I went through a period recently where I was really annoyed by all the photographers and documentary filmmakers and journalists scurrying from the same troubling sites to the same troubling sites time after time, fine-tuning their poverty porn, trying to associate factories shuttered in the 1950s with the current crisis facing the auto industry, and in the end only telling a fraction of the city’s story. But I have come to a sort of peace with it all. For years Detroiters complained about nobody caring about their economic woes while the economy bubbled everywhere else, and now Detroiters complain because everybody is suddenly here with a camera trying to create a visual panorama of the American economic downturn. We are the poster city for the recession, and complaining about the attention won’t do any good. I only hope, as with post-Katrina New Orleans, the attention will make a few more people out there care about what people here are struggling against. Maybe Brangelina will fix up a house here or adopt a feral dog or something.