Ann Arbor Independent Wins Investigative Reporting Award for “Supreme Felons, Inc.”

On May 15, 2023 the Society of Professional Journalists announced that The Ann Arbor Independent had won an excellence in reporting award for its investigative series about a $1.2 million grant handed over to a Washtenaw County non-profit called Supreme Felons, Inc. The grant application submitted by the non-profit’s “president,” a murderer named Billy Cole, on parole from a life plus 60 year sentence, contained multiple fabrications. In Jan. 2023, Washtenaw County Administrator Greg Dill admitted to the Detroit News that he and all of the County Commissioners seated in July 2022 (when the award was made) knew the felon’s application contained fabrications. Nonetheless, the County Commissioners still voted to award $1.2 million in taxpayer money to the group.

Not only did commissioners refuse to investigate the fraud, they defended the fraud after it was revealed, and defended their votes in favor of awarding $1.2 million in taxpayer funds to Supreme Felons, Inc.

The Society of Professional Journalists has previously recognized The Ann Arbor Independent for excellence in investigative reporting for articles that revealed multiple county employees were going on taxpayers-funded trips to Las Vegas. Those articles revealed that county employees had stayed at casinos and treated themselves to $35 buffet breakfasts and expensive meals out. After the newspaper’s reporting, the trips to Las Vegas were investigated and curtailed.

In 2022, The Ann Arbor Independent was nominated for multiple reporting awards, including for a series of articles that exposed mismanagement at the County’s domestic violence shelter, SafeHouse. As a result of the newspaper’s reporting, the SafeHouse Board of Directors launched an investigation and the Executive Dir. of SafeHouse, Barbara Niess-May, was forced to resign.

Before her forced resignation, Niess-May made multiple public statements in which she said the newspaper’s reporting was “all false.” She is now being sued for defamation, along with the members of the SafeHouse Center Board of Directors. Several of the Board members embroiled in the scandal quietly left the Board after an outside investigator’s report concluded Niess-May had mismanaged the shelter and demonstrated long-standing lapses in judgement.

The Ann Arbor Independent competed in the Society of Professional Journalists’ “Digital” investigative news category and the “Supreme Felons, Inc.” series beat out the investigative reporting of several major news outlets, including The Detroit News, The Detroit Free Press and The Oakland Press, among others. Since its launch in 2013, the newspaper has won multiple awards for photography, arts reporting, design and investigative reporting.