This summer, the Scripps Howard Fund awarded Detroit Free Press columnist M.L. Elrick a prize for opinion writing. Elrick has spent decades covering local governments in southeast Michigan in the muckraking tradition. His Free Press column, “On Guard” has uncovered any number of stories shedding light on elected officials. In 2009, he and colleague Jim Schaefer shared a Pulitzer Prize for uncovering corruption in the administration of then-Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick.
Stateside host April Baer sat down with Elrick to discuss the work that helped him win the prize and the importance the transparency journalism ensures.
This Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.
April Baer: One of the stories that contributed to your win for this award was about a candidate for Wayne County probate judge, Daniel Mercier. In this particular case, were the details of the misdoings hard to come by?
M.L. Elrick: I think the hardest thing to find was some of the records in Florida, which he tried to tell me were inaccurate. But the records spoke for themselves. This is someone who's had trouble almost his entire adult life with following the rules, treating women with respect, and – at least – not violating the law by harassing them.
It took a lot of digging. And I'm glad we were able to get that information in front of voters before they had to cast a ballot, because this was someone who enjoyed the support of a lot of Wayne County judges who should have known better. And the only person who could tell the voters his true record was the Free Press.
I think that's part of the public service we provide. And that's kind of the reason why we have this column “On Guard.” It's about being on guard, about being a government watchdog and giving people the information they need to make informed decisions. Not telling them what to do, but just saying, “Hey, here's what the candidates won't tell you. Now you've got the whole story. Go do what you think is in your own best interest.”
Baer: How common is it for the facts of a candidate's record to go unexplored?
Elrick: It's frighteningly common, particularly these days, because there are so few reporters. A lot of these candidates just simply aren't vetted. The Detroit Free Press editorial page sends out questionnaires, but for the most part, we take them at their word when they respond.
One time there was a questionnaire I saw where a candidate said he'd never filed for bankruptcy, and I later found out he'd filed for bankruptcy three times.
Baer: Another story that the award judges liked was about Mark Brant, the county commission chair in Monroe County. Federal investigators were on his trail for about four years before he was ultimately arrested and convicted for leasing some farmland that he owned to cannabis growers. How did you find out about that story?
Elrick: He's a pillar of the community, and he ran for re-election knowing that he was going to plead guilty to a federal felony. And his plan was to do constituent services from jail, which is great if your constituents are willing to take a collect call from prison.
But I have done stories on officials who have been convicted of crimes and who have had other elected officials write letters seeking leniency from judges that say things like, “this is one of the finest human beings ever. This anomalous behavior is out of character.” These letters are sometimes written by officials that the official who's going to prison tried to set up in a sting to lessen their sentence.
And somebody said, “if you'd like to know about a less than scrupulous individual from Monroe County where people sought leniency for them, please look into this case.” And I did.
As part of that investigation, I contacted a state senator who wrote a letter on Brant’s behalf seeking leniency. He said, “I do this all the time because I was an addict, I had trouble, I straightened my life out. So I try to help people. Seeing how this went down, I wouldn't do it again. And I learned something from this.”
The real story here is that an elected official can learn from their mistakes.
Baer: In the case of Mark Brant's story, his fellow commissioners said they had no idea what was going on. But Monroe County is not a huge place. How do you decide when to lay it on with a butter knife and how to let absurdity speak for itself?
Elrick: I like to believe that these things all speak for themselves. I teach journalism, and I tell my students, “We're going to charge you $100,000 and keep you here for four years. But in five minutes, I'm going to tell you all you really need to know.”
First of all, we ask questions. Second of all, we get answers. Third of all, we present it in an accurate, fair, and compelling way. And fourth, we let people make up their minds about what they think about it.
As a columnist, I have license to put my opinion in there, and I hope there's not much of my opinion in there. I hope there's more observation and analysis, because I think most of this stuff does speak for itself.
When I write the facts, I often opine “wow, you'd think that if this was really such a plus, they wouldn't hide this blessing that they're going to give us if we elect them.” And so I just try and state what I think most readers, listeners and viewers are thinking. Which is: Are you kidding me? Does everybody think this is going to be believed?
Because they want to fool all of us all the time. But there are some of us who aren't fooled, and we're trying to make sure the rest of you all aren't either.
Baer: The conventional wisdom about investigative journalists is that they're extremely skeptical and take nothing for granted. And I think I think that's generally true. But the thing I always wonder about is what the work does to your view of human nature.
Elrick: I'm glad you said skeptical, because I think people think cynical. And cynical means that you don't believe anything off the rip. Skeptical means that you're willing to find an explanation and that you're going to work to find an explanation, and that we do.
Baer: Was there a point in your career when you realized just how much there was to be learned right in front of us? Not in Washington, D.C.?
Elrick: There are people who don't vote because they feel like their vote doesn't have any weight. And if you're voting for president, there may be something to that. But the presidency in 2016, and probably the next 15 years of our country's destiny hinged on 10,000 votes cast in Michigan. If 6,000 votes had been swung the other way, President Hillary Clinton would be building her library right now. So your vote does count even on the biggest scale.
But where your vote really counts is on those school board elections, on those city council elections, on those drain commissioner elections, because so few people vote. That means your vote has a massive impact. And I hope that the work I do doesn't make people feel that democracy is futile. I hope the work that I do tells people democracy is lost if people who are outraged and know that you deserve more than you're getting don't participate. You have to do it.
Elrick has a podcast called ML Soul of Detroit with additional material beyond the columns. He is also the creator of a student journalism project called Eye on Michigan, in which students at Michigan State University learn investigative skills and create print and short form video stories to share what they find.
