For as long as I've been paying attention, Ypsilanti residents have had some significant discontent with its coverage in the local news. Many complain that Ypsi is to the Ann Arbor News what Detroit is to the national media - that place you go when you're out of fodder for your "if it bleeds, it leads" doctrine. (I don't know if I necessarily see it, but I haven't been paying attention to the News' Ypsi coverage for the 30 years that some have.) The Ypsilanti Courier, meanwhile, has long been maligned, with the criticism stepping up recently when Heritage Newspapers closed the Ypsi office and moved the paper to Belleville.

A few attempts have been made, or discussed, to provide "better" (more thorough and/or more balanced) news coverage to Ypsi. A year or two ago, a group of local bloggers were discussing the formation of an online news site, "The Ypsilanti Sentinel", but never quite got off the ground. (Oddly, google turns up a note in 2006 Pittsfield Township Historical Commission minutes that "A new newspaper will be starting in Ypsilanti, a daily newspaper called the Ypsilanti Evening Sentinal".) Blogger Steve Pierce went ahead and started videoing meetings and otherwise devoting his YpsiNews to local current events. Finally, word on the street is that a group of old-school Depot Townies have been discussing the formation of a new print paper, to the point of putting together a business plan and starting to raise the $1 million(!) in startup costs. Edit: This new daily publication would be the "Ypsilanti Evening Sentinal" - apparently there are only so many former Ypsi newspaper names worth recycling.

Now, into that simmering brew of alt-media efforts, let's throw in an experienced regional new media powerhouse, shall we? Sure, sounds good.

Earlier this spring, Issue Media co-founder and CEO Paul Schutt delivered the keynote at the Michigan Suburbs Alliance's Regional Redevelopment Summit. Issue Media produces the Detroit-focused Model D, and regional Metromode, as well as similar pages in Pittsburgh and Grand Rapids. Issue Media's focus is on business and culture news, and on presenting an "alternative narrative" for these rust belt regions - Issue Media holds that the major media can't report anything about Detroit but the Big 3, Pfizer, crime, and the occasional World Series, with maybe a passing mention of Google creating 1,000 jobs in town, and that largely includes the Detroit News and Freep. Model D, therefore, focuses on the other side of the story - the entrepreneurs, the businesses growing in or relocating to Detroit, the neighborhood success stories, the cultural happenings. In addition to running their own sites, Issue Media packages and distributes news to corporations and institutions attempting to recruit employees or financing, focusing on the "creative class" 25-35 demographic seen as the power behind the "new economy", who are generally considered to have far less concern for property taxes or school districts than on living in interesting places with interesting people.

So, Ypsi. Issue Media is interested in branching out to some of the smaller communities around metro Detroit, and Ypsilanti's high on their radar. Among other attractions, says publisher Brian Boyle, "The Detroit music scene is turning over - garage rock is making way, and a lot of people think that what's next is coming out of Ypsilanti." (There's some supporting evidence for that here and there.) And Mark Maynard's face, in fact, graced the front page of Metromode when it was pulled up at the MSA summit, on an article on the Michigan Design Militia.

Yesterday, a group of Ypsi luminaries was invited to a meeting with Boyle to discuss what Issue Media could do for Ypsi, and what it would cost. The invitation list included various business, institutional, and thought leaders from around town, and me. I'm not sure why me. (I suspect this here post is a big part of why - I'm just a tool for building buzz.) I'll let invitees out themselves as they wish, in part because I don't know them all, but I believe DDA Director Brian Vosburg was Issue's first point of contact, so I'll out him.

Issue Media's proposition for Ypsilanti is a dedicated site and outreach tools, something much more focused and fleshed out than the Metromode Ypsilanti section, but, of course, not as large as Model D. Sounds like we'd have approximately one dedicated/paid Ypsilanti writer, supported by the Issue Media tech platform and database of media and business contacts. We could add specific "neighborhood" coverage or "growth area" coverage (e.g. "Design"), though I think Ypsilanti as a whole may be only as large as what Model D packages as a "neighborhood" . (Even without entire neighborhood sections, though, things like "Normal Park" or "Historic South Side" would get single-page coverage.) Additionally, Issue Media would provide "Visiting Ypsi", "Moving to Ypsi", and "Investing in Ypsi" guides for interested outsiders.

The price tag on all of this is around $40,000 annually; setting up discrete neighborhood or growth sector sections would be about $10,000 a pop. A local advisory group would work with Issue Media staff to name and design the site and recommend coverage. $10k seems pretty steep to me for what we call neighborhoods, but $40k a year is fantastically cheap, compared to spending $1m on capital and however much running a new print newspaper.

"So, who would be the 'client' here?" I asked. "You know, who do you envision would be paying that $40,000 and setting up this advisory committee?" Boyle answered that, of course, Issue Media would prefer a single point of contact to a mob, but he envisions that the stakeholders heading up a client coalition, and heading up the funding, might be the Chamber, EMU, and a local hospital, if we've got one.

The next step is to round up those stakeholders and hash out whether or not this is a worthwhile proposition. For my part, I'll say "heck yes". With Ypsilanti's profile in the national news summing up to "Auto woes manufacture city's decline", and even that article calling Ypsi "not the most memorable" of Michigan's struggling cities, I think we could use an advocate. And, yes, an Issue Media-run site for Ypsi would be unabashedly boosterish (hello, they're suggesting the Chamber of Commerce would be funding them!), but there is, after all, no such thing as unbiased media, and Issue is quite clear that their mission is to report the successes and the excitement of place. There are plenty of places for hearing bad things about Ypsi (for exmple, most of the rest of Washtenaw County); shouldn't we have somebody on our side?

Stay tuned...