Everybody in the media club, they’re looking at us.

And it’s not through a race-neutral lens. National news coverage understandably plays up the Detroit mayoral election’s race hook.

Free Press politics editor James G. Hill likely knew this sentence in his Election Day column was wishful dreaming:

While race may be a few paragraphs in whatever story is written Tuesday night, it shouldn’t be the headline.  


Huffington Post has this presentation locally and nationally.

That's indeed the approach taken by the Associated Press. Its nationally published article by Corey Williams of the Detroit bureau mentions race only in the last of 23 paragraphs:

Duggan becomes Detroit's first white mayor since the early 1970s. The city is more than 80 percent black.

"Detroit Voters Elect Duggan Mayor of Broke City," says AP's suggested headline, which is used or adapted by Politico, the Boston Herald, ABC News and others.

Across the Detroit River, The Windsor Star's straightforward head says "Ex-prosecutor named Detroit mayor" and its top sentence says he "overcame perceptions of a racial divide." 

Time magazinegoes with "Detroit Elects First White Mayor in Decades," its display type says.

MSNBC has an echo: "Detroit gets Its 1st white mayor in 40 years."

The Washington Post plays up that angle wordily:.“Voters in predominantly black Detroit elect Mike Duggan city’s first white mayor in 4 decades.” That's atop a version of AP's dispatch with a first paragraph saying he may end "a period of racial divide that has defined much of the city’s past."

Huffington Post, nationally and locally, goes with the approach shown above. 


Mike Duggan's social media team changed their Facebook cover photo Tuesday.

Overseas in the U.K. The Guardian has the race angle in its subhead and first paragraph below this main type: "Mike Duggan elected mayor of Detroit as city awaits bankruptcy filing outcome."

“The city's first white mayor in 40 years” also is in the subhead and lead of a Governing magazine article that “reported” the outcome two hours before polls shut.

Another national publication, ​the Christian Science Monitor, has the type of perspective suggested by Henderson of the Freep. 

“Voters here are evidently less concerned about where city hall leadership is coming from, and more interested in what the next mayor can accomplish while in office," Marlk Guarinlo writes under the head "Detroit mayor's race: Racial politics out, focus on fixing the city in:” 

In a similar framing locally, the head atop Michigan Chronicle senior editor Bankole Thompson's coverage Wednesday morning begins: "Detroiters Look Beyond Race."