Report the truth, no matter how ugly

(NOTE: This article originally appeared in the September 13, 2010 edition of Central Michigan Life.) 
Matt Dobek committed suicide.


Those were four words that the Detroit media establishment would not print for a week.

Dobek, a CMU alumnus and 2009 inductee of the CMU Journalism Hall of Fame, was found dead Aug. 21 after hanging himself at age 51.

Yet, if you only relied on media reports, you would have had no clue that Dobek took his own life.