Pop culture e-zine, Detour, launched last week. Headquartered in Royal Oak and helmed by publisher Anthony Morrow, the site covers the media gamut: movies, television, music, videos and live shows.
Morrow, recently of Metro Times, characterizes the publication as focusing on "indie stuff, underground stuff and also, guilty pleasures." Examples of recent posts fitting in each of these categories are a Larry Murray record review, a take on David Lynch's Inland Empire and an ode to 1980's Christian Slater/John Travolta film Broken Arrow, respectively.
Morrow is aiming for a "magazine-style format -- image-driven and easy to navigate." He says Detour's critic-at-large, Johnny Loftus, describes the direction of the publication as, "It's like joining an on-line conversation."
Morrow decided to launch Detour for a couple of reasons. Career-wise, he felt that "it hit a point where I'd done everything I could at a paper, and this seemed like a logical step." And, he believes he found the right team -- the staff of three is rounded out by promotions manager Dawn Wegner -- with which to take the plunge. He worked with Loftus at MT and discovered they shared similar tastes in movies and music, as well as a predilection to working with new media. "We share a lot of the same curiosities and guilty pleasures. A lot of our conversations led to this."
Detour will be funded through advertising, as would be expected, but Morrow is also planning a fall music festival at multiple venues that will showcase both local and national talent -- much as will the website. "It's important for us to be here and have the festival here, but we do have a national focus. We're not going to be myopic."
Source: Anthony Morrow, Detour
Writer: Kelli B. Kavanaugh
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