Mackinac Island Town Crier: The Island’s Weekly Newspaper

Walk into a coffee shop on Main Street on a summer morning and you will see something that has mostly vanished from the rest of the country. People are reading a printed local newspaper, and they are reading it closely. A ferry captain checks the meeting notices. A shopkeeper turns straight to the back page. Someone’s grandmother folds it in half to get at the obituaries. The paper in their hands is the Mackinac Island Town Crier, and it has been telling this island about itself since the 1950s.

For visitors it is one of the cheapest and best souvenirs on the island, though hardly anyone thinks to buy one. A single issue tells you more about how Mackinac Island really works than a shelf of guidebooks will. It also has a strange origin story. It begins with a university professor who decided the best way to teach journalism was to buy a small-town newspaper and hand it to his students.

A Newspaper That Only Runs When the Island Does

The Town Crier is a seasonal newspaper. It publishes most frequently during Mackinac Island’s main visitor season and less often during the quieter months. Historical listings have described about 22 issues a year, but the exact schedule can change. Readers should check the newspaper’s current website or subscription information for the latest publication dates. That flexible rhythm reflects island life, which becomes much busier during the tourism season and quieter in winter.

How a University Professor Bought an Island Newspaper

Wesley Maurer and the Classroom Idea

The story begins with Wesley H. Maurer Sr., a longtime University of Michigan journalism educator who chaired the department from 1948 to 1966. In the late 1950s, Maurer asked the university to acquire the Town Crier as a practical newsroom for student interns. He purchased the newspaper expecting reimbursement, but university procedures changed and he remained its owner, publisher, and editor. The project gave students experience reporting for a real community rather than completing classroom exercises. Maurer continued his newspaper work long after retiring from the university.

Students Running a Real Newsroom

What made this so unusual is that it was not practice. Students did not write pretend articles for a professor to mark. They put out the actual newspaper the island read every week, with real deadlines, real sources and real trouble if they got a name wrong. They covered city council meetings, chased down the story behind a closed restaurant, photographed the Lilac Festival, and then delivered the finished bundles themselves. For a young reporter it was a full education, because on an island this small you cannot hide behind a phone line. You have to knock on the door, and then you have to live next to whoever answers it. The Maurer family held the paper for more than sixty years, and that teaching tradition ran through nearly all of it.

What Actually Fills the Pages

The contents are wonderfully ordinary, and that is the whole point. A typical summer issue carries city council and planning coverage, notes on ferry and airport operations, school news, sports, letters and obituaries. There is a section of plain community news about who visited whom and which family opened their cottage for the season. There are advertisements for the shops you walked past an hour ago. There are public notices telling you what the island is arguing about this month, whether that is a building application, a horse ordinance or a dock repair. None of it is written for tourists, which is exactly why it is so useful to them. You are reading the island talking to itself rather than the island showing itself off, and the difference in tone is obvious straight away.

Why Visitors Should Pick Up a Copy

Most people leave Mackinac Island having seen it beautifully and understood it hardly at all. A newspaper fixes some of that in about twenty minutes of reading. You learn that the community has normal civic arguments, that the winter population is small enough for everyone to be named one by one, and that the horses and ferries everybody photographs are somebody’s daily work problem. There is also a practical side to it. The paper will tell you which events are actually happening this week, which is often more current than anything printed in a seasonal visitor guide, and it will mention closures and schedule changes that no one has updated online yet. It pairs well with a slow afternoon somewhere comfortable, too. The island’s public library keeps copies and has one of the best free seats in town. Reading a local paper there is about as close as a visitor can get to being a temporary resident.

The Paper Today

The Town Crier remains in publication under different ownership. Hoffmann Michigan Media Group acquired the Town Crier, the St. Ignace News, and related publishing operations in a transaction completed at the end of March 2023; the ownership change took effect April 1. The newspaper’s website provides current reporting and subscription information for readers on and off the island. The publication has also continued offering hands-on reporting internships in recent years, preserving an important part of Maurer’s educational legacy.

The Internship Keeps the Tradition Going

The internship connects the modern paper with Maurer’s original educational idea. Recent recruitment notices describe an intensive summer reporting experience in which interns develop published work and learn community journalism firsthand. Specific duties, eligibility, housing arrangements, and availability can change from year to year, so prospective applicants should consult the latest announcement from the newspaper or participating universities.

Reading the Island Like a Local

If you want to get the most out of an issue, read it in a certain order. Start with the public notices and the meeting coverage, because that is where the island’s real priorities turn up. Go to the community news column next, which will teach you more about how people here are connected than a week of carriage tours would. Save the advertisements for last and actually read them, since they work as a live directory of which businesses are open this season and which have quietly changed hands. By the time you finish you will recognise names on the street, and the island stops feeling like a stage set. That shift is the same one described in our look at what happens after the day-trippers go home.

Where to Find It on the Island

During the publication season, visitors can ask at local shops, lodging properties, the public library, or the newspaper office about current print availability. Distribution points and stock may change, so the newspaper’s website is the most reliable place to check for current access, digital editions, and subscription options. The paper also serves off-island readers who maintain a connection with Mackinac Island.

Conclusion: Stay a While and Read the Local News

There is a real pleasure in sitting on a porch with a small-town newspaper, a coffee and no schedule, especially on an island where nothing is going to arrive faster than a horse can walk. Inn on Mackinac is built for exactly that kind of morning, with a long front porch, harbour views and downtown a minute’s walk away, so you can pick up the week’s Town Crier and settle in without going anywhere at all. If you want a trip that lets you slow down enough to actually learn the place, book your stay with Inn on Mackinac and give yourself a morning with the local paper

Category: Mackinac Island