Detroit Journalist Desiree Cooper Hasn't Disappeared

Desiree Cooper always has aimed to connect with readers and listeners. She has worked as a newspaper columnist and a radio host. She has taught classes and argued as an attorney. She has pursued her first loves: poetry and fiction writing.

Cooper, one of Detroit's top civic activists spanning the past quarter century, now strives to connect people with one another. She is a recent addition at City Connect Detroit, which promotes closer relations among sources such as local governments, schools, nonprofit agencies and faith-based programs.

"Working together, we all can build greater strength and resources," she says.

Unless they spotted Cooper's farewell column last year, Detroit Free Press readers still may wonder why such a high-profile journalist suddenly disappeared. Public radio listeners, in the same way, may ask whatever happened to Weekend America, with Cooper as co-host.

The answer? She was laid off in both cases, six months apart. During the summer of 2009, she found herself among the city of Detroit's record-high 28.9 percent official unemployed. The City Connect opportunity came along last October.

"It took me 10 months to find a full-time job," Cooper says, "and I realize I'm among the lucky ones."

She moves ahead with positive feelings and mixed regrets.

"My biggest thrill was in public radio, with the types of stories about everyday people that we were able to promote on Weekend America," says Cooper, expressing her heartbreak when American Public Media defunded the show.

"I also appreciated my opportunity at the Free Press, but I had become tired of print journalism, frustrated by the negative focus and the types of stories rewarded in print. I don't miss that aspect."

A Life of Many Endeavors

At City Connect Detroit, Cooper serves as a sort of jill-of-all-trades. She has provided leadership for everything from a youth employment project to the current full census count campaign.

"Nonprofits must produce major work with virtually no resources," she says, "and so you can't do only one job."

Her versatility is reflected in her background.

Cooper was born in Japan in 1960 to Barbara Cooper and her husband Willie Sr., an Air Force chief master sergeant. Travels in military life took her across both Japan and the United States, until her father retired during the middle 1970s and the family settled in Chesapeake, Va.

Upon graduating from Chesapeake's Indian River High School, Cooper embarked on studies at the University of Maryland. She says she enrolled in journalism because while her ultimate goal was (and is) to succeed in poetry and fiction, she realized she needed to earn a living. She achieved her magna cum laude degree in 1981 but "realized (she) didn't want to be a reporter," so she then enrolled in law school, graduating with her law degree in 1984.

One result was that she encountered and eventually married a fellow law student, Detroiter Melvin Hollowell, and then joined his hometown return. They raised a family in the Palmer Woods neighborhood and have reared two children into adulthood, a 22-year-old son and a 19-year-old daughter.

But back at the start, a less fortunate consequence was that Cooper didn't like practicing law as much as she had enjoyed studying law. Insurance and bankruptcy cases lacked personal fulfillment. Before the 1980s ended, she was looking elsewhere.

In 1988, she worked for New Detroit Inc., a traditional type of civil rights coalition. She later taught Wayne State University classes in the then-emerging field of multicultural leadership, and got involved in grassroots community service.

The publisher of the Metro Times, an independent weekly paper, viewed her freelance writing and invited her to serve as editor in 1995. Leaders of the Detroit Free Press viewed her Metro Times work and invited her to come on board as a columnist in 1999. Her work in public radio evolved in the same way.

"That's how my jobs in journalism came - not by me applying, but by somebody asking," Cooper says with a chuckle.

City Connect Offers Fresh View

Cooper didn't sulk after her pair of major media layoffs. She decided that with her journalism background, she could help nonprofit programs improve their visibility.

"They don't necessarily have to be in the newspapers," she says. "They can find new ways to tell their stories to new people."

One of Cooper's strategies is to focus on social media such as blogs, Facebook and even Twitter. Another is to feature clients who have succeeded or received help, "making it real" when agencies tell their stories with a personal touch.

City Connect is one of the nonprofits she advised. When the job opening was offered as senior analyst for new media, she believed that the opportunity fit like a glove.

"When I first started doing community work, I wondered why there were so many little groups doing the same thing," Cooper explains. "Part of me wanted to wave a magic wand and consolidate them. Then I realized that the groups weren't necessarily duplicating efforts because they were touching very different people.

"City Connect Detroit is a happy median between the two. It acknowledges that community groups need to serve those in their own areas. But sometimes we need to raise our heads above our backyards and discover that we can garner greater resources from outside of our community by collaborating across organizational divides."

Resources from the outside community? Cooper asserts that in eight years, City Connect has helped groups attract $118 million "that would not have come otherwise, if we were locked in our own special camps."

Writing Remains First Love

Cooper describes herself as an "aspiring" writer, even though she already is well-recognized. Her short stories and memoirs have been collected in "Children of the Dream: Our Stories of Growing Up Black in America" (Atria 2000), "Detroit Noir" (Akashic Books 2007) and "Other People's Skin" (Atria 2007). She also served on the national board of Cave Canem, an organization that supports emerging black poets.

"I've started working on poetry and 'flash fiction,' which are short-short stories of 750 words to keep my writing chops up, until I have more time for longer pieces," says Cooper, who intends to pursue a master's degree of fine arts in creative writing.

She blogs on DesCooper.com, where she offers the same types of transformative human interest stories that once graced the pages of the Detroit Free Press, even if she receives only a few hundred page views.

"I do miss having (the Free Press) for the great stories I came across," Cooper says. "In the newspaper, you might have thousands or even tens of thousands of readers. Still, it seemed the only people who would call or write would be people who were mad at you.

"In blogging, I might have 10 people, but I feel like I'm talking with 10 like-minded people."