LEGO likenesses of Doris Kearns Goodwin and Rick Snyder are tough to recognize without this reference, which we regret not having earlier to avoid embarrassment.
Hasty conclusions plus a rush to post can equal a stumble.
We made those missteps Wednesday morning in a Mackinac Notebook item about the cover of a Detroiter quarterly magazine distributed by the Detroit Regional Chamber at its yearly policy conference up north.
The LEGO-style characters illustrated by Skidmore Studio of Detroit are not random faces, as assumed, but represent 10 Mackinac Policy Conference speakers and pivotal players in the city's economic restructuring. They're identified on an inside page (above) that's not among the 10 features posted at the publication's site.
Social media posts by the chamber early Wednesday say the cover "focuses on the speakers and themes leading the conversation" at Mackinac -- a signal we missed. We contacted communications director James Martinez, who's at the event and responded six hours later with information that changes everything. He did not request this follow-up.
We apologize to the chamber and to our readers for posting an unjust assumption about possible racial insensitivity. The original item, preceded by a correction, remains online for transparency. Our social media posts promoting it are deleted to avoid spreading misinformation.
-- Alan Stamm
