Please read the nameplate

Dear local newspaper that says "Detroit" in the nameplate: Fascinated to see that your Tuesday 1A weather package includes a reefer to a story about a university in Lansing that decided not to close for the snow on Monday!

If "students venting online" is your standard for newsworthiness, could we direct your attention to the Carnegie Research 1 institution that's actually, literally, in Detroit, some of whose 27,000-odd students spent a large part of Monday complaining online that their university hadn't closed?

I swear to god leave it to @waynestate to be the only school open in the area when they are a commuter campus, they never plow, and like to put there student’s safety at risk just so they can have class. I love wayne state

please tell me why y’all thought it was okay to not cancel classes today. I just wanna know!!!!

@waynestate I need to know if you are considering closing campus today before I die driving downtown thx xx

Now, let it be said that WSU did announce at 12:48 p.m. Monday that it would close at, oh, 1:30:

You’re opening the school for a few hours, so I can risk MY SAFETY driving 40 min for only 2 classes just to drive home in EVEN WORSE WEATHER!

Wayne State. Where classes only get canceled in the middle of a snowstorm so everyone has to leave the campus at the same time. Exactly what closing is supposed to PREVENT. #WayneStated

Leave it to @waynestate to not close classes in the morning like everyone else and make their students and staff come in just to drive home through the terrible road conditions at 1:30

Does it seem, maybe, that if you want some of those folks (or their friends, relatives, instructors, &c) to consider you the indispensable source of local news, you should consider covering events that affect them?

No, another photo from Lansing doesn't really help, particularly when the cutline is used to convey the previous day's forecast for Lansing.
I do think the relevance is a matter of some urgency. Last week's bloodletting in journalism jobs follows a long sequence of bad news (if you haven't read Jeremy Littau's summary of the roots of the problem, indulge yourself). Local news isn't the only thing that makes up the little-D-democratic diet, but it's one of the few left in which a news organization can be irreplaceable. If my dietary choices are yesterday's State Journal on one page and yesterday's USA Today on another, with an occasional side of last week's Tennesseean or Courier-Journal, it's hard to see writing home about the food.