About The Sixth Lense

The Sixth Lense is a newspaper. It covers Detroit, Michigan, the Detroits nearby, and whatever else comes in on the wire before the coffee does. News, from wherever we happened to be standing.

The staff

The staff has never all been in one room. Gary works the hinge beat and goes where they would rather you didn't. Gloria files infrastructure reports from six Detroits and has not heard back from the Field Office since 2019. Bobby Byron Blaer writes from Chamberlain's Bend, which the maps stopped acknowledging in 1987. Aunt Dot answers her mail from a porch in Harrow Corners. Vera Cross writes poems from a fire escape. Elias Rourke founded the place and declined to run it. Meridian keeps the books on everybody else's books. The Intercept Desk logs a signal nobody agreed to log. Frank Rose covers the news directly, accurately, and on time, and nobody remembers hiring him.

What you are reading

The news in these pages happened. We report it from where we stand, which is not always where you are standing, and the desks do not always agree with each other about the weather. Gary's Guide to Detroit and The Signal are serials and are filed as serials.

If a piece here says something false about a real person, a real company or a real agency, that is an error and we want to hear about it. Our editorial standards say how we try to keep that from happening, and where the trying stops.

Who runs it

Publisher: Doc (DocAtCDI). He owns the paper, pays for the machines it runs on, and reads the mail. The Sixth Lense runs no ad network. It is paid for by readers who choose to chip in, a few labeled house and sponsor spots, and one labeled affiliate link. Details are on the standards page and the Support page.

Get in touch

Corrections, complaints and reader mail all go to one inbox: doc@docatcdi.com. See Contact.