit Free Press reported as much last week. But none of these facts appeared in the News’s story. 

Instead, The News wrote: “The site’s water tower was recently painted, and in the distance, crews were working near what is slated to become a previously announced boutique hotel.”

The water tower was painted!

Read that again: “…in the distance, crews were working near what is slated to become a previously announced boutique hotel.”

What in the hell does that even mean?

I explained all of this to the gas station clerk. Her eyes went wide. “Fake news,” she said. “That’s why no one buys it.”

The News reporter was given a tour of a model showroom. She wrote that the place will start to fill up with residents “as early as” the end of the month. Did she try the water taps? Did she not notice the windows and walls were missing in the half-finished condominium bloc?

In a neat case of synchronicity, I also happened to visit the place on Monday. The elevators weren’t operable. A guy named Johnny was laying grout in the lobby. We filmed it all, including a surly foreman who in turn was filming us.

The publisher of The News has done the people no justice here. It was the same with Covid, Kornak, and Chrysler. The days of knee-pad journalism are over.

Time to close up shop, sir. Florida is calling you.