PAULINE'S PICK: Dueling Car Coverage! The 'Detroit News' Chimes In With Its Dream Cruise Features

By: Pauline Millard Yesterday I chose the Detroit Free-Press as my Pick because I thought its car coverage was pretty good. Within an hour or so of the piece going up I got an e-mail from the Detroit News, the Free-Press' competitor. They were confused over why I chose the Free-Press, since they claimed they "blanketed" the recent Dream Cruise coverage. The Free-Press, in the News' estimation, couldn't hold a candle to what they had accomplished.

I hadn't chosen the Free-Press because of its Dream Cruise coverage, I just thought it was interesting. But since the Detroit News went through all the trouble to e-mail me at such length, I decided to check out their coverage.

And I'm glad I did. I'm even happier to report that in this case, the Detroit News may have indeed one-upped the Free-Press. Apparently the Dream Cruise is all the rage in Detroit and everyone comes out to see the incredible cars on display. I'm not one for cars (I live in New York City, so I can barely drive) but even I got caught up in all the photos and videos that the News put together. My personal favorite was the hybrid "Chevarley" that one local man built. It's half Harley-Davidson motorcycle and half Chevrolet. When riding in it, one wears a helmet, but no seatbelts.

The News covered the Cruise live, with 73 live blog items entered on Saturday alone. They had a dozen photo galleries for the week, which added up to hundreds of images.

They also had 14 cruise videos, and an audio slideshow. Two staffers in a Detroit Newsmobile blogged live from the cruise.

Readers submitted more than 100 of their own photos. There was also an interactive map of the event, which could be printed out as a PDF, screensavers of classic cars that detnews.com users could download and a gallery sketches by the editorial cartoonist, Henry Payne.

The moral of this story is that is pays to e-mail me, especially if you think that I'm paying more attention to your competitor than to your paper.

Here are some of my past Picks:

'The Detroit Free-Press' Shows Off The City's Cars

'Montgomery Advertiser' Blends Young Readers and Citizen Journalism

Minneapolis 'Star-Tribune' Creates Feature-Style Podcasts

LATimes.com Launches Interactive Homicide Report