Miles: The News is 150 years older, but our ideals are unchanged

My sixth day at The News was the election of 2000, a day that lasted a month. Nine months later came 9/11 —moments that flew by but lingered like the dust.

"We're under attack," my boss whispered when the fourth plane was still airborne.

Gary Miles

Extra editions. Late nights. You learn a lot about a place in times like those.

I learned that my co-workers had incredible talent, intense competitive drive and immense pride in The News and their ability to serve our most important asset — our readers. Those lessons have only been reinforced in the two decades since.

As we celebrate the founding of The News 150 years ago and look to the future, it's those elements that propel us forward.

A clear mission and strong culture are critical to business success, the experts say. At The News, for most of those years, the mission was written on the walls — quite literally.

"Voice of the lowly and oppressed. Advocate of the friendless. Righter of public and private wrongs," read the inscriptions on the parapet written atop The Detroit News building, built in 1916. "Chronicler of facts. Sifter of rumors and opinions. Minister of the truth that makes men free."

Those are among the words written by University of Michigan professor Fred Newton Scott and which architect Albert Kahn perched on 10 panels at the front and rear of The Detroit News building at 615 W. Lafayette Blvd.

The building still bears our name, although The News departed for a smaller office space just down Fort Street. And it still bears our ideals, carved in stone. It's easy to believe those inscriptions contributed to a culture that has transcended the generations.

While our staff and space are smaller today, a function of the digital era, our readers are no fewer and our ideals no less lofty. (The News printed as many as 900,000 copies daily after buying the Detroit Times in 1960. Today, The News averages 3.4 million unique users each month to our mobile, desktop and tablet platforms.)

And our readers, with whom our contract continues, expect as much. I hear regularly from readers either pleased or displeased with our coverage who make clear they have high standards for our work.

I've received emails from a half a dozen different readers over the past week alone to clarify, correct and offer suggestions. That scrutiny gets our attention.

It must, because we cannot take our existence for granted. This could be a pivotal year for Detroit's newspapers. If the owners of either Detroit daily wish to dissolve in 2025 the ties that have bound them since 1989, they must say so this year. That could portend a return to the newspaper war that threatened to make Detroit a one-paper town in the 1980s.

Thankfully, much of the feedback we receive remains positive.

A retired physician from Dexter, who lived and worked in Michigan for 30 years, wrote me after reading my subscriber email that clarified a recent story.

"My main source for doublechecking and verifying much of what I read elsewhere comes from The Detroit News," he wrote. "The News will continue to be the (main) source, and it is letters like yours discussing the MSU events and how the stories came to be, and how they came to be corrected, that continue to give me confidence and trust in the honesty and integrity of The Detroit News … Here's to the future of The Detroit News."

It is that mutual expectation — that of those who create The News and those who read it — that makes The News what it is.

For that, I applaud founder James E. Scripps and his successors and the hundreds of staff members over the decades who have made Newton's ideals a perpetual goal.

Author Jesse Madison Gathany commended The News for attempting to live up to those values in his "American Patriotism in Prose and Verse, 1775-1918."

"The courage to set them forth as its ideals, and the attempt to live up to them, are so highly commendable, and indicate the spirit and the function of the American Daily," he wrote.

That spirit and function live on, now for 150 years and counting.

Gary Miles is editor and publisher of The News. You can reach him at gmiles@detroitnews.com.