About UPword

UPword Michigan is a digital news magazine focused on the dynamic communities, businesses, and residents of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. We cover what's next in entrepreneurship, creative culture, and development in and around the U.P., and are part of the Issue Media Group family.

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Meet the UPword Michigan team:

Brice Burge, news editor
Brice is an award-winning young professional, looking to serve his community through education, public service, and technology. Spending his entire adult life in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, he appreciates the importance of wearing many hats in rural communities.

Jaymie Depew, writer
Jaymie is a writer living in Michigan’s rural Upper Peninsula. She obtained an English writing degree from Northern Michigan University and has had articles and essays published by The North Wind, The Mining Journal, The Munising News, and Pyre Publishing. After copywriting for economic development and tourism-based businesses the last several years, she’s looking forward to getting back to her true passion – journalism.

UPword Michigan is published by Issue Media Group (IMG). Incorporated in 2005 in Detroit, Michigan. IMG operates a national network of online media outlets leveraging the power of solutions-based journalism to report on community change. Our publications aim to connect readers to their communities' most visionary and innovative people, projects, businesses, and organizations — fostering civic capacity, improving understanding of key issues, amplifying underserved voices, and building community attachment during a time of local media decline.

We work with like-minded stakeholders across public, private, nonprofit, and grassroots organizations whose values and missions align with ours through an underwriting model of publishing. Our journalists connect with community stakeholders through regular listening sessions designed to build trust and shape authentic community stories.

IMG's work has been recognized and supported by leading journalism organizations nationally including INC Magazine, Knight Foundation, Columbia Journalism Review, Facebook, Lenfest Institute, Google, Solutions Journalism Network, Ground Source, and Society for Professional Journalists.

Michigan Assets
Issue Media Group’s Michigan footprint of 18 local online community news sites is grounded in cross-sector stakeholder coalitions comprised of leadership in foundations, nonprofits, government and municipalities, education, community and economic development, health, entrepreneurship, and workforce development. Through regular community listening sessions, these leadership coalitions help guide relevant community-informed coverage, increase local audience engagement and ensure influential readership networks.

How to pitch us freelance stories:

UPword receives valuable contributions from a network of talented freelance writers, photographers, and videographers. We encourage anyone interested in contributing articles, personal essays, photos, videos, social media projects, or any other creative method of storytelling on a topic related to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to email editor@upwordmichigan.com with a pitch describing the story you want to tell, how you plan to tell it, and why you think our audience will be interested.