MLive’s eight titles are: The Ann Arbor News, The Bay City Times, The Flint Journal, The Grand Rapids Press, Jackson Citizen Patriot, Kalamazoo Gazette, Muskegon Chronicle and The Saginaw News.
The work done by editors, multimedia specialists and reporters throughout the state will continue, said Kelly Adrian Frick, vice president of content for MLive Media Group. She said the move away from print will not affect MLive’s staff of roughly 100 journalists, which she said is larger than it was at the end of 2025.
As a longtime online publisher who also worked for print newspapers, I’m definitely conflicted about this. While printed newspapers are clearly an unwieldy method in a time where the delivery of news can be instantaneous, there’s unquestionably value in creating a record that is not subject to being digitally rewritten at the drop of a hat. What do you think?
Richard shared: “I was allowed into the basement of the old Grand Rapids Press one night. The paper hadn’t been printed downtown in about 10 years. Photographed the abandoned areas and old presses for about 3 hours. The next week they took one press to the VanAndel museum and cut and scraped the rest. As you may know that building was demolished in July for the additional MSU Medical school.“
Be sure to read all the way to the end for a super cool song about this from Michigan’s own Mustard’s Retreat!
In 1715, the French founded the fortified community of Michilimackinac on the south side of the Straits of Mackinac in what is now Mackinaw City. Michilimackinac became an important center of the Great Lakes fur trade where thousands of Native Americans and French-Canadian voyageurs gathered at the post every summer, a pattern that was unchanged until the British took over the post. Lissa Edwards of Traverse Magazine details how the commandant of Fort Michilimackinac was invited to watch a game of baggatiway (lacrosse) between the Ojibwe and Sauk June day in 1763 writing (in part):
Under an unusually hot sun on a late spring day on the Straits of Mackinac, British Major George Etherington, commandant of Fort Michilimackinac, was suffering from an acute case of cultural blindness. And there was no excuse for it. Relaxed at the sidelines of a rousing game of baggatiway (similar to lacrosse) outside the fort, the major should have seen the danger signs in this Ojibwe versus Sauk contest of sweaty, half-naked bodies painted with white clay and charcoal.
…Though well armed, his garrison of 35 or so soldiers was vastly outnumbered by the hundreds of Indians encamped around it, there to exchange furs for wares—steel tomahawks and knives included—from French Canadian traders. That there’d been a run on tomahawks of late didn’t seem to worry the major. And he was only irritated by warnings from the many French Canadians who lived at the fort that the Indians were planning an uprising. He threatened to have the next person who spread similar gossip locked up down at Fort Detroit. The unwitting Etherington had not yet heard that Fort Detroit was under siege, attacked several weeks before by a coalition of tribes led by Pontiac, the Odawa chief. Foreseeing that English domination spelled the end of his people’s lifestyle, Pontiac had just begun his famous rebellion.
…It happened in seconds. A frenzy of sweaty, painted bodies clamoring for the leather-wrapped chunk of wood that was the ball as it fell at the mouth of the open gate. The women opening their blankets and handing off knives and tomahawks to the athletes-turned-warriors. Shrieks, screams and blood. Etherington and his lieutenant, William Leslye, whisked off to the woods—as the other fort officer and likely the only soldier armed that day, Lieutenant Jamet, was killed. The plan so carefully laid by Minweweh and Madjeckewiss, cohorts of Pontiac, was executed flawlessly. The attack and the events that followed were recorded in the painfully descriptive memoirs of Alexander Henry, who—at the time of the attack—was a young English fur trader staying at the fort. “Going instantly to my window I saw a crowd of Indians within the fort furiously cutting down every Englishman they found,” Henry wrote.
Joel noted Pontiac’s victory & that the British constructed the more serious Fort Mackinac on Mackinac Island as a result of this when he posted this back in 2011. See more below & in his Colonial Michilimackinac gallery on Flickr and follow him there. You can also see his photos in the Michigan in Pictures group on Facebook and explore his archive on Smugmug.
Jorge Mario Bergoglio was born Dec. 17, 1936, to Italian immigrants in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the eldest of five children. He was ordained a Jesuit priest in 1969 and led the religious order in Argentina during the country’s murderous dictatorship from 1976-83. He became archbishop of Buenos Aires in 1998 and elevated to cardinal in 2001 by St. John Paul II. He was elected the 266th pope on March 13, 2013, on the fifth ballot.
Francis’s first included:
The first pope from the Americas.
The first from the Jesuit order to be elected pope.
The first to take the name of Francis, after St. Francis of Assisi.
The first to visit Iraq, meeting its top Shiite Muslim cleric in 2021.
The Detroit Free Press shares that the Stevie Wonder mural in downtown Detroit was finished in 2019 by London-based artist Richard Wilson who paid for the mural out of his own pocket!
Visible from Brush Street on the south-facing wall of the Music Hall Center for the Performing Arts, Wilson’s portrait spans roughly 8,000 square feet and is large enough to be seen by an airplane passing overhead. “For me, he’s the greatest living singer, songwriter and musician,” said the 45-year-old Wilson. “In 300 years, I’m sure he’ll be looked (at) as a Beethoven, Mozart, Bach — that kind of epic influence on humanity.
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” – Dr. Martin Luther King, Letter from Birmingham, Alabama jail, April 16, 1963
Today is the day America remembers civil rights giant Dr. Martin Luther King, and for me these words engraved on the north wall of the MLK Memorial in DC encapsulate both his work and the still incomplete journey to justice for every American, and for every person.
Are the conditions for justice for all better today than when Dr. King wrote those words? Unquestionably.
Are they as good as they can be? Of course not. As Flint, Benton Harbor, and other communities have shown, the drinkability of your water in Michigan depends in large part of the color of your skin. Three times as many Black Michiganders live in poverty and they face 7 years less lifespan on average, clearly demonstrating that a lot of the work that Dr. King championed still needs to be done.
For sure check out the Detroit March to Freedom of June 23, 1963 on Michigan in Pictures if you haven’t already. It was at the time the largest civil rights demonstration in U.S. history, with 125,000 marching down Woodward Avenue culminating in a speech by Dr. King at Cobo Hall that is recognized as his first delivery of the “I have a Dream” speech.
The annual Grand Rapids Art Prize is once again underway, running through this Sunday, October 3rd. The event was started back in 2009 & has become one of the nation’s leading public art competitions. This year nearly 900 entries are available to view & vote on. Here’s hoping you get a chance to visit!!
Daniel took this photo the other day – see more on his Flickr!
I’ve never spent much time in Grand Rapids, but I have seen photos of this striking bridge across the Grand River. I wanted to capture the river as the sun went down. I love watching how quickly light can change. These three photos, all very different, were taken within 15-20 minutes of each other on Saturday, 6 March 2021. The photo above is the third in the series, taken at night with most of the light in the image now comes from the lights on the bridge, hotel windows and street lights.
Image 1: Just at sunset, you can see the warm tones from the last light on the buildings
Image 2: Blue hour – the sky almost balances the surface of the river perfectly
Ayman writes: December 13, 2020 – A FedEx A300 freight plane takes off from Gerald R. Ford Airport in Grand Rapids, Michigan, carrying the first shipment of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for distribution across the US.
You love to see a Michigan company once again stepping up to help our country in time of great need! Head over to Ayman’s Flickr for more pics!
