Seeking Michigan is at it again. They
have just posted PDF files containing scanned index cards for the
Detroit News clippings file. The Archives of Michigan received over
one million of these cards at the end of 2014 and has now made them
available online.
Someone has clearly been very busy. Items are indexed by subject
so you may need to think creatively to find what you are looking for.
You will also find cards for some individuals, but probably only if
they were noteworthy in some way.
According to Kris Rzepczynski, an
archivist at the Archives of Michigan, researchers can request the
clippings for the items noted on the cards from the Archives of
Michigan (archives[at]michigan.gov). Alternatively, if you can visit
an institution that possesses the Detroit News on microfilm you can
look up the articles yourself.
On the index cards, entries are listed
by year with notations on the cards in the format: D9, 20-1, which I
interpret to be December 9, page 20, column 1. Be aware that some
cards are not strictly in alphabetical order. While searching for
“Salpatrick” I saw several cards for “Sayles” interspersed
with ones for “Sales.”
If you find any cards of interest, I
recommend taking a screen shot of each card (press Alt and Print
Screen [prt sc] and pasting it into a Word document) so you don't
have to download the PDF with 500-1000 cards.
In my case, I found a card listing
articles about the 1941 Christmas murder of my grandmother's sister
by her estranged boyfriend. Most of the entries were from the time
of the murder through his entry into the Ionia hospital for the
criminally insane. I think I have this period covered in the
Kalamazoo Gazette. However, a later entry (1947) was entitled
“Recovers Sanity.” I could try to obtain this article in the
Detroit News, but now that I have a date I can search around it in
the Kalamazoo Gazette the next time I'm in town. Without an index I
would have been hard-pressed to find this.
If you are looking for subjects and
names closer to home, remember that the WMU Archives holds the
Kalamazoo Gazette clippings files.
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