About Inkster Now!

Why we exist

Inkster is a city of roughly 24,000 people in western Wayne County. For years it has been covered the way small cities usually get covered by big-market media: occasionally, and mostly when something goes wrong. A council votes on a $14 million road project and nobody reports it. A police department changes a policy and residents learn about it from a neighbour. Meanwhile the stories that do get picked up are the ones that reinforce a reputation the people who live here don't recognize.

Inkster Now! exists to close that gap. We go to the meetings. We file the records requests. We publish the numbers with the context that makes them mean something. And we give residents a place to publish what they're seeing on their own block.

What we cover

• City Hall, the mayor's office, council meetings, budgets, contracts, and a running tracker of the things residents report broken and how long the city takes to fix them.
• Crime and safety, data first: how Inkster compares to neighbouring cities, response times, clearance rates, and a blotter where every item cites a document.
• Business and housing, who's opening, who's closing, what rent is doing, and where the development money goes.
• Schools and families; Inkster's district dissolved in 2013 and there are no schools inside the city limits, so we cover the districts where Inkster's children actually go, and the busing and enrollment questions nobody explains to parents.
• Community, events, obituaries, lost dogs, a marketplace and a jobs board. The ordinary business of living somewhere.
• Around Inkster, coverage from other newsrooms, linked back to them. See our aggregation practice.

Ownership and funding

Transparency about who pays for journalism is part of the journalism. Here's ours.

Inkster Now! is owned and operated by Inkster Now!, based in Inkster. It is an independently owned local news publication and is not owned by, affiliated with, or funded by any political party, campaign, candidate, elected official, or unit of government.

We are supported by:

• Advertising from local businesses
• Paid listings and promotion, directory, marketplace, jobs, events, obituaries
• Newsletter sponsorship and clearly labeled sponsored content
• Reader memberships and contributions

No single advertiser accounts for a controlling share of our revenue, and we will disclose it here if one ever does.

Editorial independence

Advertisers, sponsors and members have no influence over what we cover or how we cover it. They do not see stories before publication, they do not get to kill or soften coverage, and buying advertising does not protect anyone from being reported on.

Sponsored content is written separately from the newsroom and is always labeled as sponsored at the top of the item. We will not accept sponsored content designed to look like news coverage.

If we ever report on a business that advertises with us, on a person connected to the publication, or on anything we have a financial interest in, we disclose that inside the story.

Ethics and standards

Accuracy

We verify before we publish. When we can't verify something but it matters, we say what we know, what we don't, and how we tried. We do not publish rumour. We do not report something because another outlet did.

Sourcing

We prefer named sources and documents. We grant anonymity only when the information is important, unavailable another way, and the source faces a real risk, never to let someone attack a neighbour without accountability. When we use an anonymous source we explain why. We protect confidential sources absolutely, and will resist any legal demand for their identity to the full extent of Michigan's shield protections and the First Amendment.

Fairness

Anyone facing criticism in a story gets a real opportunity to respond before we publish, and we say so in the story if they declined. We don't ambush people.

Crime coverage

We do not name people who haven't been convicted, we don't run mugshot galleries, and we follow cases through to their outcome; including dismissals. The full policy is published here.

Minors

We are careful with children. We don't name or photograph minors in connection with alleged crimes, and we seek a parent's permission before featuring a child in a story where that's practical.

Conflicts of interest

Our staff and regular contributors don't accept gifts, meals, travel or favours from people they cover beyond items of trivial value. They don't work for, advise, donate to, or publicly campaign for local candidates or campaigns while covering them. Anyone with a personal or financial connection to a story either discloses it in the story or doesn't take the assignment.

Plagiarism and attribution

We don't take other people's work. When we build on another outlet's reporting we credit them by name and link to them, in the story, not at the bottom.

Artificial intelligence

We may use AI tools for routine tasks like transcribing an interview, sorting public records or drafting a headline option. We do not publish AI-generated reporting, AI-invented quotes, or AI-generated images presented as photographs. A person is responsible for everything we publish, and any illustration that isn't a photograph is labeled as an illustration.

Corrections policy

We will get things wrong. What matters is what happens next.

• Corrections run at the top of the story, not buried at the bottom, and say plainly what was wrong and what's right.
• Substantive corrections stay on the article permanently with the date.
• We correct typos and small clarifications without a formal note, but we never quietly change a fact.
• We do not delete published stories to make a problem go away. If a story was wrong enough to remove, we replace it with an explanation of why.
• If we corrected something that was widely read or shared, we say so in the newsletter too.

Found an error? Email news@inksternow.com with "Correction" in the subject line, or use the contact page. We'd rather fix it than defend it.

Requests to remove coverage

People sometimes ask us to take down an old story, often about a charge that was later dropped, or something they did years ago. We take these seriously and we consider each one individually, weighing the public interest against the harm to the person. We will always update a story to reflect a dismissal or acquittal. We generally will not delete accurate reporting. Email news@inksternow.com.

Your part in this

A newsroom this size can't be everywhere, and residents know things we don't. A meaningful share of what we publish starts with a tip, a photo or a submission from someone who lives here. Community contributions are labeled as such, reviewed by an editor before publishing, and credited to the person who sent them.

Send us something.

Who we are

Inkster Now! is a new publication and a small one. Reporters and contributors will be listed here as they join. Until then, everything published here is written or edited by the founder, and you can reach that person directly at hello@inksternow.com.

Reach us

Inkster Now!
Inkster, Michigan 48141
(424) 235-8216
hello@inksternow.com

All contact options