WobblyReport

Readers and longtime subscribers have been critical of a few of our recent editorial decisions at the papers I edit and related social media posts have generated heated discussion. So, I thought it would be a good time to give everyone a look under the hood and describe how we decide what to put in the newspaper. Our first priority is to report as much as we can by traveling around the area, taking photographs and talking with people. We are primarily a team of two persons in this regard, covering three rural northeast lower Michigan counties, with a couple of regular, freelance contributors assisting. We rely on invitations, community buzz and personal interest in deciding what to attend. Our next priority is to solicit and curate community contributions and press releases. When coaches and parents of student athletes send us photographs and gameplay details, we take pains to include them. We also work in collaboration with coaches and parents to develop stories from a combination o...

The Immigration Act of 1918, also known as the Alien Anarchists Exclusion Act of 1918, was signed into U.S. law by President Woodrow Wilson on October 16, 1918. It expanded upon the Anarchist Exclusion Act of 1903 to further target anarchists, anti-war protesters and members of radical labor unions. The 1903 law had come in response to the assassination of President William McKinley in 1901. The assassin, Leon Frank Czolgosz, was a 28-year-old born in Detroit to a Polish-American family. Colgocz moved with his family to Alpena in 1880 and to Posen in 1883. He began his working life in a Pennsylvania glass factory at the age of 16. At 17 he found work at Cleveland Rolling Mill Company in Ohio. He worked there through an economic crash and labor strikes in 1893 and more violent strikes in 1898, before going to live as a recluse on a farm his father had bought in Warrensville, Ohio. President McKinley himself was born and raised in Ohio to English and Scots-Irish parents, whose famili...

I tagged along with circa 240 5th graders this week on a farm and forest educational event hosted through a joint effort by a county conservation district, local U.S. Forest Service staff, farmers and other volunteers. Here I am 10 minutes before I found the farm.