President's message

In 1993, five years after I began covering Juvenile Court for the Detroit Free Press, the newspaper’s beloved publisher Neal Shine began a campaign called “Children First.”

The idea was to write stories that went beyond the tragedies then afflicting children, particularly kids in urban centers like Detroit who were being shot, beaten to death, generally mistreated and pretty much ignored by ordinary people and the powers that be. My stories prompted Shine to launch Children First and I carried that torch for many years, through the 2005 sale of the Free Press to the Gannett Corporation. Alas, the Children First campaign ended shortly after that change in owners, although the paper’s editors allowed me to continue writing compelling stories about children in need until I left the newspaper at the end of 2007.

Since then, consistent and thorough news coverage of children’s issues has gotten harder to find. So this year, with permission from the Free Press, I have re-launched Children First as a series of columns on our website, www.michiganschildren.org. Large and potentially devastating cuts to services for vulnerable children are now under debate in Lansing and in Washington, and people need to understand the impacts of those cuts on children and families.

My hope is to again shine a light on the challenges our vulnerable children and families now face.

Please check out the columns and help us make Michigan a place that puts Children First.

Jack Kresnak, President & CEO, Michigan's Children