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Interlochen Public Radio is proud to announce our newest reporter, who will connect you with one of Michigan’s most iconic regions. Michael Livingston will report on people and issues from Little Traverse Bay to the Straits of Mackinac to the Pigeon River Country. He’ll be based near Cheboygan.
This newly created Straits Bureau is a partnership between Interlochen Public Radio and the Traverse City Record-Eagle. Livingston will be a corps member of the national journalism service organization, Report for America.
A recent graduate of Central Michigan University with bachelor’s degrees in journalism and international relations, Livingston was editor-in-chief of the college newspaper, Central Michigan Life, and won multiple awards with the rest of his staff. He has interned at WCMU Public Radio/Michigan newspaper collaborations.
Report for America leaders place journalists in partner newsrooms where they can focus on under-covered topics and communities. It launched in 2017 with the objective of placing 1,000 journalists in newsrooms across the U.S. by 2024 to combat a decades-long contraction in the number of reporters on the ground in communities.
An initiative of the nonprofit The Ground Truth Project, Report for America provides up to half of each reporter’s salary for up to three years, with the expectation partner newsrooms seek local supporters to cover the balance of each reporter’s salary and benefits.