Brewed Fresh Daily

If you’re a baseball fan, you already know that the ground shook last week when the Detroit Tigers signed slugger Prince Fielder. His nine-year, $214 million contract cost the Tigers as much as Ford plans to spend on a new engine plant in Brazil.

Prince Fielder at his first Detroit Tigers press conference

But Crain’s Detroit Business says the Tigers — and Detroit — can afford the former Milwaukee Brewers star.

That word comes from Chris Ilitch, the son of Tigers’ owner Michael Ilitch, and the president of Illitch Family Holdings, Inc., the family’s group of companies that includes pizza giant Little Caesar’s Enterprises.

Those companies, including the Tigers, the Detroit Red Wings, and Detroit’s Motor City casino, generate about $4 billion in annual revenue.

In 2010, the latest year for which information is available, the Tigers had annual revenue of $192 million, according to Forbes.com.

Crain’s says the Tigers’ upcoming payroll, is likely to surpass $110 million to $120 million in salaries and bonuses, as well as benefits.

The payroll includes $63 million alone this season to three players: Fielder ($23 million), American League batting champion Miguel Cabrera ($21 million) and Justin Verlander, the winner of the Cy Young and Most Valuable Player awards, who will earn $20 million.

“That spending is typical of markets larger than Detroit, but it isn’t thought to be financially stressful for the wealthy Ilitches, baseball insiders say,” according to Crain’s. Those salaries are “high-stakes bets on winning a World Series, which would provide the team millions in new revenue.”

Crain’s says the team is saving money in 2012 by not re-signing aging outfielder Magglio Ordonez, who was paid $10 million last season but who also has broken his ankle the past two seasons. Also off the payroll is second baseman Carlos Guillen, who got $13 million in 2011.

Together, their contracts have the same value as Fielder’s pay this season., Crain’s said. He also gets $23 million in 2013 before the team elevated it to $24 million annually over the final seven seasons. There also are several million dollars in potential bonuses in the deal.

Ticket prices are not going up for 2012, but If Fielder leads the team to a World Series, the team can expect a revenue bounce from a boost in season-ticket sales, suite sales, new corporate sponsorships, merchandise, and other things, Crain’s said.

Teams typically raise ticket prices after winning the series, and that bounce continues for several years. As Chris Ilitch put it, “There are opportunities to create revenue.”

What About Milwaukee?

As Tiger fans look forward to greeting their new star at the Tigers’ home opener on April, 5, how is Fielder’s departure playing across Lake Michigan?

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel looks at that today in the story headlined, “Brewers Focus on What They Have, Not On What they Lost.” Not only is Fielder gone, but slugger Ryan Braun could face a 50-game suspension over alleged steroids use, which he has denied.

On Sunday, the team, which won its division title last year, held its annual “On Deck” fan fest to promote the upcoming season. Asked what he might tell fans in need of a pep talk for 2012, effervescent outfielder Nyjer Morgan told the paper, “Don’t panic. Everything is going to be okay. We’re all professionals.”

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Name: Zoe Johnson
Midwest Home: Detroit, MI
New Home: Portland, OR

My former husband worked for a company which was a support arm of the auto industry. We left the city of Detroit in 2007 and moved to Portland. I have mixed feelings about the move but overall it was a good choice. I am self-employed which has been challenging.

My youngest daughter, who is 25, just moved from the Metro Detroit area in October of 2011. She had been without employment in Michigan for several years. She found a job immediately after arriving in the Portland Metro area and is much happier overall.

I would not move back to the Midwest. The culture and mindset is much different, the economy has suffered, and the infrastructure is grounded on old belief systems.

The values of the people here in the Pacific Northwest are more closely aligned with my own philosophy and values.

Read more Midwest Migration stories on our dedicated page. If you or someone you know has left the Midwest add your own story.

Who wants to work in a factory? The Cleveland Plain Dealer has an excellent story about what local manufacturers are doing to find new talent. Business-owners say they can’t find enough skilled young people to fill open positions. So they’ve launched a PR push to change the perception of factory work.

1,600 Jobs in Illinois Chrysler is expected to make a big jobs announcement this week in Illinois.The Chicago Tribune, quoting Dow Jones Newswires, says CEO Sergio Marchionne will announce 1,600 new job openings at Chrysler’s Belvidere assembly plant on Thursday. The story says Chrysler also plans to hire new workers at plants in Detroit and Toledo.

Deadline in Detroit Detroit Mayor Dave Bing says he wants to see new concessions by the city’s unions approved by tomorrow. The city is trying to fill a nearly $200 million dollar deficit and avoid being taken over by a state-appointed emergency financial manager.

Sharing is caring Partner station WBEZ reports on a new website that seeks to create a sharing economy.

On TV3 this evening, Cleveland Plain Dealer’s Thom Fladung, managing editor, squirmed like a worm on a hot brick over his firing of Tony Grossi as a beat writer for the Browns.

The PD is upset about what Grossi tweeted about Browns’ owner Randy Lerner.

Jim Donovan did a good job asking pointed questions of Fladung. Donovan compared Grossi’s mistake — for which Grossi has apologized — with the scathing comments by Brent Larkin. From Larkin’s column:

The Cleveland Browns (second edition) is the worst professional sports franchise in the city’s history….[F]or sustained ineptitude, this atrocious, Randy Lerner-owned Browns franchise has no peer….

Here’s background on what happened to Grossi: PD’s Tony Grossi Removed from Browns Beat After Twitter Remark About Randy Lerner

Look, I grew up with the Browns and used to travel to the games with PD’s sport editor, Gordon Cobbledick, who was our neighbor. My loyalty to the team runs deep based on those experiences.

What’s the big deal? Most many Browns fans agree, I suspect, with Larkin’s assessment: Never in Cleveland sports history have so many given so much to a team that gives back so little. So what if Grossi thinks Lerner is a bozo?

Flautung’s explanations of the PD’s actions were just not very understandable or credible. Flautung’s assertion that the Browns organization had no communication with the PD is, well, just hard to believe.

Unintended consequence for the PD: Seems to me that the editors once again damaged the brand. Here’s a paper that is losing circulation, where sports is about the only content that gives the paper a pulse.

The credibility of the paper — in the face of pressure from the Cleveland business community — has never been very strong, in my view. (I cancelled my subscription after the PD started publishing the Forest City blog.)

Now it’s even weaker.

My guess: The PD just drove their subscription numbers down.

Well played.

Update: In another long explanation of the PD’s action, Ted Diadiun, the “Plain Dealer’s reader representative” (really?), tries once again to justify the PD’s action. What the editors seem to be missing here is that the idea of “objectivity” is not the same for local sports journalism as news journalism.

With sports journalism, if people want objectivity, they go to statistics and box scores. People read sports news precisely because they want views and opinions. That’s the reason that great sports writers — Tom Boswell, John Feinstein, Frank DeFord — have all developed a strong, recognizable voice.

Grossi, as Diadium points out, “is a passionate guy with strong, honest opinions, who cares deeply about the team and its fans”. Precisely. These qualities are what made Grossi, well, Grossi. And made him valuable to the PD. He was a strong, recognizable sports writer covering a beat that people in this city care deeply about.

He had a voice. You did not necessarily agree with him. But that’s the point. His views sparked conversation. He had credibility, knowledge, and he helped make sense of what was going on. Sports is entertainment, not news. Local sports writing and news writing are different.

Conflating the two, as the PD editors have done, simply tells me that the management of this paper is worse off that I thought.

To get re-oriented to what really matters in today’s market, perhaps the editors should read this post from the student-run blog at Missouri School of Journalism: What’s the Point of Objectivity in Sports Journalism?

The Jane Addams Hull House Association on Facebook

Jane Addams founded the Hull House in 1889

In 1889, on Chicago’s Near West Side, Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr opened the Hull-House as a way to give their less fortunate neighbors an education in the arts and literature. The role of the Hull-House quickly expanded, offering English class, child care and job training to the city’s rapidly growing immigrant population. Jane Addams went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize. The House she created has been helping Chicagoans in need ever since.

But that ends today.

At 5p.m. Chicago time, Hull House will close its doors forever. The museum that honors Jane Addams and the house she built will remain open. But, for those seeking help, the Jane Addams Hull House Association will no longer be there to give it.

The leaders at Hull House say the closure is unavoidable. They say revenue has dropped from $40 million a decade ago, to half that today. But the staff at Hull House has been telling a different story on the Association’s Facebook page.

They say the end of the charity came as a sudden and shocking surprise to them, and to the people they serve. They say because the closing was only announced this week, there’s been no time to help transition clients to other service providers. As of Wednesday, they wrote that less than half of their clients were able to find a replacement for Hull House services. And most of Hull House staff have no job prospects, no severance and no health care.

“It’s a bitter irony,” they wrote on Facebook, “that some Hull House staff members might well find themselves in desperate need of the same services that they once provided to clients.”

Hull House staff say they’ve contacted the Illinois Attorney General’s office to investigate how things got so bad so fast for Hull House, and whether management did anything illegal along the way.

Whoever is running the Hull House Facebook site says they will keep it active even after the charity closes its doors. And they’ve set up an email account for anyone who has questions. The address is AskAboutHullHouse@gmail.com.

RELATED: In November, we brought you the story of Chris Busse, a laid off teacher who launched a new business. He launched that business with the help of Hull House.

courtesy of Lisa Nichols

Lisa Nichols took out a sub-prime lease on a used car

Kate Davidson just reported on the risks and rewards for Buy Here-Pay Here car dealers and customers across the region.

Lisa Nichols didn’t buy her car at one of those lots, but she ended up in a similar situation. She sees her tale as a cautionary tale of “buyer beware.”

When her car broke down, Nichols’ credit score was low enough that she fell in the sub-prime lending category. She went to lots of dealerships, but couldn’t get a loan.

“The funny thing is when you have bad credit, they won’t finance a car that you can afford,” Nichols said. “I wanted to buy one for four or five thousand dollars, but they won’t finance a car for that little money if you have bad credit.”

Another dealer sent her along to Summit Place Kia, a dealer that works with sub-prime customers. She was offered a two-year lease on a used Hyundai Accent. “It was a nice car, it was way more car than I had any business trying to buy,” said Nichols. But she needed a car to get to work. “I didn’t feel like I had any choice.”

Tommy Leedle works in the financing department at Summit Place. He says they use outside banks and leasing companies to work with customers like Nichols. These companies charge high interest rates or fees. That means the dealer needs to sell a cheap enough car at a high enough price so they can still make money after those fees.This leaves sub-prime customers often getting less car at a higher price than those with solid credit.

Nichols ended up signing an $11,000 lease. Leases don’t come with interest payments. But fees can make up a hefty chunk of the total price of a sub-prime lease. The Kelly Blue Book value of the car Nichols leased was about $3,500 less than the cost of her lease.

Leedle told me he doesn’t know exactly how much the leasing company they use charges in fees. In a car sale, the financing company must disclose their fees to the buyer and the dealer. In a lease, the amount of fees is not disclosed.

Because of her credit, Nichols was required to make a car payment every week. Then, she would get a code to punch into a box attached to the underside of her car’s dashboard. If she missed a payment and didn’t get a code, the car wouldn’t start. “I managed to keep up the payments for about four months and then I just couldn’t do it anymore,” she said. “I ended up needing to give the car back, and that impacted my credit again.”

Leedle says sub-prime leases and high-interest car loans are risky for buyers. About 50% of the sub-prime buyers he sees default. But, he said, if people are smart about the risk they are taking they have a chance to rebuild their credit. He also said his dealership needs to offer these kinds of loans because so many people in their area have sub-prime credit.

After Nichols gave up her lease she went without a car for a few months, relying on co-workers and friends to take her to and from work. A co-worker then came to her rescue and sold her an old car. She now makes a car payment, without interest, directly to her co-worker each month.

Nichols accepts responsibility for what she says was a bad and desperate decision. “I don’t recommend it. It was embarrassing, honestly. I didn’t tell anybody the entire time I had the car because it just felt really embarrassing.”

Nichols is now steadily trying to rebuild her credit, and happily driving a car worth much less than the one she leased.  She says, “It’s not helping my credit, but at least now I have a reliable car that I can afford.”

*This story was informed by the Public Insight Network. Add your story here.

**We also want to disclose that at one time, Lisa Nichols worked as a technology contractor for Michigan Radio.

So far, three Midwesterner governors have delivered their state of the state addresses. The image above is a word cloud created from the prepared texts of the speeches in Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin. As usual, the speeches offer optimistic visions of what each governor has accomplished in the past year, and what they’re capable of accomplishing this year. We’ll be tracking what the rest of the Midwest governors say in their speeches. And, as we parse through what’s been said and unsaid in the speeches so far, we want to know: What do you think of your governor’s speech? Were you surprised by anything, or did it all sound like what you’ve heard before? Let us know in the comments.

Name: Ryan Brevard
Midwest Home: Kalamazoo, MI
New Home: Mexico City, Mexico

When I graduated college the unemployment rate in Michigan was the highest in the country. I sent out over 150 resumes to all 50 states. Over half were sent to schools in Michigan. This resulted in 5 interviews. Only 2 of those were in person. Only one was in Michigan.

Not being able to find a teaching job, I came across AmeriCorps and was hired to serve with the American Red Cross. After completing two years of service I promised myself I would go on a trip abroad. It was something I had never done before.

I decided that I did not want to spend the little money I had saved from my poverty level income on sipping cocktails on a tropical island. I wanted to have a productive vacation.

So I signed up with an organization that recruits volunteers to teach English to Palestinian refugees. I spent a month living in a refugee camp where electricity was sporadic and fresh, running water nonexistent. It changed my life. It motivated me to continue teaching and traveling abroad.

Currently, I teach second grade English and Health at Instituto Thomas Jefferson in Mexico City. I know I’m not the only individual from the AmeriCorps program in Michigan who has gone on to work internationally instead of in the Midwest or even in the United States. I still would love nothing more than to move back to Michigan, Detroit specifically, to be a part of the rebuilding and revitalization that is taking place as we speak.

Read more Midwest Migration stories on our dedicated page. If you or someone you know has left the Midwest add your own story.

Wednesday we heard from some teachers at Saline High School in Michigan about changes in education over the past year. Today, we’ll hear from two students at the school about how these changes have trickled down to them. Christine Houle and Aaron Mukergee are the co-founders of a student group called STRIVE.

They work on school reform issues. Aaron says their voice, as students, has been lost in the debate over changes in education.

Saline is an affluent district and its high quality schools are known to draw people to the community. But Christine says even in Saline, funding cuts are affecting students in very real ways.

“The largest effect just this year that we’ve seen as some of the policy changes here at Saline are our larger class sizes,” Christine explained. “Now you can have up to 42 people in a class and I know almost all of my classes have been at the 42 maximum. It just makes it really difficult to have any kind of class discussions.”

Aaron and Christine are over-achievers, not struggling students. Even they are worried the education they’re getting now might not be preparing them for college next year.

Using data from the state’s ACT scores, it’s estimated that less than 20 percent of Michigan’s students are ready for college. For kids who are economically disadvantaged, that number is less than 10 percent.

Aaron will be going to Harvard next fall. Christine doesn’t know yet, but even her “safety” schools are in the Ivy League. These are the students Michigan, and states across the Midwest, want to retain to help grow their economies.  But do these students see a return to the region in their future?

“I think I’d like to come back to Michigan but I think there will definitely need to be some changes in the state, and obviously some jobs created before I’m ready to come back to this environment,” said Aaron.

“I definitely agree with that,” Christine chimed in.

STRIVE will continue to work with the district superintendent, principal and school board to push changes in their district. Over the next year they would like to see the pressure on their teachers decrease. Aaron also says he wants to see Michigan move away from what he calls “the idea that education is a business.”

Click here for a recap of our live chat with teachers across the region. Share your own story here.