Detroit's Belgian newspaper shutters after 104 years
After 104 years chronicling Flemish life in North America, Detroit's Belgian newspaper the Gazette van Detroit will cease all operations by December, including its website.
The paper's print edition already disappeared in 2015. But for almost its entire history, the Gazette fought on as the only Flemish-American newspaper in the U.S.
"The 3rd and 4th generation descendants of our immigrant ancestors no longer read Dutch in large numbers," says the paper on its website when describing its past difficulties to stay afloat. "Nor do many retain active ties to Europe."
The Flemish region of Belgium — also known as Flanders — is located in the northern region of the country and is historically Dutch-speaking. Michigan has the second-largest contingent of Belgian descendants after Wisconsin, the majority of whom are Flemish.
Flemish immigrant Camille Fools founded the paper in 1914 after moving to Detroit in 1889. The paper's first articles mostly chronicled the events of World War I in Dutch for immigrants far from home.
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Over the years, the paper hit a series of financial hurdles. After a peak readership of about 8,000 in the 1930s and 1940s, the Gazette almost went defunct in 1974 when those numbers dropped by half. The paper rebranded as a nonprofit group and began publishing articles in English — until then it was written only in Dutch — but continued to struggle, cutting its print edition to once every two weeks in the 1990s.
Today the paper is staffed by volunteers, including a Belgian correspondent, who work to produce a monthly 24-page publication.
"The role that the Gazette plays wasn’t the same that it was 100 years ago," said Trui Moerkerke, a Belgian journalist who has worked on several articles for the paper. "I think it’s amazing what they did for more than a century, and it’s really a great accomplishment."