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A weekly show from the folks at East Lansing Info breaking down all the news and happenings in East Lansing, Michigan.
WDBM East Lansing.
Introduction:This is East Lansing insider brought to you by ELI on impact eighty nine FM. In this show, we break down all of the news and happenings in the East Lansing community. And now, today's East Lansing insider.
Anna Liz Nichols:Hello, everyone, and welcome to 2026. I'm Eli's deputy editor, Anna Liz Nichols. And today, I thought we'd take a moment to reflect and review on 2025 and kind of give a precursor to some of the stories East Lansing info plans to tell in 2026. Of course, I'm kind of new to East Lansing Info. I started my role as deputy editor here in September after being a a long time Capital area resident, and and it's been a blast so far.
Anna Liz Nichols:For today's discussion, we have our managing editor, Lucas Day, here, and we wanted to quickly share on the back end how East Lansing Info has changed this year, not just bringing me on, but some of the other organizational changes we'd love to share with people, including new grant funding that has made some of our growth possible. Take it away, Lucas.
Lucas Day:So I I've been with Eli for three and a half ish years now, a little bit less than three and half years. And the the grant that we got at this in the spring is it it really changes what the organization can do. Prior to the grant, I was the only full time employee. We now have four full time employees all on the editorial side. We all write.
Lucas Day:So we've been able to get to a lot more things in the city. We've been able to cover the city a lot more completely, I think. And, I I mean, we've just upped the production. Like, there's more articles coming out every week. Before, we were pretty reliant on a lot of young reporters from MSU, and we still wanna bring those people.
Lucas Day:And I think it's good to learn how to report on the city government when you're in college. That's how I learned. So we've got a couple of interviews with interns next year next week that I I'm excited about. And, we're we're just publishing more. Now we try to put out two stories a day.
Lucas Day:Before, there were some weeks we're only putting out three or four articles in a week because we still like the the work to be complete, but it takes it takes time to do the kind of reporting that we do. So I I'm really excited about the future. This I I think that we've done a bunch of really good work just in the last, months that we've had a full staff, and I'm really excited about a lot of things that we have in the pipeline. Yeah. It's just bigger and and and better journalism, I think, that's been coming out of us since we got this grant.
Lucas Day:And they it's exciting because there's opportunities for renewal in the future. And, of course, ELI has been sustained by, community support for the last decade or so, and that's still strong. I heard that we had a really great end of the year fundraiser, so we really appreciate everyone who supported us with that. Yeah. I I'm I'm excited about the future.
Lucas Day:I think there's a lot that we're gonna find out over the next few months.
Anna Liz Nichols:On that topic, you're talking about, like, what's carried us through. It is my understanding when I was talking to people when I was considering the East Lansing info job that you're really the one that has carried East Lansing info to this point. And I'm grateful to have joined the staff, and I I know in this last year, we were able to add, you know, other full time staff members or or or graduate people into full time.
Lucas Day:Yeah. And, it was not me. It was Alice Alice Dreger founded ELI for about, what was it? It had to have been years. Alice carried on her back.
Lucas Day:I mean, she worked all the time, and I I think she hardly got paid. She she will do this thing into existence and then carried it for a long time. And Paul Bass, who runs the non or the Oasis grant, is helping to fund us, I'd I I talked to him, and he was talking about how how after nonprofit newspapers especially lose their founders, they tend to die. And so I I know that he had a relationship with Alice that helped lead to this grant, and he was just excited about how he's gonna continue to be quality journalism coming out of East Lansing, even after the founders moved on.
Anna Liz Nichols:And we've had the the two other people on staff on East Lansing Insider before, both Justin Dufourt Petty and Aya Imran. I've really enjoyed getting to know them, and I I I really love their reporting. Some of the some of the stories that I enjoyed most from them this year ended up on our our greatest hits article that we published over the Christmas publishing break, and I was I was happy to see that was a consensus that some of the things I most appreciated were recognized.
Lucas Day:And, I was with us as an intern when she was finishing up in MSU. She she was here for about a year, and it was the first chance that she had to be, you know, published consistently. And so we've really watched her grow and grow over the last year, year and a half. And she had a summer internship with the Detroit Free Press, which has really helped her out a lot. And then Dustin worked here with me before we had the grant where he was doing a ton of work really keeping this thing moving, you know, really just doing out of the community.
Lucas Day:And a lot of the reporting that I do, like, Dustin is incredible at chronicling the history of East Lansing. Like, I like to make fun of him because he's a giant nerd. And he spends his afternoons, like, locked away in this in this room in the East Lansing public library where he looks at old newspapers because they got them all filed away in this cabinet. And I was doing something on the history of student voting, and I went into his newspaper room, which is in his room. It's in the library.
Lucas Day:But I I was really excited to tell him I was in his new newspaper room, and he was proud of me for that because, I don't know. I'm sure there's other people that go on there, but I I always give him a hard time about being locked away in his history archives.
Anna Liz Nichols:Yeah. And we when we look at stories that really define 2025, of course, East Lansing had a city council election for which we got two new members in Steve Whalen and Chuck Grigsby. And East Lansing info did several stories throughout the election process, topics like campaigning amidst no reason absentee voting. We had coverage of the candidate forums. So voters had another medium to understand what candidates really stood for, where their their their policies align.
Anna Liz Nichols:And we had six candidates, so it was it was a fairly crowded field.
Lucas Day:Yeah. The the election report is always some of my favorite reporting to do every year. One, because it's it's kinda cool to get to meet the candidates. It's always people that are kinda passionate about city government, which I think through our work, we kind of naturally have to, like, care about what's going on, what what we're reporting on. When you when you're not in this line of work, it's something that you don't really pay attention to, I think.
Lucas Day:And, I you do have a subset of the community that cares very much about city government. We get to know them throughout the course of our work, but I I I guess I didn't know much about how cities operate until I started doing this. And so you get to meet more people that are passionate about the way the city works, and you get to learn more things about the city because they've been paying attention to things. So, like, it it was cool to listen to Steve sometimes talk about some of the stuff that he learned as a school resource officer. And, Chuck was on the Human Rights Commission and was one of the leaders of some of the police reform protests back in 2020.
Lucas Day:So we got, like, a couple of candidates with diverse points of view that the community ended up supporting. And I I just think it'll be interesting to see how how they operate going forward because they're different than Dana Watson and George Brookover who just left. So I you're gonna get to see them get their footing over the next few months. There's always a learning curve when you've got new council members.
Anna Liz Nichols:Mhmm. So like I said, I came on staff in September. I come from a state government background, namely criminal justice. And something I was happy I was able to to use in in some of my coverage was my statewide knowledge, especially when it came to, you know, policies from the Trump administration when Michigan was facing down the the snap pause. We really got to localize that to what that looks like for East Lansing.
Anna Liz Nichols:But another thing that was interesting to cover was when I was covering state government, we talked a lot about trust in policing and and the attitude the public has towards public safety, this balance between wanting safer communities, especially, you know, post pandemic. During the pandemic, violent crime went up and ever and it's a statewide interest to to lower crime levels. But there's the balance between wanting safer communities and also holding law enforcement to account, and East Lansing is no stranger to that conversation. We had 2025 was very marked by turmoil over how the city is handling public safety.
Lucas Day:Yeah. And I I mean, this goes back way way before 2025, as you said. I think in twenty twenty one or two, around that time, the city did a study of their police department, and it showed, you know, a the the study showed the the exact division you're talking about. It showed, a, that there are a bunch of issues with the LPD policies. They're too broad.
Lucas Day:They can be interpreted, however. And then it showed below officer morale, which I think was an issue around the country is that as you saw these pushes for reform, police didn't feel appreciated. Morale departments dropped. Yeah. And that's that's something that's carried on.
Lucas Day:The the discussions, they kinda simmered down for a little bit, but it they sparked back up around, August with Michigan State's welcome weekend. There is an incident where a police officer deployed pepper spray on two young men outside of Dave's hot chicken. And for about a month, you we're seeing some people at city council meetings saying that there were issues with how the incident was handled and saying that, you know, while there may have been some issues with violence downtown, which we've heard from business owners, there there have been plenty. Not everyone who was arrested was guilty. And you've you've later got this video that comes out of the incident and shows that, you know, there's some pushing and shouting and, you know, nothing uncommon for downtown East Lansing on a weekend.
Lucas Day:But then another kid comes in, and he pulls one of the men that was, you know, shouting away. And an officer walks over and pepper sprays them both. And I don't think that anyone who watches that video I and, you know, I've I've been reporting on this for months and months. I haven't heard anybody defend the officer's actions in that video. I've gotten lots of questions about it.
Lucas Day:I've talked to lots of people about it. I've heard people who like police generally and say that police in general do a good job. But I haven't heard anyone defend the officer's actions in this video except for the police chief who issued a press release about it and said that the officer had been cleared and said that these two men had been violent downtown. And this press release was issued before the video of the incident came out. And since the video came out, we haven't really heard from her.
Lucas Day:WKR did some reporting about her wanting to control the narrative. That was a phrase she used in a press release. The city has hired a communications coach for her, and they've ordered some bias training. But, really, leading city officials haven't addressed this incident. And the reason that the communication staff has told us in the most recent months that they're not talking about it is because there's a lawsuit related to it.
Lucas Day:The two young men are suing. But there's about a month, month and a half gap between when that lawsuit came and when the incident happened, and they weren't talking about it then either. And so the city did hire an investigator to review actions and policies of the police department, and that review is specified to look into between MSU's welcome weekend and present day. So we know that behind the scenes, there's an investigator working on it. But when that report's done, it's it's it's gonna be confidential.
Lucas Day:The city could the city council could vote to make that they could vote to make that report, public, but I've got kind of little faith that they're gonna do that just based on how they've acted to this point. So if you go to a city council meeting, you're gonna probably see, you know, at least half a dozen, a lot of times more people at the meeting speaking about this incident specifically, even though we're about four or five months out from it now. You're gonna see people asking for the police chief's resignation. You're gonna ask people you're you're gonna see people asking for the mayor to address the incident, which I I still don't think he really has. I can't recall him talking about it at all.
Lucas Day:And it's it's tough. It's tough for the city. And I'm not I'm not offending their actions. I kind of I I I think that they probably would admit that they took missteps in handling all of this, but they're spending money to try to improve the department's reputation. We saw that communications coach that they spent money on.
Lucas Day:But you've got city commissions, people that are well known in the community that are, you know, calling the police chief, calling the city manager, calling the man the mayor racist. And that's happening at every city meeting. So I I again, I don't know how you PR your way out of that, but that's that's a thread that we're gonna be following for the next year.
Anna Liz Nichols:And I don't mean to sound like I'm plugging the podcast, like, while we're talking on the podcast, but, you know, that story, which you had robust coverage of the the whole incident and the the fallout after it, and I I really enjoyed reading it. But I really enjoyed our conversation on the podcast where we talked fairly holistically about this, where, honestly, a lot of our conversation focused on real media literacy, how the city communicates these things, the weight of communicating public information in the interest of public safety, and, you know, what we can really expect from from transparency and accountability from the city. And I've enjoyed a lot of the conversations I've had on the podcast. I I I in particularly, it was cool to talk to our newest members of city council so soon after the election to hear, you know, even more about, you know, their vision for the city because we have we have days ahead of us as the city faces a a challenging financial future. Also enjoyed my conversation with with, Ellie's Place talking about grief during the holidays.
Anna Liz Nichols:Just lots of different topics. But, you know, I think East Lansing Insider really provided us yet another venue to robustly address, you know, the implications of of what the Dave's Hot Chicken incident means, including the the side story, which isn't even a side story. It was a huge issue this year of the the citizen police oversight commission, which threw a a chain of events that would be pretty difficult for any resident to to understand, but we we laid it out, you know, many times in in coverage. The commission, which didn't have a lot of teeth to begin with in terms of having actual authority over holding police accountable, got what little oversight they had scaled way back, which is, you know, kind of a a black mark against the city from many community members' standpoints of this genuine interest in in improving citizen engagement and accountability in policing.
Lucas Day:Yeah. They I mean, visually, those meetings look different now. Like, they just one of the example of the changes, I'm not gonna get involved with them, but one of the examples is they can't see the police officers' names in the meetings anymore. And so, like, at one meeting, the chair of the commission was talking about the police chief's actions, and they're running some some resolution related to her. And he he could say the police chief, but then when he said her name, all of a sudden, he realized he was violating the new ordinance, and he just kinda threw his hands up.
Lucas Day:And he was like, this is ridiculous. And so it does kind of it makes it it makes it look in some ways, like I I I don't wanna say, like, a performative commission because you do have a group of people that are very serious about police reform that are regularly meeting. But they've gotten a lot of the resources that they had previously stripped, and now their their speech is being pretty heavily policed in public meetings. And so it it looks like it's a commission that the city made, but not made with the same intent that the people who joined it have.
Anna Liz Nichols:Yeah. I don't think even the the conversation is it's performative, which I know this is not your implication, but performative of those members of the committee. It's a question of, is this more just a a symbolic committee that the city is implementing?
Lucas Day:Yeah. And maybe I I mean, East Lansing has got so much turnover. Like, while we're speaking about old stories, one of my favorite stories we did last year was our interns, Alison and Madan, did a story about the low pay of members of city council and how it leads to a lot of turnover and people of different groups kind of being excluded from city leadership. It's a great story. You should read it.
Lucas Day:But it explains a lot of the turnover that city council has, and, also, we got a new city manager in the last couple of years. And they've got different priorities than previous city leaders had, you know, particularly the members of city council. It's a very different city council than it was four years ago when they made this commission. And so I it's a commission that's existing in the current state of the city, but the current state of the city is just so much different than it was four or five years ago. Like, I I don't think that the current city council would be making a police oversight commission.
Lucas Day:And so it's and it it's interesting to see how with this high turnover of city leaders, it just leads to a lack of continuity of different systems within the city. And with all the staff turnover, this is kind of a separate point. With all the staff turnover, we've heard from, like, DPW that they've got department of public works that they've got, you know, road plot projects and sewer projects and different things delayed because that department has turned over so much. And so you can see it kind of in different sections of the city where turnover from leaders and employees are impacting what happens in East Lansing.
Anna Liz Nichols:You know, we've covered a lot of fairly high profile issues in the city, issues that have persisted through the years, accountability within policing, the financial health of the city. But it might sound cheesy, but what I've really valued in my my short time so far at East Lansing Info, I've really enjoyed the the one on one conversations I've had with members of the community and and really getting to know, you know, the individuals that make up the city. One of my favorite stories that we published this year that really sticks with me is the story about Rick Rapaport, who was a a LGBTQIA advocate in East Lansing, specifically a a wealth of work over at MSU implementing Pride Week at the university. And it was just so it was beautifully done. It was so wonderful.
Anna Liz Nichols:It had all these people that knew Rick from childhood. It had individuals that had been impacted by his work really humanizing individuals during the the AIDS epidemic. But one element not to to to glaze over Rick and his work, but one element of the story that really stuck out to me was the inclusion of Rick's doctor, doctor Peter Gullick at Sparrow Hospital in Lansing who, you know, helped Rick through his his journey with with HIV AIDS, but also talked about what it was like being a physician who regularly saw such patients and helps people navigate the health care system at a time that the health care system was frankly abysmal to to members of the LGBTQIA community and and those with HIV and AIDS. It it was just such a merciful and thoughtful way to talk about this moment in our in our our in our city's history, in our in our state's history, in our in our nation's history. And just hearing how the whole process, how those years impacted him and what drove him to, you know, practice with compassion and and and in the interest of of health and wellness, it it will it will stick with me for for a while.
Lucas Day:Yeah. Yeah. I was proud of Dustin when we got that one out. And I mean, when I was editing that story, I was trying to, like, fact check some of the stuff, and there isn't a pun that was written about Rick Rapaport besides the state news did something because he'd worked there right after he died, but it wasn't all that long. And, I mean, just short stuff that you find every year, but there's not a ton of information about this guy or about doctor Gullick who's been on the forefront of the fight against HIVAIDS, still is still doing research about it at MSU, reads or leads, initiative at MSU that helps the med students learn about it.
Lucas Day:There's just not a ton of information about either of these guys out there. So I I think Dustin kind of created, like, a piece of history with that story because it chronicled this. Yeah. I was proud of him when he wrote that one.
Anna Liz Nichols:Yeah. It's it's just gonna stick with me for a while. I thought it was beautifully done. And, like, I I wanna we I think we both said this once we we looked over the story because we both we did both did some editing on it is I wanna know a lot more about doctor Peter Peter Gulik and and other individuals that, you know, participated in this moment in our history.
Lucas Day:So as we start 2026, we've already talked about a couple of the threads that we're looking at, but, there's just a couple more that I wanna highlight. The first is finances. I I know that I've been doing local reporting for six six, seven years. I I've been doing it for a few years now. I did it when I was at State News in undergrad, and then I went up to the Upper Peninsula for a little bit.
Lucas Day:And I I know that I'm too excited about this stuff now when I hear the city's putting together a financial review team, and I'm like, oh, that's gonna be the highlight of my next year. Because financial reporting is, I think, the most important type of local reporting because it it it I mean, it's not just dollars and cents. It's how the city is using its resources, and it's money that taxpayers pay and, you know, everybody it's the economy is not great right now, so a lot of people are struggling. And it the financial reporting tells us how your taxes are being used. And so while it's the most important part of, I I think, local reporting, I think it's also the most difficult.
Lucas Day:And Alice was really good at this. I I financial reporting, I think, was Alice's biggest biggest strength, Alice Strayer, again, our founder, because she'd worked in finance before. So she was a really, really sharp financial reporter. And when we lost her, you know, I I've done my best to cover this, and we get a ton of help from Chris Kristoff, who's, you know, a retired long time journalist. He's kind of an adviser mentor to all of us.
Lucas Day:And so he'll help me with some of the financial reporting. But Chris is a volunteer, so I I I try not to take up too much of his And so in 2026, we're going to get this team of volunteers. One of them is a former state treasurer. Another one was on the committee before, and then there's, you know, five other people. There's seven of them.
Lucas Day:And they're just gonna do a deep dive publicly in these finances and recommend changes. And so, a, we're gonna learn a lot more about what some of the issues the cities are having finance is having financially and some of the potential changes. But I think it's gonna sharpen, you know, not just my reporting capabilities, but our newsrooms reporting capabilities because we're gonna learn so much about these different financial levers. Just as a side note, Dale Krutoff, one of the members that's on this board, I went to grad school. I had semester long project with him, and I ran into him at the bar the other day.
Lucas Day:And I, like, said hello. And Dale's gonna hope he doesn't see me at the bar after they start doing this work because I'm gonna ask him about a million questions. You're warning
Anna Liz Nichols:it's gonna be a podcast.
Lucas Day:Yeah. Dale, if you hear this, if you see me duck out, I'm gonna have a lot of like, I'm gonna take up your night. The the finance people, it's just such a different world. As a journalist, you gotta learn to cover different things. You can't I I think finances is something you gotta spend so much time learning.
Lucas Day:And so it it's gonna be really good, I think, to watch this group of people that this is their area of expertise that aren't necessarily paid city officials where their job depends on it because I think that there's some reluctancy from the city officials we have in place right now to talk about their mistakes. Because, you know, and I'm not saying that the current group's made massive mistakes or anything like that. There's been a lot of turnover. But, yeah, I I mean, people don't don't wanna give away to their to the press about the mistakes that they've made because it might reflect poorly on them or their staff, and I get that. But the this group of commissioners or this com committee members, they've got a different goal.
Lucas Day:So I I think that we're gonna get to see some of the stuff about the finances peeled back. The other thing that I'm excited to see evolve over the next year is apparently the university and the city have started meeting again. And I'd like to joke that East Lansing is a college town. It's known as a college town when people outside of East Lansing hear of East Lansing, I think, of Michigan State. But I I don't think that city I think that city officials sometimes like to pretend like it's not a college town.
Lucas Day:And you see that in decisions that they make sometimes, like, recently, the ones, man, they don't wanna add seats to bars that serve liquor. And so you've got all this frustration from bar owners that this is you know, their market is that they work in a college town where kids go and drink, the city officials, don't want to let them expand or city council members, don't wanna let them expand their bars. And I was surprised to hear from Carrie saying that she said over her two years on city council, council and university leadership had not met yet until December. So went about two years without meeting. And I'm I'm really curious to see if that relationship evolves somehow if they start working together more.
Lucas Day:There's a ton of stuff. The mayor of East Lansing is putting the city's financial problems on the feet of the university. He's saying that the city can't tax, 25%, a third, whatever it is, of its landmass because it's the university. And so are they gonna work together on public safety initiatives? Are they gonna work together on housing?
Lucas Day:Those are the two big ones that we've heard, recently. That's that's that's what I got in my eye on for next year.
Anna Liz Nichols:I'm looking forward to this year, really. I've I've, again, I've really enjoyed my time here and and getting to know everybody, and I know there's a lot more to learn about East Lansing. So, hopefully, me and the readers will learn together. But I said this, you know, as we were wrapping up the East Lansing Insider podcast for the year back in December, and I'll say it again. I really appreciate everyone listening to this new format that East Lansing info has where we get to get a little more in-depth and a little kind of flesh out some of the the observations that we as reporters have had while reporting on stories, but also get to talk one on one in a in a longer format with the members of the community that make up East Lansing.
Anna Liz Nichols:Again, this has been deputy editor, Anna Liz Nichols for East Lansing Insider.
Lucas Day:And this is managing editor Luke Day. Thanks for listening.
Introduction:East Lansing Insider is brought to you by ELI on Impact eighty nine FM. We are on the web at eastlancinginfo.news and impact89fm.org. Thanks for listening.