IN ANN ARBOR IT is said that some bleed maize and blue. Between its 2009 launch and its 2013 end, journalistic “experiment” AnnArbor.com bled talent. Reporters frustrated by low pay and, several say, difficulty getting hard-hitting stories published, jumped ship one-after-the-other. At the end, AnnArbor.com had an ad sales force that rivalled the size of its reporting team.
AnnArbor.com sports writer Dave Birkett covered U of M football there for 15 months and then left to work for the Detroit Free Press in 2010. In 2007, while a reporter at the former Ann Arbor News Birkett snagged a first place Michigan AP Award for Sports Enterprise Reporting. In 2014, Birkett won the Michigan Sportswriter of the Year Award.
In January 2014, after the Free Press broke a story about a federal investigation of the University of Michigan’s investigation of an alleged rape that was reported to the Ann Arbor police, as well as University of Michigan officials in 2009, Birkett commented via Twitter:
“Also, nice to see Michigan acting in a timely manner in the Brendan Gibbons case. I remember trying to report that when I covered them in 09.”
Gibbons was arrested and questioned after an alleged rape in November 2009, but never charged with a crime. The victim did not press charges, but also alleged that U of M football player Taylor Lewan (Gibbons’s then roommate) threatened her should she do so.
The University of Michigan revised its sexual misconduct policy in 2011. In November 2013, Gibbons was found responsible for a violation of the student sexual misconduct policy by Michigan’s Office of Student Conflict Resolution. Gibbons received a letter of separation.
The Michigan athletic department, including former Athletic Director Bill Martin, current Athletic Dave Brandon and Coach Brady Hoke have come under scrutiny from the mainstream media about their handling of the Gibbons matter in 2013. Gibbons was found responsible by the OSCR on November 20, 2013. Still, he played in Michigan’s game against Iowa on November 23. He attended Michigan’s football banquet on December 9.
Brady Hoke described Gibbons as “iffy” for Michigan’s bowl game on December 16. Now, Hoke is facing allegations that he lied to the media to cover for Gibbons.
After months of silence during which Michigan officials did not publicly address Brendan Gibbons’s “separation” from U of M for violation of the school’s conduct policy, Brady Hoke issued a statement that said, in part:
Michigan Athletics has no influence over any part of a review of a potential violation of University’s student code of conduct — not the process, the investigation or the timing of the resolution. In general, while we may be aware of an on-going proceeding, we always strive to balance transparency with privacy.
Our usual approach is to not issue discipline related to a student’s standing on the team before the University’s process runs its course and the outcome has been determined. We will always respect the rights and confidentiality of the process and the parties involved. One way we do that is by not discussing the details of student disciplinary matters.
So while I would like to be more forthcoming, I can’t provide any details due to federal privacy laws and University policies.
Michigan denied the Athletics Department had any influence over sexual misconduct investigations. Rich Rodriguez refused to comment.
Now, Dave Birkett says his effort to report on the incident in 2009 was thwarted by his own newspaper. Is there some explanation?
Doug Smith who worked for four years to force an investigation of the incident says that he was told by AnnArbor.com editors that since Gibbons was never charged, the newspaper could not justify printing a story about the allegations.
Smith, a former U of M pathologist, was banned from the AnnArbor.com comment section in December 2012. He was also banned from the MLive comment section for his persistence in chiding the newspaper for what he perceived as its participation in what Smith came to believe was a cover-up. Is it beyond the pale to believe that AnnArbor.com’s higher-ups would try to protect the University of Michigan from negative publicity?
Connections Between U of M and AnnArbor.com
In 2009, AnnArbor.com’s VP Laurel Champion was a member of the Ann Arbor SPARK Board of Directors, along with University of Michigan President Dr. Mary Sue Coleman. U of M VP Stephen Forrest was a member of the SPARK Board with Champion, as well. Dr. Forest and Champion served on SPARK’s Executive Committee together. The Executive Committee is a tight-knit group of politically-connected business leaders who handpick the Board’s own members. The Executive Committee has, until recently, fought the release of SPARK’s audited financial statements to the public despite receiving millions in public funding.
Champion’s position on that Board prompted vociferous criticisms from AnnArbor.com readers. Alan Goldsmith is one such reader, and his comments reflect concerns that the newspaper was not aggressively covering issues related to SPARK’s accounting and the non-profit’s refusal to release its audited financial statements to the public.
In May 2010, just a few months after Birkett’s story was killed, Ann Arbor SPARK announced its Executive Board members. The announcement included this:
“Laurel Champion, executive vice president, AnnArbor.com was selected as treasurer of the board of directors.”
SPARK also announced that, “Stephen Forrest, vice president for research, University of Michigan is board chairman.”
Laurel Champion, AnnArbor.com’s VP was serving on SPARK’s Board with Rick Snyder, then listed as “CEO and co-founder, Ardesta, LLC.”
Then, in March 2011, the mainstream media blasted Champion and AnnArbor.com Content Director Tony Dearing for appointing University of Michigan VP for communication, David R. Lampe, to the newspaper’s editorial board. National media analyst Jim Romenesko, writing for the non-partisan Poynter Institute, a non-profit media research institute, broke the story in March 2011:
AnnArbor.com has named University of Michigan vice president for communications David R. Lampe as an editorial board member. One website commenter notes: “University of Michigan is the biggest business in this town. And you have its top PR guy on your ‘editorial board’? Your pretense of journalism is over. Fold your tent.” Romenesko is told that a comment posted by “Jim” — reprinted below — was written by former Ann Arbor News sports columnist Jim Carty.
Carty wrote this: “David Lampe spent a good six months fighting The Ann Arbor News at every single point of our academics and athletics investigation. He is a well-paid professional spinner for the biggest organization you cover. The idea you would put him on your editorial board would be nothing less than mind-boggling if it weren’t for everything we’ve seen over the past year-plus. Pretty much epic fail on every front at this point, Tony.”
The Brendan Gibbons scandal, the federal investigation and Dave Birkett’s public allegations—which have not been withdrawn—are a symptom of what U of M critics allege is a much more serious problem.
Kyle Poplin, editor of The Ann magazine wrote a piece in September 2013 titled, “University of message control.” In that piece, Poplin argues: “These aren’t traditional times in journalism, and it simply isn’t realistic for the paltry number of reporters responsible for playing watchdog to keep tabs on everything. Not only are there fewer journalists focused on the school, but U of M has gone on media offense, too, adding more than 50 new public relations positions since 2005.”
Poplin goes on to write, “This state of affairs alarms those who view inquisitive, aggressive journalism as indispensable to keeping public institutions accountable. It isn’t that those in power at U-M are necessarily corrupt or incompetent, they assert, but the near-absence of a robust, competitive media leaves the public unable to judge for themselves, significantly less aware of how their tax money is being spent and without journalists capable of explaining complex issues in common language.”
Former AnnArbor.com reporter Dave Bigelow is quoted by Poplin as asking: “How do you pinpoint what’s not being uncovered?”
Bigelow continues: “There’s a sense that things are being missed, but without someone taking time to do that reporting, it’s hard to know what those things are. That’s the $1 million question.”
With the launch of AnnArbor.com in 2009, Kyle Poplin writes that the “waning influence of the local media has prompted U-M and its brethren to beef up its public relations staff and use social media or email to speak directly to what they refer to as ‘stakeholders.’ Between 2005 and 2011, the number of jobs with the words ‘marketing,’ ‘communications’ or ‘public relations’ on the U-M payroll zoomed to 217 from 162, a 32 percent increase, according to public data available on MichiganDaily.com.”
While the federal investigation of the University of Michigan’s handling of its investigation of Brendan Gibbons’s conduct is welcomed by those who have alleged there was a cover-up of the football player’s behavior, such an investigation is by no means a panacea. The Michigan Daily has produced superb investigative reporting about the 2009 incident and the subsequent efforts to untangle what happened and who knew what when.
The investigation by federal officials is expected to take several months, and the University of Michigan—not Gibbons—will suffer the consequences.