What is “Bridge Michigan” and why is it in the Mirror?
The Manchester Mirror runs articles from Bridge Michigan in our State News section but what is Bridge Michigan?
by Sara Swanson
The Mirror received a question from a reader last week and based on the rule of thumb that if one reader asks, at least ten others are probably wondering the same thing, we are answering it here! In relation to Bridge Michigan found next to the bylines in the state news section of the Mirror, a reader asked “What is Bridge Michigan and where is it located?“
Bridge Michigan is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, award-winning news organization founded in 2011 that provides fact-driven journalism on the state’s diverse people, politics, and economy. They publish online at https://www.bridgemi.com and, like the Manchester Mirror, all of their articles are free to read without a subscription.
In this day and age it is good to ask who is behind the scenes of your news source. Bridge is a publication of the Center for Michigan, a 501(c)3 nonprofit and nonpartisan “think-and-do” tank. Bridge’s work is supported by donors, sponsors, and foundation grants. You can view a complete list of their supporters here.
As for where Bridge is located, their headquarters are located at 220 W Michigan Ave in Ypsilanti, and they have bureau offices in Detroit and Lansing. As an online publication however, the best way to reach them is to start with an email to info@bridgemi.com.
From the beginning, the focus of the Mirror has been hyper-local to the Manchester area, but in 2018 we came to the realization that in addition to local policies and issues, there are many state-wide policies and issues that also affect Manchester residents. These larger issues affecting us locally were outside of our ability to cover.
Because of this, in January of 2019, we made the decision to purchase a syndication license from Bridge (which was known as Bridge Magazine at the time). A syndication license allows local newspapers to re-run their articles a few days after they are initially published by Bridge.
That month we created a “State News” category both online and for the print edition. We usually select six new recent articles from Bridge to run online each week and one or more (depending on space) of those articles to run in print. Of the available Bridge articles, we always select factual articles and never opinion pieces, and we try to select articles on a variety of topics, with an eye toward what will be most interesting and/or relevant to Manchester-area readers.
We only re-run a fraction of Bridge’s articles each week. We encourage everyone to visit them directly at https://www.bridgemi.com and read their exceptional state news coverage!
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