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.
Wayne County deputy clerk knows where they went but won’t say
[Commentary] Eat your heart out, Kwame. You won’t see this in Detroit: A mob of people swarming the mayor, acting like he’s some rock star. Like Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa had an affair and survived, though his marriage didn’t. What’s the difference? Continued –
[COMMENTARY] There’s a thing in architecture called perspective. Look at a five-story building by itself, without comparison to other structures, and it looks big. Stand beside it, and it seems gigantic. Build a 60-story tower next to it, and look again. It seems tiny. Continued -
[COMMENTARY] News late last month that the Detroit Free Press will print its last editions of the Community Free Press on Aug. 1 stunned the reporters, editors, photographers and myriad freelancers who’ve diligently worked to make those mini-papers popular with readers. In Detroit and 10 suburban areas where they circulate, the CFPs have managed to [...]
[COMMENTARY] How often has Columbia University bestowed its coveted Pulitzer Prize for national news reporting on reporters who DECLINED to publish a huge story? At least once. It happened in the case of Clark Hoyt and Robert Boyd, who received the 1973 Pulitzer for their gumshoe work uncovering the psychiatric hospitalizations of then U.S. Sen. [...]
I was just kidding when I said my birth certificate might cast doubt on whether I’m me. A clever little kicker to a mildly sarcastic story about the need — post 9/11 — to prove unequivocally who we are. Planning a trip to Canada in late May and unable to find my passport, I realized [...]
[COMMENTARY] I was still trying to digest Eric Alterman’s long, thoughtful article in the March 31, 2008, New Yorker about the demise of American newspapers when I noticed the March 29, 2008, Detroit Free Press front page story from Mackinac Island. Mackinac Island in March? Who’d want to be there when there’s snow on the [...]
[COMMENTARY] Is Sam Riddle right? I don’t think so. He thinks the FBI wants to embarrass U.S. Rep. John Conyers Jr. by investigating his wife. He’s convinced that’s why the feds reportedly are investigating Detroit City Councilwoman Monica Conyers, as part of a larger corruption probe into how the city entered a new $47 million [...]
Back in late 2007, when I was still a slave to newspaper deadlines, I got worked up about a thrashing delivered to New York Times Magazine writer Deborah Solomon by the paper’s hired dean of conformity, Public Editor Clark Hoyt. Solomon was pilloried by Hoyt for doing what the paper, through its unwritten code of [...]
Sometimes small is big. And sometimes big is small. The steam rising from the Detroit Free Press’ revelation of the text messages between Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and his former chief of staff and former paramour Christine Beatty has really roasted the mayor, what with allegations and now charges of perjury and the threat that [...]
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