Auto Emissions Ruling Could Cost Big Three
Big Three Sales Sink in March.
Stabenow Stands Up for Big Three
The Detroit News headlines alone reveal the Motor City remains too caught up clinging to its glorious past rather than inventing a new and prosperous future.
It's been nearly three months since the Automotive News, compelled by Toyota's surge in market share, stopped referring to GM, Ford, and Chrysler as the Big Three. "When you say 'Big Three,' you would be universally misunderstood,'' David Sedgwick, editor of Automotive News, told the New York Times. ''We needed something to reference General Motors, Ford and Chrysler without implying they are the biggest.''
The boys at the Wall Street Journal are using the 'old Big Three.'
Tom Walsh of the Detroit Free Press is using 'traditional Big Three.'
Like Sedgwick's trade publication, respected Michigan business writer Rick Haglund is using 'Detroit Three.'
In the body of its stories, the Detroit News has embraced the new shorthand as well, as evidenced by the articles linked above. But the paper's big bolded headlines reinforce, on a daily basis, an image that no longer exists.
And like the rotted swimming pool beside the Detroit River pictured above, the headlines also illustrate an urgent need for reinvention.
