We began planning a student trip to the swing-state of Michigan over a year ago, long before Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel, and before Israel’s invasion of Gaza. At the time, we could not have imagined the role that the Arab-American and uncommitted votes would have on the Michigan Democratic primary, or prospectively on the November elections. These events proved fertile ground for our class, as students sought to determine the issues that would influence Michiganders in the coming elections.
This political-reporting class follows three other travel classes, each of which provided transformational experiences for our students, and proved to be successful experiments in immersive, experiential learning. Our students have gone on to paid internships and/or jobs at the New York Review of Books, Vice, Forbes and Dow Jones, among others, as well as graduate studies.
For each project, we seek out a state that is likely to be decisive in the upcoming elections but one that, ideally, is not over-covered by the mainstream media. We focus on the issues voters care about, not horse-race politics.
The first political-reporting class took us to Maine’s 2nd Congressional District during the 2018 midterm elections. The second, which focused on the El Paso-Juarez border, coincided with the Covid 19 epidemic and, while our trip had to be cancelled at the last minute, our students met with sources via Zoom and produced this border project. Then, in 2022, we traveled to Arizona, following Joe Biden’s razor-thin win in the state in 2020 and the discredited recount that followed, to see how the Native American vote, Latino activism and the education culture wars were likely to impact the midterm elections. All three projects won national awards for student reporting.
These classes grew out of travel-reporting projects that began with three trips to Cuba—the first in 2015, just weeks after President Barack Obama initiated his détente with Cuba.
Our political-reporting classes begin with two months of intensive reading, research and reporting on our destination, including briefings by political and demographic experts. Our trips take place during spring break — the only time that our students can travel during the semester without missing other classes. Because this year’s spring break took place in April, and concluded just two weeks before the end of spring classes, we had to both do plenty of advance reporting via Zoom and, unfortunately, abandon plans to produce the videos and podcasts that have enriched previous projects. Our students rose to the challenge and produced a rich array of articles under intense time pressure, even as they finished assignments and final exams in other classes.
We arrived in Michigan just as Detroit, which had emerged from bankruptcy 10 years earlier, was gearing up for the NFL Draft and celebrating its nascent urban revival. It was a perfect backdrop for our efforts to understand the extent to which the economic revitalization reached beyond the downtown area of a 139 square miles city that is 80 percent African-American. We were especially keen to understand Detroit’s twin challenges of an affordable-housing shortage and 19 square miles of vacant land, much of it blighted, as well as the city’s plans for a November ballot measure that would raise taxes on vacant land in exchange for lowering taxes on most developed property. In the process, we found that efforts to lift up the city’s far-flung communities was often led from the grassroots by neighborhood groups whose work faces considerable challenges, and takes place far from the shiny precincts of downtown.
We also traveled to Dearborn, adjacent to Detroit, which is home to Michigan’s vibrant and sizable Arab-American and Muslim-American communities. There we learned a thing or two about how the conflict in the Middle East could impact the prospects for President Biden’s reelection, four years after the same community had helped the President eke out victory in 2020.
An independent election commission redrew district lines in Michigan for the 2022 election, which proved decisive in flipping the state blue, giving Democrats control of both houses of the legislature, and the governor’s office. We were fortunate to get much insight from two Democratic state legislators, Jennifer Conlin and Joey Andrews, who are facing reelection in November. We also traveled to Lansing to speak with two Republicans, Mark Tisdel and Sarah Lightner, who shared their perspectives on key issues from the future of Detroit’s land tax to Michigan’s transportation travails, as well as their thoughts on how chaos in the Michigan GOP were likely to influence their election prospects.
We ended our trip on the shores of Lake Michigan in the twin cities of Benton Harbor and St. Joseph. A study in contrasts, Benton Harbor the home of Whirlpool, is one of the poorest towns in the state; across the St. Joseph river, the town of St. Joe — as it’s popularly known — is an affluent vacation community. The tale of these two small cities encompasses the tensions in the rest of Michigan — racial divide, economic disparities, lack of affordable housing and shortage of public transportation. Throughout our journey we relied on the insights and generosity of countless Michiganders during both our initial planning trip in January and thereafter.
Just a day or two before our departure, one of our students tested positive for Covid. Luckily, we were able to change his ticket and have him join us a few days after our own departure. It was the first student trip we had taken since 2020 where the pandemic had not loomed large over our plans. While Covid has subsided, we have had to navigate the university’s strict new financial rules — a terrain that the Baruch College dean of the Weissman School of Arts and Sciences, and her staff helped us navigate.
So, we begin our acknowledgements with a heartfelt appreciation for Dean Jessica Lang, as well as Boo Choi and Amanda Becker, in the dean’s office, and Irina Laskin and her staff, in the Baruch College Fund, for helping us navigate complicated university financial rules.
We are also grateful to Provost Linda Essig for supporting this class and for approving our scouting trip in January, which was essential for our planning.
We must also thank our colleagues in the Journalism Department for their unfailing support of this project, and most especially, our chair, Vera Haller, who designed this website and was a faculty member on our earlier political-reporting trips, and Glenda Hydler, the department’s administrator, who has helped us in ways large and small. Lindsay Armstrong provided invaluable advance research on bus companies, hotels and more
We would also like to thank Victoria Merlino and Jonathan Sperling, our former students, who participated in the political-reporting trip for the Maine midterms and who have since created a scholarship fund for Baruch journalism students.
Many of the people who helped make this project possible, some of whom we quote in these stories, we first met during a scouting trip to Michigan in January. We want to begin by thanking the myriad sources in the Detroit area who made this trip so productive, including:
- Julie Egan, founder of Salonniere, provided introductions to both the American-Arab Chamber of Commerce and Detroit Future Cities.
- Jerry Davis and Christie Brown, professors at the University of Michigan, hosted us at their home. Davis also gave us a tour of his Midtown neighborhood.
- Rep. Jennifer Conlin and her husband Dan Rivkin hosted us at the University of Michigan.
- Lynette Clemetson, the Charles R. Eisendrath director of Wallace House, home of the Knight-Wallace Fellowships for Journalists and the Livingston Awards at the University of Michigan, generously hosted a lunch for us at the University of Michigan.
- Ahmad Chebbani and Bilal Hammoud of the American-Arab Chamber of Commerce hosted us at the chamber along with several of its members.
- Hamzah Nasser, owner of Haraz Coffee
- Hira Khan, executive director of Emgage
- Assad Turfe, deputy county executive of Wayne County
- Tiffanie Simmons of Ford and the UAW
- Malik Yakini, founder of D-town Farms, generously gave us a tour of both the farm and the soon-to-open Detroit People’s Food Coop on separate days.
- Rochelle Riley, director of arts, culture and entrepreneurship for the city of Detroit
- Antoine Bryant, director of planning and development for the city of Detroit
- Tom Goddeeris, chief operating officer of Detroit Future Cities, and his colleagues provided an excellent briefing on economic development in Detroit and introduced us to some neighborhood groups.
- Katrina Watkins of the Bailey Park Development, as well as her colleagues and neighbors, hosted us for an afternoon and gave us insight into grassroots efforts to revive their neighborhood.
- Brandon Reed, director of external affairs of the Michigan Black Business Alliance.
- Kai Bowman, the Black Business Alliance
- Chelsea Ray, owner of Insatiable Turtles
- Tanesia Greer, business development manager, Michigan Women’s Forward
- Nadia Nijimbere, co-founder of Baobab Fare
We are also grateful to the members of the Benton Harbor-St. Joe communities who welcomed us, as well state representatives who hosted us in Lansing, including:
- Rep. Mark Tisdel
- Rep. Sarah Lightner
- Nate Lada, co-owner of Green Things Farm Collective in Ann Arbor
- Steve Benscoter and Adrian Miller gave us a tour of the Special-Lite factory in Benton Harbor.
- Rob Cleveland and Christina Frank, of Benton Harbor’s Cornerstone Alliance, provided an insightful briefing and lunch.
- Deb O’Connor, Whirlpool Foundation managing director
- Paula Camp, owner of Carriage House Ciders
- Kayla Hurse, her students and her colleagues hosted us for an evening at the Boys and Girls Club of Benton Harbor.
- Tess Ulrey, city commissioner of St. Joseph, introduced us to the Boys and Girls Club and facilitated our town hall in Benton Harbor/St. Joe.
- Rep. Joey Andrews participated in a two-hour town hall with our students.
- Chokwe Pitchford, Berrien County commissioner, participated in a two-hour town hall with our students.
- Rev. Edward Pinkney, president of The Benton Harbor Community Water Council
A special thank you to those who gave us guidance before our trip, as well as those who met with our students via Zoom before we left for Michigan, including:
- Micheline Maynard, author and journalist, met with our students and provided many local introductions.
- Jennifer Berkshire, professor, author and co-host of the education policy podcast “Have You Heard”
- Prof. Donald Grimes, economist, University of Michigan
- Jeremy Kimbrell, Mercedes-Benz and UAW
- Charlie Terng, Baruch College’s data services librarian
- Alex Kotlowitz‘s book The Other Side of the River, gave us such insight into the Benton Harbor-St. Joe communities.
Lastly, we thank our students, who rose to the occasion and made this a rewarding reporting trip for all.
Profs. Andrea Gabor and Gisele Regatão, Baruch College Department of Journalism