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In-depth reporting on Michigan's largest city and surrounding communities, including deep dives into the big changes afoot in Detroit, its schools, neighborhoods, institutions and city hall.
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Slideshow: Gorgeous postcards offer valentine to bygone Detroit
Architecture buff turns postcard collection into picture book. Take a peek at the fabulous and familiar with 11 images from Detroit’s colorful past.
No time for sleep. Nikolai Vitti has a school district to save in Detroit (slideshow)
Detroit’s new superintendent only gets three hours’ sleep per night. There’s no time to waste if he’s going to fix a district pushed to the brink.
Are there two Detroits? A new report says yes, but...
Downtown and Midtown Detroit get more tax breaks and investment than neighborhoods. Why? That’s where the good jobs are.
Kid Rock slams critics. ‘I am king of Detroit’ and ‘love black people’
The controversial singer weighs in on protests that began after a Bridge Magazine column criticizing his concerts this week at Detroit’s Little Caesars Arena.
Eleven surprising facts that define Detroit’s ‘139 Square Miles’ (Slideshow)
Detroit’s middle class is shrinking and poverty remains rampant, but neighborhoods are stabilizing, a new report shows.
Detroit is a city with many needs. So why are bikes such a priority?
The city’s neighborhoods are still in need of many improvements, but they’re getting striped set-asides for cyclists. Transportation evolution or an amenity for the few?
Arson finally on decline in Detroit. Now for the bad news.
A popular rewards program is set to vanish at year’s end. Homeowners, firefighters and insurers could feel the effects statewide.
Botched elections. Missing ballots. Is this any way to run a democracy?
Michigan’s failed presidential recount last year wasn’t an aberration. It’s part of a pattern that has some concerned about the integrity of elections.
Detroit Police killed their sons at the Algiers Motel. No one ever said sorry.
Three black teens died at the Algiers 50 years ago today. So did faith in justice for their families.
He started the Detroit riot. His son wrestles with the carnage.
Bill Scott threw the first bottle at police, an act that encouraged violent uprisings by black Detroiters in 1967. His son grew up thinking his race didn’t matter. Until one night, suddenly, it did.
He became famous defending ‘Algiers Motel’ cops. Deal with it.
With the release of “Detroit,” director Kathryn Bigelow’s film about the killings of three black teens during the 1967 unrest, the lawyer who successfully defended several infamous white Detroit officers looks back with indifference toward his critics.
Share your 1967 recollections and attend showing of documentary on Detroit uprisings
Additional showings of “12th and Clairmount,” a documentary produced by the Detroit Free Press in collaboration with Bridge and WXYZ-TV, have been scheduled as the 50th anniversary of the unrest of 1967 approaches.
Can Detroit find salvation through demolition?
Mike Duggan is the latest Detroit mayor to measure success by tearing down homes. Two scholars debate whether the strategy works.
Detroit is razing thousands of homes. It won’t fix much.
An urban planning professor argues that Detroit has knocked down more homes than any other city in past 50 years – and has little to show for it.
Bulldoze away: Some Detroit neighborhoods need thinning out
An urban policy expert says the city needs to ask difficult questions about which areas can be saved in era of diminishing revenues.
A day in the life of one Detroit high-crime neighborhood
Michigan Radio’s Lester Graham tags along as a neighborhood police officer completes his rounds in the city’s MorningSide community.
Just another Tuesday for 37 first-graders with no music or art or gym
This is what it’s like to teach in a classroom with too many children, books that don’t arrive until March, and no help because there not enough teachers.
Detroit court gets tough on traffic tickets. County taxpayers get stuck with tab
A get-tough approach is sending scofflaws to jail for unpaid misdemeanor tickets. But it costs the county more to jail them than it generates for the city in ticket revenue and, now, even the sheriff is complaining.
Sorry we foreclosed your home. But thanks for fixing our budget.
Counties across Michigan profit from selling foreclosed homes and charging fees on back taxes to down-and-out residents. No place does it more than Wayne County.
One envelope holds her fate. Is she getting deported today?
A Michigan woman brings hope and a duffel bag to the airport on what could be her last day in only country she’s known since she was a baby.