Your ELi: Longer Days, Longer Stories

With the notable exception of roadwork, things slow down in East Lansing during the summer. You may have noticed.

Here at ELi, it may look like things have slowed down with us, too, but we are actually taking advantage of the relative quiet spell in the City to chew on some bigger stories for you. We hate to get scooped, so I can’t tell you what the stories are about. But I will tell you that this week I left our regular editorial meeting with Managing Editor Ann Nichols feeling bouncy with excitement about what we have in the hopper. The ELi team loves doing good work for you.

Summer has meant some of our regular reporters are away, but it’s also meant we’ve gained some sharp college students who are home for the summer. These include Casandra Eriksen, who has already provided you with two reports—one on East Arbor Architecture and Saper Galleries bringing art and design to East Lansing’s downtown, and the other on a special prom hosted by Peoples Church for area LGBT youth. The latter has earned over 700 Facebook “likes”—not too shabby a readership level for this new reporter’s inaugural offering.

We are also enjoying the benefits of having home young Sam Sprague of the East Lansing Sprague musical dynasty. Sam has been doing fantastic at-large music reporting for us, covering what you probably don’t know about—I sure didn’t—including a new underground music scene at Replay Entertainment and an annual local music industry swap meet. Ann has Sam on some new assignments that branch out from this topic area, and we think you’ll continue to find his work enlightening.

All this reporting is made possible by readers who get why it’s worth investing a little money in East Lansing Info. Our Kickstarter campaign succeeded thanks to these folks—in the last month we have actually raised about $16,000.

This helps fund not only our day-to-day running expenses but will also help us carry out a much needed upgrade to our website and to hire a Government editor to replace the work I’ve done there. I love being the Government editor and a regular Government reporter, but ELi is now successful enough that I’m having to dedicate more and more time to running the nonprofit corporation.

We really appreciate your support more than I can say. Working for you through ELi is such a joy and privilege, and its success comes from your readership, your story tips, your financial support, and your sharing of our work with others. The ELi web is getting bigger and bigger, and better and better at supporting the extraordinary community that is East Lansing. Thank you for everything you do to help.