A deal in Detroit

This week, USA Today Co., owner of the Detroit Free Press, announced that it would buy The Detroit News but still publish the two papers separately. It’s hard to know what that will look like in practice, but some media observers in Detroit wondered how long it will last.

“I believe they’ll pretend to maintain the two for a while, and then one of them — I don’t know which one — is a goner,” journalist Bryan Gruley told Deadline Detroit’s Allan Lengel. Gruley wrote a book in 1993 about the joint operating agreement the two papers existed under from 1989 until the end of last year.

“Experts predict layoffs and, eventually, the merging of the brands, resulting in a 1 newspaper city,” Crain’s Detroit’s Dustin P. Walsh wrote on X.

The two papers have been fiercely competitive journalistically for a long time, a rivalry that continued even under the JOA.

But even if they are under the same corporate roof, journalists at the outlets will still face competition from the outside. Like many regional media markets, southeast Michigan is home to a growing number of independent publications vying for stories — and audience share. They include Detroit’s Outlier Media, the nonprofit Bridge Detroit, Detroit Metro Times and Lengel’s Deadline Detroit, among others.

News In Focus
Headlines, resources and events aligned with API’s four areas of focus.

Civic Discourse & Democracy

>> Reporter’s notebook: Living and reporting from Minneapolis in crisis (NPR)

NPR reporter Meg Anderson, who lives in Minneapolis, has experienced “being a member of this community while also reporting on it.” She describes the contrast between witnessing violence and everyday life. “Some days, you’re interviewing people about the horrors they’ve seen. Other days, you’re eating arepas at a restaurant. Life more or less continues, until it doesn’t.”

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Culture & Inclusion

>> Colorado Ethnic Media Exchange builds coalition to strengthen diverse outlets amid DEI rollbacks, ad support lags (Colorado Public Radio) 

Chandra Thomas Whitfield profiles the Colorado Ethnic Media Exchange, a statewide coalition designed to bring ethnic media outlets together to increase their visibility and opportunity with advertisers, corporations and foundations.

>> What I’ve learned one year into being a creator journalist (TV News Check)

Fernando Hurtado left his job at NBC a year ago to launch In The Hyphen, a YouTube channel covering U.S. Latinos. He documents five main lessons from his journey — including one he found to be shocking.

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Community Engagement & Trust

>> Journalism lost its culture of sharing. Here’s how we rebuild it (Open News) 

Scott Klein and Ben Welsh write that “the open-source culture that defined an earlier era of online journalism has collapsed.” They interviewed more than a dozen newsroom leaders to find out why, and learned about “economic, technological and institutional changes” that have led organizations to turn inward; they also offer some ideas for turning it around.

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Revenue & Resilience

>> California Post brings brash New York-style tabloid news to the West Coast (Associated Press) 

The New York Post, known for its splashy and punny headlines, has launched in Los Angeles. The new tabloid and website bring “a brash, cheeky and conservative-friendly fixture of the Big Apple to the West Coast,” writes Christopher Weber. It also adds another title to Rupert Murdoch’s media empire.

  • Related: California is a ‘news desert’ says Post editor-in-chief Keith Poole as new title launched (Press Gazette)

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What else you need to know

🗞️ Family-owned newspaper in Syracuse to shut down publication (WSYR)

📰 Carpenter Media’s ominous takeover of local news (CJR) 

🌉 American Journalism Project invests $1.5 million in Mission Local to accelerate neighborhood-first reporting across San Francisco (AJP)

🗣️Fearing major layoffs, current and former Posties rally around #SaveThePost campaign (Nieman Lab)

📺 Bari Weiss to CBS News staff: Without a shift in strategy, ‘we are toast.’ (The Washington Post)