Contact & Policies
The Manchester Mirror is a weekly non-profit newspaper covering the Manchester, Michigan area that publishes online every Monday morning and in print every Wednesday morning. It is free both online and in print.
* Email is our preferred method of communication*
Phone
(734) 328-1386
This is a message phone that receives texts and voicemails. Please text. If you are unable to email or text, please leave a message on the voice mail and we will return your call when we are able.
The Manchester Mirror, PO Box 696, Manchester, MI 48158
Note: The post office box is only checked once a week. If you need to communicate with us in a time sensitive manner, please use the above email address or send a text. Emails and texts are checked every day.
Deadlines
For any information that needs to be in the upcoming week’s edition, please contact us by Saturday at noon to be sure we can include it. It is a good idea to contact us earlier than that, though so we have time to ask questions and get answers. Remember, you may want the article to come out earlier than a week before the event. The print paper comes out on Wednesdays but some subscribers don’t receive their papers until Saturday or Monday so if you have an event on the weekend, you want your article to run the week before and not the week of the event!
Announcements & Obituaries Policy
We run birth, engagement, marriage, anniversary, birthday, retirement, and graduation announcements/congratulations for $10 an announcement. This can include a photo and runs one week both online and in print. If you are interested in running an announcement or notice not listed above, contact us! This is not a complete list. We run memorial service announcements at this price as well. If the expense of the memorial service announcement will cause a financial hardship, let us know and we will waive the fee.
We run obituaries for $30. This can include a photo and will run one week online and in print. If the expense of the obituary will cause a financial hardship, let us know and we will waive the fee. Note: There is no deadline for obituaries. We will do our best to work obituaries into our next edition, depending upon when we receive them. Our policy is to only run obituaries for one week unless there are extenuating circumstances (like, for example, a change to funeral plans after publication, or a large gap in time between the original publication and the memorial service.)
Email themanchestermirror@gmail.com to place an announcement or obituary.
Upcoming Events Articles vs. Advertising Policy
If you are a non-profit (regardless of whether your event is free or has a fee) or for-profit and your event is free we are happy to run an upcoming event article about your event before it happens. There is no charge for upcoming events articles. If you are a for-profit and your event has a fee, we ask that you purchase an ad. We only run articles in print once (unless there is a significant update or additional information available.) Online versions of articles stay up indefinitely so may be shared and viewed all the way up to your event.
This article explains how to get your event into the Mirror in a more in-depth way.
Letters to the Editor Policy
The Mirror welcomes letters.
Publication is at the sole discretion of the editors and will be in within 30 days of receipt.
All submissions become the property of the Manchester Mirror and are subject to editing for length, grammar, accuracy, clarity, and civility. Some letters may appear in condensed form.
All letters should address a single idea.
All letters must include the author’s name — no pseudo- or anonymous letters will be published. Please also include your city or township; this will be included with your name (but not your full address or email address).
All letters should be well-reasoned and grounded in fact.
We ask that all letters to the editor address local issues and be written by a resident of Manchester, Freedom, Sharon or Bridgewater Township. Exceptions can be made when the topic of the letter is Manchester.
We do not publish form letters, letters also sent to other publications, or letters directed to individuals or groups.
No letters or opinion pieces will be published the edition immediately before an election (unless the letter is a response to a previous letter. In that case, the Mirror may, at its discretion, invite a response that will run in the issue preceding the election.) In keeping with our hyper local focus, we will only accept letters to the editor about village, township, school, county commissioner or other local races, and on local and county-wide ballot issues.
Vitriol should remain in your drafts folder, unsent, as the Mirror will not provide a forum for free-floating aggression, but seeks instead to publish those letters that will educate or provoke thought. The Mirror will not run letters that include character attacks or critiques of individuals.
To give an opportunity to the greatest number of writers, no individual’s work will be published more than once every 30 days.
Artificial Intelligence Policy
“Artificial Intelligence” (AI) in this policy means computer- or software-based language systems, especially large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, etc. The Manchester Mirror has not and will not use an LLM to produce new text. We will not knowingly accept submissions that were in whole or in part generated by an LLM. Please don’t submit an AI written article to us. While we recognize you are attempting to save us work, we would much rather you send us the facts and we will write an article out of them than you send us an AI-written article. Read more about our AI policy HERE.
Elections/Candidate Policy
The Mirror will publish one press release per candidate announcing their candidacy as a news article. If a candidate is holding a non-fundraising meet-the-candidate campaign event (like an open house, coffee hour, town hall, etc.) in the Manchester area we will run it as an upcoming event article. Before each election we assemble and publish a voters guide with short profiles of each candidate in contested local, county, state house, and state senate elections. Candidates may choose to participate in this by responding to a questionnaire that will be emailed to them. We do not endorse candidates. We may cover the candidate as news if warranted. We do run political ads at our usual ad rates. See Michigan Press Association for more information on the legal requirements of newspapers in regards to political advertising.
Subscriptions
We offer a subscription to the print edition. The newspaper will be mailed first class to your home or business on Thursday mornings. Subscriptions cost $60 for a year, $34 for 6 months or $18 for 3 months. Subscriptions can be paid for by credit card online (email themanchestermirror@gmail.com for more information) or can be paid by mailing a check to The Manchester Mirror, PO Box 696, Manchester, MI 48158 (include a note with the mailing address you’s like the subscription to be sent to and that you are paying for a subscription.)
