This newsletter covers what’s working in local news. See something I should feature? Let me know. 

How do you cover crime in a way that’s not just another police blotter? 

In Detroit, several newsrooms are exploring a new approach. 

“This isn’t a rundown of the latest crime headlines,” Streetlight Detroit explains online. “Instead, you’ll see us in your inbox every other week with the explainers, data and key stories you need to help build a safer Detroit.”

Streetlight Detroit is a newsletter and a collaboration from the Collaborative Detroit Newsrooms network, which includes Outlier Media/Detroit Documenters, the Detroit Free Press, Michigan Radio, BridgeDetroit, WDET, Detroit Metro Times, Planet Detroit and WXYZ. It launched in July and so far has about 400 or so subscribers. 

The name is about shining a light, but it also resonates in a city where the streetlights didn’t always work. Block by block, neighborhood by neighborhood, those lights matter quite literally for public safety. 

"With Streetlight, Outlier and our media partners are taking what we believe is a more helpful approach to presenting information about safety, policing and justice for Detroiters” said Outlier’s managing editor, Erin Perry. “Those will always be issues news organizations in big cities need to pay attention to — but in a healthy, useful way. We can talk about those issues in the context of mental and physical health, the environment, neighborhood vitality and more. So, we're choosing to do that."

The idea for the newsletter came from Detroit Documenter Alex Klaus, who pitched it during the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication conference in Detroit.

Members of the collaborative share blurbs, and the newsletter is mostly written by Miriam Marini, a reporter with Outlier Media and a breaking news reporter with the Detroit Free Press. Past issues include why people read so much news about crime, mental health and classroom safety and facial recognition. 

The newsrooms involved all cover crime differently, and Perry thinks of those as learning styles. The newsletter takes the slower approach of adding context.

Success isn’t just about building subscriptions. The buy-in from other newsrooms is itself an indication that the newsletter is worthwhile, she said.

“It also gives us the chance to promote work from outlets that we would have thought of as competition,” Perry said, “to elevate their work.”

And amplifying and sharing work from other newsrooms without replicating it means each newsroom can figure out where else to use their very limited resources. 

Check out Streelight Detroit here. Below are a few tips from Perry on working with other newsrooms in your city: 

For more:

• Check out these guides and best practices from The Center for Cooperative Media. 

• Former Poynter-Koch fellow Justin Baxley created a new way to for journalists to talk to the families of crime victims.

• And check out how Poynter’s Kelly McBride is working to transform crime coverage and a team from 100 Days in Appalachia is working to transform addiction coverage. 

That’s it for me. I was Minnie Mouse yesterday for Halloween, not because I’m a Disney adult (no judgment, I LOVE Disney adults) but because I already had a polka dot dress and mouse ears and that’s about as much as a Tuesday Halloween deserves. 

See ya’ real soon!

Kristen