Sarah Cwiek

6 days ago | michiganpublic.org | Sarah Cwiek

Does news content from traditional media outlets help Facebook's bottom line, or is it the other way around? That’s what researchers from the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business sought to pin down in a new study. To do that, they looked at what happened to overall Facebook engagement and content creation when the social media giant briefly stopped sharing news content in Australia in 2021.

1 week ago | michiganpublic.org | Sarah Cwiek

Detroit has debuted landscaping plans for the second phase of its effort to transform parts of some of the city’s most blighted neighborhoods into solar farms. The city has plans to create solar arrays in five neighborhoods. Officials say the whole process has been resident-driven, and neighbors were heavily involved in designing the natural buffer zones around those sites. Detroit City Council member Scott Benson said generating renewable power is a good use for the city’s vacant land.

2 weeks ago | michiganpublic.org | Sarah Cwiek

A 2019 deal between two companies that play a middleman role in the health insurance system was actually an illegal price-fixing scheme that’s helped drive some independent pharmacies out of business, according to a lawsuit Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel filed this week. The companies, Express Scripts and Prime Therapeutics, are pharmacy benefits managers (PBMs). Those companies help set drug prices, lower costs for insurance companies, and reimburse pharmacies for filling prescriptions.

3 weeks ago | michiganpublic.org | Sarah Cwiek

More than 200 immigrants have been detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) at Detroit’s Ambassador Bridge port of entry since January of this year, according to information obtained by Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib’s (D-Detroit) office. The number of detainees — which only reflects data through March 21, Tlaib's office said — has raised alarms among immigrant rights advocates and attorneys who say CBP is not equipped for long-term detentions.

3 weeks ago | michiganpublic.org | Sarah Cwiek

On Earth Day, ahead of the state-sponsored Michigan Healthy Climate Conference, advocates for clean energy gathered in Detroit Tuesday to denounce President Donald Trump’s efforts to roll back environmental protections, and called on state and local lawmakers to fight back. Bentley Johnson with the Michigan League of Conservation Voters said the Trump administration is “waging an all-out attack on clean energy” while trying to revive the most polluting fossil fuels like coal.