The Weekly Standard publishes a mesmerising piece by Matt Labash, who spent a week watching and writing in Detroit, an American city crumbling alongside its three major motor manufacturers.

Labash doesn’t try to explain the decay, claiming that unenviable task is “best left to historians” but instead looks and sees and reports. The result is a series of arresting snapshots, both of people and places, promising leads that, while never fully explored, build a vivid picture of the city as it stands today.

During his stay, Labash spends time with Charlie LeDuff, the ex-New York Times journalist of ten years who left the big shot paper to return to the Detroit News, a “failing newspaper in a failing city”.

LeDuff’s quotations, and the characterisation and ambiance of his newsroom, reminds me of the Baltimore Sun as depicted in the fifth season of David Simon’s The Wire, leathery, hardnosed men, fighting the painful economics of modern print media with mere pens and passion.

Read it for that, and for the other stories and images the piece touches upon.

Following a week of yet more painful game media closures and web cutbacks, I found the following quotation, in which LeDuff steels himself against media-industry misfortunes, inspirational:

“God gave me something to do, and I’m not turning my back on it. I’m trying really hard. Maybe I’m not great. I’m always nervous, never sure if it’s any good. But I’m just trying. What’s wrong with trying?”

This. Yeah, this.