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Michigan State University School of Journalism alumnus Mark Phelan is the widely respected automotive columnist and critic at the Detroit Free Press. He
Gray’s NBC affiliate in Lansing, Mich., taps WDIO Duluth, Minn., news chief to succeed Barbara Roethler.
By Mark K. Miller | May 3, 2021 | 9:52 a.m. ET.
Gray Television’s NBC affiliate WILX Lansing, Mich., has hired Mike Schram as news director. He will be just the third news director at the station in the past 24 years. He follows in the footsteps of longtime News Director Kevin Ragan, and most recently Barbara Roethler, who left for a leadership position with the Detroit Dept. of Public Health.
He is returning Mid-Michigan, an area that he knows well. After graduating from Michigan State University’s School of Journalism, he started his career as a newscast producer in Lansing. He then spent several years at WJRT Flint, before returning to Lansing as an assistant news director for five years.
Chris Meagher talks with Russ White.
“I actually started as a newspaper reporter,” says Meagher. “I worked at The State News the second semester of my senior year, which was a great experience that kind of allowed me to take the next step after I graduated. I had a couple of internships, including one at the Oakland Press in Pontiac and then became a reporter out in Santa Barbara, California, first for a daily that is no longer in existence and then an alternative weekly there. I was a reporter for about six or seven years and had a conversation with the congresswoman who represented the area out there one day and decided to come onto her staff and become the press secretary. That s kind of how I flipped to political communications.
Since 1980, Michigan’s biggest growth industry has been its prison system.
It is a dubious distinction, as the state devotes a bigger share of its general fund budget to prisons than any other state. With annual spending of about $2 billion, Michigan pumps more money into corrections than higher education. And the state keeps its prisoners behind bars longer than the national average.
Conservatives and liberals alike are now saying it is a price Michigan can no longer afford. While opposition to change remains, critics are renewing a push for reforms that include reducing sentencing guidelines for many non-violent crimes, changes in parole procedures and release of some sick and elderly prisoners that cost upwards of $200,000 a year just for mental health and medical care.