Beyond 'ruin porn'

Cities 2010 | The Motor City is facing very hard times, but there is more to Detroit than the usual images of decay. Detroit also has stories of hope and renewal | Susan Olasky

Andre J. Jackson/Detroit Free Press/MCT/Newscom

DETROIT—It's a challenge to tell stories about people in this city who see its problems and are working hard to be part of its rebirth. It's a challenge because press accounts of Detroit are training us to view the city in three morbid ways.

"Ruin porn" is the favorite negation. Photo after photo of broken windows, vandalized schools, abandoned and decaying buildings. Murder capital, riots, corruption, crummy cars, poverty, racial bigotry. Detroit has something for nearly everyone to hate or ridicule, and ruin porn—porn in the sense of provoking civic, not sexual, degradation—has become a shorthand way to convey scorn.

The second genre is shoot 'em up. Last month's Metro Times: "A car turned from Jefferson onto Chalmers. It drew closer, then slowed when it reached Jackson's house. The headlights panned the front of the home until they revealed the ex-cop sitting there on the otherwise dark porch, staring back. He had a shotgun in his lap."