Skip to content
Verna Whitlock

No. 96 · Thursday 12 November 2026 · Detroit

Paper Trail

Free, every Thursday. Leave whenever you like.

In print and on air

  • The Eastside CourierThe reporter who turns a records request into a front page2026
  • Lakes Journalism ReviewWhy the city’s best contract reporting is a free weekly email2026
  • Riverbank RadioMorning panel: how to read a city contract before it is signed2025
  • Open Records QuarterlyThirty years, one city: a reporter’s habit of asking for the paper2025

Media kit

Who reads Paper Trail

A free Thursday letter on public records, city contracts and housing. Its readers are reporters, students of journalism, council staff and neighbours who want to know where the money goes.

  • X24Kfollowers
  • YouTube6Ksubscribers
  • Facebook11Kfollowers
  • Email list9.4Ksubscribers
Work with me
Verna at her cluttered newsroom desk with folders

Ages

  • 18–2414%
  • 25–3427%
  • 35–4428%
  • Other31%

Places

  • United States81%
  • Canada7%
  • United Kingdom4%
  • Australia2%

Rates

  • A sponsor’s note in one issue

    from$1,500

  • A commissioned story or investigation

    from$3,000

  • A panel, class or documentary interview

    from$800

Newsrooms, universities and film teams

Work with me

Tell me who you are and what you have in mind. I reply within a week.

  • Sponsor the letter

    A short note in one issue, set apart from the reporting and marked as yours. By inquiry.

  • Commissioned reporting

    A story for your newsroom or a film team, built on public records and a lot of phone calls. By inquiry.

  • Panels, classes and interviews

    Records, city contracts and housing, live or recorded, for newsrooms and universities. By inquiry.

Your message comes only to me.

This week’s issue

A city contract nobody read, and the one page that mattered

Forty thousand dollars a month for a service nobody could name. I pulled the contract, read it twice and found the one page that explained it.

No. 96 · Nov 12, 2026 · 9 min read

Stone courthouse steps on a wet grey morning

The vendor was paid on invoices the city never checked. For three weeks I followed the paper from a council agenda to a basement archive, and then asked who signed off.

This week I go through the records line by line, show you how to find the same pages in your own city, and explain what the official answer left out.

Plus: your letters about records offices, and the request that came back with every line blacked out.

Read: A city contract nobody read, and the one page that mattered

Hands sorting highlighted photocopied records under a desk lamp

Notes from the field

A morning in the basement archive

The clerk who knows where everything is, the folder that was filed under the wrong year and a tip about asking for a box.

No. 92 · Oct 15, 2026 · 8 min read

Shop

Press portrait of Verna in an olive field jacket

Verna Whitlock

Thirty years in Detroit newsrooms, and I still read the footnotes

I’m Verna. I started on the city desk of a Detroit daily in 1996 and spent most of three decades following contracts, housing money and the people who sign for both.

Paper Trail began in 2025 as a letter to a few colleagues. It is still free, still written on Tuesday night, and still one long read plus a note on how to ask for the records behind it.

Council chamber from the back row with residents in the front rows

Next issue: Thursday 19 November

Get the letter on Thursday morning

One long read on a public record, a few short notes and your letters. Free, and it always will be.

One email a week. Leave whenever you like.