Aerial drone helps coverage of search for Hoffa remains

Aerial view of search for Jimmy Hoffa’s remains from Harry Arnold’s drone.

The Macomb Daily’s coverage of the recent search for Jimmy Hoffa’s remains included livestreamed video shot by an aerial drone.

No human remains were found at the Michigan home, so the former Teamsters president’s 1975 disappearance remains a mystery. But while authorities were digging for remains, the search made for some interesting news.

Executive Editor Richard Kelley said the video was provided by Harry Arnold, a freelance videographer the Macomb Daily has used before for livestreaming. Arnold uses a remote-controlled quadrocopter drone to provide aerial videos to Detroit-area clients.

Kelley passes along this explanation from Arnold:

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Subscriptions don’t ensure quality and free access doesn’t hinder it

If nostalgia were a business model, Dean Starkman might be a CEO and his company might make tons of money.

But nostalgia doesn’t work in the news business the way it does for the History Channel. And besides, the good, old days Starkman wants to take newspapers back to never actually existed.

My initial reaction to Starkman’s latest rant for Columbia Journalism Review was that I couldn’t and shouldn’t address it here:

I’m pondering a response to this Dean Starkman paywall valentine, but I can’t find a coherent point in it to address. bit.ly/WHOFBW

— Steve Buttry (@stevebuttry) October 8, 2012

But Steve Myers helped me out:

@stevebuttry This looks like it to me: “I say the free news model is designed to produce volume. Who wants to seriously argue otherwise?”

— Steve Myers (@myersnews) October 8, 2012

I respect Steve a lot and I respected CJR for decades. I learned this biz in the old school when CJR was an important voice in journalism and merited a response. So I took another read. As close as I can tell from a piece that desperately needed the attention of an old-school editor, these are Starkman’s points:

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