I am writing today to announce the closure of the Michigan Messenger. After four years of operation in Michigan, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news into a single site, The American Independent at Americanindependent.com. This is part of a shift in strategy, towards new forms [...]
An abstinence-only presentation provided to numerous school districts in Calhoun and Eaton Counties in October of this year provided false and misleading information to students about HIV, experts allege.
Two county registers of deeds filed a class action lawsuit Monday on behalf of Michigan’s 83 counties alleging that the Mortgage Electronic Registration Services owes millions of dollars in property title transfer taxes.
Despite evidence of the impact of mercury on children and public health, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette last month joined with 24 other state attorneys general in filing a lawsuit to scuttle new EPA regulations that would reduce mercury emissions from power plants.
We've come a long way since this earliest logo
Hello, and welcome to the new look of Michigan Messenger.
The debut of our new design gives us the perfect chance to introduce ourselves to you — something we haven’t had a formal occasion to do since our quiet, curious launch almost a full year ago, last September.
The Center for Independent Media (CIM), our parent organization, is a nonprofit in Washington, D.C., that besides us, operates a network of independent news sites that includes one nationally-focused site The Washington Independent and state-focused news magazines in Iowa, Minnesota, Colorado and New Mexico.
Our mission
CIM started Michigan Messenger in 2007 almost on a whim with the idea of filling the gap in political and policy news that goes un- and underreported in the mainstream news outlets in this important swing state.
Michigan’s most widely known daily papers, news radio outlets and local TV news affiliates generally all do an excellent, professional job of bringing you what they bring you: part of the story.
By mainstream news, I’m talking about the outlets we all grew up with: The Detroit News, for example, which I delivered door-to-door as a wide-eyed kid on the northeast side of Ann Arbor — including the edition in 1980 with the banner headline screaming that John Lennon had been shot.
And of course I’m talking about the Detroit Free Press, WWJ-Detroit (which I contributed to years later as a reporter) and the most-listened-to radio station in Michigan: WJR-Detroit, which airs five straight hours of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity back-to-back every weekday afternoon.
And I’m talking about outlets like WXYZ-TV Channel 7 in Detroit and hometown papers like The Grand Rapids Press, Lansing State Journal, The Ann Arbor News and The Flint Journal.
They’re all popular and professional print and broadcast outlets that are no longer run as locally owned moms & pops, but rather by national chains that report their quarterly earnings on Wall Street and are beholden first and foremost to their bottom lines and scatter shot investors. For this reason, Michigan needs an independent daily.
Let’s face it, corporate ownership has taken the bark and bite out of journalism, what with its budget-driven de-emphasis on investigative journalism, insatiable taste for scandal and sensationalism, and deep desire to not offend its shrinking roster of advertisers (including this state’s biggest polluters and corporate lobbyists).
At Michigan Messenger, we aim to find out, report and discuss with you news, viewpoints and information you will not always read in your hometown paper. We snoop, we watchdog, we work for the people of Michigan. And we do it without accepting money from advertisers or political campaigns. We also try to have fun, too, because you can’t be too serious all the time, either.
Who we are
Like our sister sites, Michigan Messenger is staffed with what we call Fellows — part-time journalists dedicated to looking at things with old-fashioned skepticism.
And our new look gives us heightened interaction with you, our reader. In our original incarnation that we just left behind it was difficult to figure out how to leave comments. Now it’s simply a matter of registering here to begin commenting on the stories you read. Please join our discussion.
And please bookmark us for our award-winning coverage.
Our team of contributors is organic, consisting of seasoned veterans who’ve been here since day one, and newer faces with varying backgrounds in journalism and blogging.
Todd A. Heywood is the capital correspondent for Michigan-based weekly gay newspaper, Between the Lines. He’s been reporting on a variety of issues, including LGBT, the extreme right, the culture war and partisan politics since 1989. Ed Brayton, also from the Lansing area, is one of the nation’s best-known bloggers, coming to us from ScienceBlogs. And Eartha Jane Melzer, of Traverse City, is a veteran investigative journalist who won recognition this year for her reporting on this site about Sovereign Deed. This private disaster response company founded by a military contractor sought millions in state economic development funds and promised hundreds of jobs to the Petoskey area. Her investigation revealed a string of fraud charges against the company CEO, who had hired a retired Army general to promote country club-style disaster response services for the wealthy, received an honorable mention for the Hume Award from the National Press Club.
Other Fellows join these original writers and reporters. Minehaha Forman is a young, talented writer and videographer with a journalism degree from Oakland University. Alexa Stanard has a master’s in journalism from Northwestern. Both report from the Detroit area. Our newest Fellow, Diane Sweet, is a Michigan resident living near the Ohio border who comes to us from The Raw Story, one of the Internet’s most well-respected political blogging sites.
Whether we have journalism degrees or a fancy list of credits, we are all professionals. We get paid to be here. But passion for truth-telling and freedom of expression is usually the deciding factor in what brings us to Michigan Messenger.
Michigan Messenger's editor, Todd Spencer
So, then, who we are collectively: A loose-knit, rag-tag band of crusading miscreants? To some, probably. Keyboard-pounding Minutemen ever-ready to strike a blow for truth, democracy and the American way? Maybe.
For sure, we’re reporters, bloggers, observers and citizens who care about Michigan, its future, and the not-always-healthy state of its democracy.
At the end of the day, it boils down to this: We aim to give you another place to stop when informing yourself about the state you live in.
Our managing editor and longtime independent blogger LoRayne Apo-Joynt who lives in Saginaw and our journalism mentor, Tony Collings, who teaches at the University of Michigan hold Michigan Messenger together. Tony is a veteran of CNN, Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal and the Associated Press and whom you might know as the guy who drives all over Ann Arbor at 25 mph to save on gas.
Welcome to our new look. And thanks for your curiosity about, and concern for, the state we love so much.
We’re glad to be here, off leash.
Todd Spencer
Editor
Michigan Messenger
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