Today is a sad day for Livingston County.
After nearly two decades on the air, Mike Marino and Jon King of the award-winning Mike & Jon in the Morning show on WHMI-93.5 signed off for the last time.
That King was leaving wasn’t a surprise. He posted on Facebook yesterday that he would be leaving the radio station on Feb. 25, calling it a “forced departure.” But this morning, both he and his longtime co-host, Mike Marino, announced that they were both gone immediately.
The show — crowned “Morning Show of the Year” in 2021 by the Michigan Association of Broadcasters, with King himself winning for best investigative reporting — was a popular commodity in Livingston County.
No one knows for sure why all this happened.
King, who also served as WHMI’s news director, said he will tell his story when the time is right. He shared with me, though, that his “forced departure” was solely the decision of Krol Communications, the Owosso-based company that bought WHMI in 2015. Krol booted King in response to a local advertiser who threatened to pull his ads because of the station’s news coverage.
Apparently, all an advertiser has to do is whistle and and Krol Communications will come to heel.
I don’t know whether Krol Communications thought through the implications of its wrong-headed, short-sighted decision, but it speaks volumes as to how little it thinks of its station if a little foot stomping by an offended advertiser is enough to fire a longtime employee.
Maybe it was more than that, you say? Maybe King’s news coverage was inaccurate?
I don’t think it was.
But I’ve been wrong before, so here’s the deal: If you can find a WHMI story that did not report the news accurately, send it to me with an explanation of the inaccuracy, and if you’re right, I’ll send you one of our limited edition LivPo coffee mugs.
Maybe it was what WHMI covered?
WHMI (along with stories and opinion pieces by The Livingston Post) covered some recent controversial stories in the community, from COVID and vaccinations and misinformation to Drag Queen Bingo to President Joe Biden’s visit to Howell.
I’ll argue forever that the news stories covered at WHMI are precisely the same stories I’d be covering if I were back running the local paper with a staff of reporters.
King’s leaving is a very bad omen for our community.
With King out as news director at WHMI, Livingston County is fast approaching becoming a local news desert, which is what happens when out-of-town companies swoop in to gobble up successful communication outlets only to bleed them dry. While that approach benefits the out-of-town companies, it leaves communities that once depended on their news outlets to hold local officials accountable fending for themselves.
Maybe it’s time to crown Facebook as our news source of record. And why not? We all know that everything you read on Facebook is true, right? It all goes through a rigorous editing and verification process, right?
This is not a good turn of events.
Look at the once-mighty Livingston County Daily Press & Argus, now a shell of the paper it was before Gannett bought it, back in the day when it won state and national Newspaper of the Year awards, and when it took to heart its role as an advocate for the good of the community. Where are the newspaper’s editorials and local endorsements today? Who’s combing through budgets and filing Freedom of Information requests to get to the bottom of what’s happening with our elected bodies?
And, now, look at the once-mighty WHMI, which has now sent the message to advertisers everywhere that it prioritizes their whims over the good of the community for the sake of a few bucks. How can you trust its news coverage from here on out?
The only locally owned and independent source of information and opinion left in Livingston County is The Livingston Post, which is not a happy fact.
I wish Jon King and Mike Marino all the success they can find.
And I thank Jon King for his news coverage.
