Pure Michigan Iowa
Anne Stanton of the Traverse City Record-Eagle has a great bit of journalism up today with a piece called “Michigan Mag Created in Iowa”. In it, she reports that the “Pure Michigan Travel Guide”, a magazine sent around the country to attract tourism into our beautiful state, is created by an editorial staff based, not in Michigan, but Iowa.
The editorial staff of the Pure Michigan Travel Guide’s editorial staff works in — where else — Des Moines, Iowa.The people who help craft the pretty words and photos that tout Michigan work for Midwest Living magazine in Des Moines, owned by Meredith Corporation, an American media conglomerate best known for Better Homes & Gardens magazine.
The contract three seasonal issues of a million copies each is worth $1.5 million to Midwest Living, all of which goes out of state.
Why? They wanted to do it on the cheap and it was cheaper to go to Iowa than to hire Michigan-based editors, writers, and graphic designers.
“At the end of the day, it’s the best value for the price and we got the most out of it,” said Michelle Begnoche, MEDC’s public relations manager. “We look at Michigan companies, we work very hard to work with Michigan companies, but we want to make sure the product we’re delivering is consistent and has the quality and the distribution.”
When the MEDC isn’t using tax dollars to crow about our anti-worker right to work law, it’s farming out an effort to attract business and tourism dollars into Michigan to another state.
Sadly, these days, that’s Pure Michigan.
H/T: Amy Kerr Hardin/Democracy Tree
Graphic by Anne C. Savage, special to Eclectablog
