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By Jack Kresnak
In January 1993 – with the senseless murders of children in Detroit and its suburbs reaching a heart-breaking nadir – Neal Shine, who had finally risen to publisher after decades as a writer-editor at the Detroit Free Press, created a newspaper campaign called Children First.
The Free Press had been dutifully reporting many tragic stories, tallying numbers of child victims of shootings and describing some ideas for solving the crisis of youth violence in the city. But the stunning numbers left some readers wondering whether the newspaper where I worked for 38 years as a reporter and editor had become merely “the scorekeeper,” tabulator of the body count in an awful epidemic of violence.
Shine – my mentor and a father figure to many reporters – thought we should “move the paper beyond its traditional journalistic role to assume a more active role in responding to the most crucial need in this community and in the state: saving the children.”
The goal of the Children First campaign, Shine said, was “to mobilize against some of the biggest roadblocks to raising children safely, educating them properly and nurturing them in a safe environment.”
For the next 14 years, I worked to keep Shine’s visionary campaign alive and well, not always successfully. Most newspaper campaigns expire within a year. Children First lived for more than a decade. During that time, Neal retired, came back, retired again and then died a Detroit icon in 2007.
I have proudly worn the Children First pin on my lapel ever since 1993, and even without the imprimatur of the Children First logo on many of my stories, I tried to keep the spirit of Shine’s Children First campaign alive, writing stories I hoped would help improve conditions for vulnerable children. Significant changes in public policy resulted from my stories, as many readers were shocked and angered by my detailed multi-part series about tragedies that could have and should have been prevented by a better functioning child protection system. Shine’s mission to “get in the game” instead of merely reporting numbers paid off for the children of Michigan.
Over the years, whenever I saw Neal, he would mention a story I’d done and say, “Way to go, Jake!” (No one else ever called me Jake.)
When I transitioned to President/CEO of Michigan’s Children in February 2008, I hoped that a journalistic champion for kids in Michigan would emerge. There have been some: Angie Hendershot (reporter) and Chris Carr (videographer/photographer) at television station ABC-12 in Flint, and columnist Rochelle Riley at the Free Press come to mind.
But, sadly, the newspaper business isn’t the same and there are not enough reporters still employed as journalists who are able to take on the complicated, challenging and often tragic children’s beat.
So, today I am jumping back into advocacy journalism. This will be the first column for Michigan's Children called Children First. At least twice a month, I will tell you stories that will inform the debate on how to improve public policies in Michigan to help vulnerable kids. These Children First stories will complement – and not replace – the many issue and budget analyses that Michigan’s Children is known for. The staff of Michigan’s Children works hard to be the “go to” place for timely information on public policy issues affecting children in our state.
Many thanks to the Free Press for letting us use the old Children First logo. My mission will be to write the kinds of stories that would make my personal champion, Neal Shine, proud. And, I hope to hear his voice in my inner ear saying, “Way to go, Jake!”
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