On May 5, 1831, Michigan’s oldest continuously published newspaper, the Detroit Free Press and Michigan Intelligencer, hit the streets. At the time, it was a weekly made up of four pages. The first edition announced the politics of the newspaper: Democratic.
“The Democratic citizens of this territory, having found the two newspapers already established here completely under the control of the city aristocracy, have been compelled to set up an independent press,” wrote Publisher Sheldon McKnight in the first editorial.
The name of the paper changed in 1835 when it became the state’s first daily, the Detroit Daily Free Press. In 1836, McKnight sold the paper, nine days after he was acquitted of a manslaughter charge stemming from a brawl in the Bull & Beard’s Saloon.
Source: Michigan Every Day