What if Michael Phelps was black? What if Phelps was a two-time Olympic gold medalist for Team USA's men's basketball team and was caught taking a hit off a glass lettuce burner?

Are we ready to be honest? Before you answer, name the last time a black athlete was pardoned in public for owning a scandalous photo similar to the one that Phelps recently cop'd to?

I'm not taking up 'The Cause' -- whatever that is -- because there are a ton of instances that offer no rhyme or reason for why they occur within our media's obsession with the instantaneous crucifixion and subsequent resurrection of the subjects pushed in front of our collective conscience in the same knee-jerk fashion most of us would like to push our in-laws out in front of rush hour traffic. Bill Clinton was crucified for banging a not-so-very-hot intern; George Bush was ignored for purposed war crimes. Go figure. Why do Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire and Rafael Palmerio get a virtual pass for their suspected roles in baseball's performance-enhancing scandal when compared to the outright vicious response Barry Bonds has elicited from media and fans? Please don't tell me it's just because he owns baseball's most famous mark, because to do so would be an outright admission you're living with your head in the sand.

That said, I find it somewhat amusing that Phelps gets a pass on this photo in the manner I've witnessed. In the Detroit Free Press Monday, the the Off Beat column penned by Krista Jahnke was titled "So Michael Phelps Is Human After All". Nationally-syndicated radioman Jim Rome was quoted as saying with a DUI on his slate already, he's not human, he's building a body of work. Today's edition of The Detroit News featured columnist Bob Wojnowski pleading for calm and reason in relation to the mistake Phelps made.

It makes me remember Detroit Southwestern High grad Jalen Rose being arrested during his first year at Michigan (1992-93) for playing video games in a Detroit house that doubled as a drug den. I was on the desk at The Ann Arbor News on the Saturday night a story came hurdling down the wire almost a year after the actual arrest just minutes before the morning edition's 1:00 am deadline. As you can imagine, we held production and made room for the story on the front page above the fold. We told ourselves we were being responsible journalists. Today I look back and cringe.

Rose wasn't smoking, wasn't selling and wasn't buying. He was playing video games, but he played a brash, in-your-face style of basketball. Rose played the 'City Game', and White America wasn't ready for Rose's style of talk-you-down, break-you-down, drive you down on your ass and shout you down the court while wearing shorts with a foot more material than any player in America. After Mick McCabe, the Detroit Free Press prep writer, discovered and published news of the October 4, 1992 arrest on March 9, 1993, six months after it happened, Rose was crucified for weeks and painted as a ghetto gangbanger. Fans and pundits alike called for his suspension. Wire services crackled with updates.

Phelps was inhaling from a glass stanchion the size of an exhaust pipe from a certified used Mini Cooper. He admitted to it. America's response? The mainstream media and sponsors alike call him human.

For the record, I have no problem with Phelps. I think the public backlash is punishment enough, and any prosecuting attorney willing to prosecute this as a criminal offense needs to just open a Facebook page like the rest of us if he really needs the attention that bad.

If nothing else, I hope you enjoy reading the paper in the morning all the more with eyes wide open.

~T.C. Cameron is the author of Metro Detroit's High School Football Rivalries. Cameron's 2nd title, Metro Detroit's High School Basketball Rivalries, is due in August this year!

I'm not usually one to point out mistakes because a) they happen and b) they can happen to me as much as they can happen to anyone. However, with all accommodations to karma already being made, this is a big deal.

Detroit Pershing lost yesterday -- twice! The state's No. 1 high school basketball team going down is a big deal in any state and in the rugged PSL, where only the top two teams in each division make the playoffs, Southeastern's win over the Doughboys makes for huge headlines.

But what was the score? The Detroit Free Press and writer Mike Horan published a score that didn't match The Detroit News article written by Rod Beard. The Freep had the score 78-75; The News reported a 77-76 tally. Usually the two papers do a pretty admirable job in getting the mountain's worth of prep scores in all sports correct, but this isn't just a game. This is the No. 1 team in the state losing.

Now honestly, the score thing isn't that big of a deal. Yes, accuracy matters, but both papers and their respective staffs are going through a massive downsizing and staffers are being asked to do a lot more with a whole lot less, like every other industry. And neither paper got the outcome of the game wrong: Southeastern won; Pershing lost.

Here's what's really sad to me. Of the approximately five million people in metro Detroit that don't live within the city proper, I would bet less than 1% have ever seen a PSL basketball team, much less a PSL game. The concerns over violence and safety can be real in the PSL but the availability of staff and officials is a bigger problem. Regardless, some of the very best prep basketball in all of the state gets missed because the games are played at 4p.m. and too many suburbanites are clueless about the city's high schools, where they're located, what's safe and what's not.

To boot, the score is inconsistent, and while that means a copy editor at one or both of the papers is fretting, it also adds fuel to the fire that drives so many Detroiters. I'm oft-reminded of the opinion that only the suburbs get the wheat while the city gets the chaff. Of course it's not true but that idea gains ground when stuff like this happens.

I've refereed dozens of PSL football and basketball games without a problem. Further, I refereed the Southeastern - Pershing game last year at Pershing so I know it was a hell of a game yesterday. And I can tell you outside of Cass Tech and Renaissance, Southeastern's gym is as nice as they come to watch a game.

It's too bad so few get to see the best the PSL has to offer, and if anyone knows the correct score, can you help a brother out?

~T.C. Cameron is writing Metro Detroit's High School Basketball Rivalries, due August of 2009 from Arcadia Publishing.

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.

Detroit's on it's way to being a two-paper town without a paper to be found.

Detroit's daily newspapers undertook the bold move Tuesday. To hear them tell it, it's the brave act. However, they didn't do it to lead the way, but rather to crawl out from under the piano of financial and structural overhead that so many other publishers and managing editors would like to do. Detroit's dailies will only be delivered in-home three days a week and the online edition will no longer be free.

That's just a start. If the paper's joint-management team had its' way, the presses and the delivery would all go away. It's a sad truth in Detroit, a town that labor built, because the large overhead is now largely obsolete. There's paper to buy from monstrous mills, and that production cost is no longer a thrill. There's manpower for staffing and benefits to be paid. There's editorial boards and advertising dollars to be made.

There's delivery to mailboxes and the coffee house's deep pockets. The problem is, by the time the paper is here, the next day's news is near. And the cash flow inward no longer matches the cash going out.

Get the point? Detroit's joint-operations management is starting the ebb away from paper and towards exclusive online production. The Detroit Free Press reported an 85% jump in online hits this year as compared to last, if reporter M.L. Elrick's numbers are true as reported by a local Detroit television station two days ago.

I haven't purchased the paper is several years, because the Internet is always on and I don't have to leave the house, much less open the door. I say go the distance, with apologies to Kevin Costner, and finish the job. Go online for good and make it a cash cow.

The Oakland Press got the jump on Detroit's dailies in the prep sports genre with the alpha launch of MIPrepZone and the large family of blogs found at BlogCentral last year. The large network of neighborhood apers, opinions and blogs gives the Oakland Press a longer, more substantial reach beyond what our competition could compete with in an immediate sense.

The buggy whip was popular in it's day, too, but the car changed everything and the automobile grew. We're on a new cusp of society-altering change. Papers have long been running two editions too many. It's one or the other, and online is winning, so why delay the inevitable as the paper keeps thinning.

I say rock out the Internet; put that paper down. Metro Detroit's leading the way to a paperless crown.

Detroit's two major daily newspapers became the first major newspapers in America to curb daily delivery to three days a week.

The paper will be delivered for home-based subscription on Thursday, Friday and Sundays only starting sometime early in the new year as the combined management of The Detroit News and Detroit Free Press aim to curb overall payroll by 9% before the end of the first quarter of '09.

The papers, managed under the umbrella of a joint operating agreement (JOA) since 1989 that pared each paper's holiday and weekend responsibilities in half, opened an 11 a.m. news conference with a paper-produced video that highlighted the paper's first 200 years as an innovative pioneer in the media industry. Self-plaudits included the first women's section, first paper-owned radio station, first Sunday paper and first paper-owned plane.

However, the overriding message was the admission that the digital age has made traditional paper production a dinosaur. With costs spiraling upward for manpower, availability of paper, and energy costs for materials, production and delivery, the newspapers are highly-motivated to pioneer the answers to what plagues the newspaper industry nationwide.

The JOA management also announced the online editions, free for the past several years, will be available for $12 a month. The $144-per-year subscription cost is aimed at saving both papers in terms of content, platform and brand.