I started writing about Detroit in 2024. So did several other people, in their own places: Substacks, group chats, pieces published in places that don't exist anymore. We came to know each other through reading each other's work, and through living in the same city. The writing came first. The recognition that we were doing something close to the same thing came later.
Strait Journal collects it. The name comes from le détroit, the French word for strait, which is also where the city's name comes from. The river is the only thing about Detroit that hasn't moved.
We cover music and nightlife because that's where a lot of us came in. We cover food, bars, galleries, the institutions, and the artists working at neighborhood scale. We cover the slow developments that actually change a city block, not the press releases that promise overnight transformation.
This is independent. There's no investor. Everyone on the masthead, including me, has a day job. The writing happens at night and on weekends. We do this because Detroit is worth writing about carefully, and because the publications that did that well are either gone, paywalled, or stretched thin.
Posts go up throughout the week. The newsletter goes out Fridays — the week's reporting, the occasional dispatch from the field, and a short list of what's worth your time over the weekend. Free, no tracking, no spam.
If you have something we should know about, an opening, a show, a project, a place we haven't been, write to [email protected]. We read every email. We don't always respond fast, but we respond.
We're at @straitjournal on Instagram and LinkedIn.
— Shawn
