Get Featured in Detroit Free Press

The Detroit Free Press covers Detroit and Michigan: city and state government, the auto industry, business, the Lions, Tigers, Pistons and Red Wings, food and entertainment. Earned coverage usually goes to major employers, elected officials and the few local stories that affect the whole region. A guaranteed placement works differently: it is arranged with the publication before any writing starts, you sign off on the draft, and it goes live on freep.com within a window stated in writing, usually one to two weeks. It is a real article on the site that you can put in a proposal, a deck or a profile.

What Detroit Free Press covers

The Detroit Free Press, known locally as the Freep, is one of Michigan’s leading news organizations. It reports on Detroit’s neighborhoods and downtown, the suburbs of Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties, state politics in Lansing, and the automakers and parts makers that anchor the regional economy. Sports coverage runs deep, from the city’s four professional teams to Michigan and Michigan State, and its dining and entertainment coverage is closely followed.

The voice is grounded and proud of the region without being soft on it. The Free Press tells Michigan stories through the people living them, so a Detroit founder reviving a commercial corridor, a manufacturer retooling for electric vehicles, a chef opening in Corktown, a musician carrying the city’s sound forward or a nonprofit with measurable results in a neighborhood all sit naturally in its pages.

Who reads Detroit Free Press

Free Press readers are Michiganders with a stake in the region: metro Detroit homeowners and families, auto-industry engineers and line workers, small-business owners, civic and nonprofit leaders, and sports fans across the state. Many grew up with the paper in the house. They read it to follow what is being built, opened, voted on and won where they live.

For a company or a person doing business in Michigan, a Free Press feature carries weight with exactly those people. Local customers, lenders, economic development groups, hiring candidates and corporate buyers in the auto supply chain all recognize the name, and the piece is useful in a capabilities packet, a grant application, a storefront window or a conversation with a new client.

The Free Press writes for readers who know the region well, so a feature works when it is tied to a real place and a real outcome. The strongest pieces name the city or neighborhood, show what was built, hired, opened or changed, and let the person behind it explain why they chose to do it in Michigan.

Our first job is to find which of the angles below is truest to your Michigan story. Clients often lead with what they sell when the more compelling story is why they stayed, returned or invested here.

What weakens a pitch

• No Michigan tie. A story that could happen in any state gives Free Press readers no reason to stop and read.
• Comeback clichés. Detroit readers have heard every revival line, so the piece needs specifics about your block, not slogans about the city.
• Numbers that cannot be supported. Jobs, sales and firsts get checked by readers, and everything we write must be true.
• A product list instead of a story. One decision, one place or one result carries a feature better than a catalog.