Behind the Headlines

By Charles Slat
We got an early tip-off that Gov. Granholm was going to mention a new Monroe company related to the wind power industry during her state of the state address.
I wrote the article that ran Tuesday about Great Lakes Tower. Then I went home and listened to her speech. You can imagine my consternation when she said that “Great Lakes Turbines” was going to start operating in Monroe.
That’s not the way it was described to me. Early Wednesday, I checked with my sources and then noticed that the state issued a press release based on job creation mentioned in the governor’s speech. Great Lakes Towers was the name of the company that had just gotten some state tax incentives earlier Tuesday. Apparently the news was so fresh, the mention of it was added to a draft of the state of the state address at the 11th hour and no one double-checked the name.
Hey, that happens in newspapers too.
For the record, the new Monroe company plans on making towers for wind turbines, not the turbines themselves.
But when it comes to new jobs in the community, it’s kind of a fine point.