Yesterday's historic announcement by the joint-management team of The Detroit News and Detroit Free Press has garnered the attention of nationally-known editorial boards, chat rooms and Internet-news gathering sites.

First is the bold masthead regarding Detroit's historic decision found at Editor&Publisher.com, one of the nation's most trusted media-on-media coverage sites. Also pushing these links was MediaBistro.com, who slotted Detroit's news just below Oprah Winfrey's decision to guide her production company, Harpo Productions, away from ABC to HBO for a broader spectrum of programming opportunities.

There's even a piece that features the well-reasoned opinions of former Freep Editor/publisher Heath Meriwether, who now lives in New York and works as a writing coach.

James Rainey of The Los Angeles Times chimes in with a healthy bit of disdain for why the papers in Detroit would cut off their most loyal readers at the expense of those who read it for free online.

Also of interest is the many respected media market analysts who openly question if the cuts are deep enough, something many of us with firsthand knowledge of Detroit's horrific business climate have speculated about in local forums for some time.

~T.C. Cameron is the author of Metro Detroit's High School Football Rivalries, available from Arcadia Publishing at major and not-so-major retailers nationwide.