It's the 150th anniversary of The Detroit News

One hundred and fifty years ago, on Aug. 23, 1873, The Detroit News made a humble and low-tech debut when founder James E. Scripps rolled a few thousand copies off a small printing press in rented space on Shelby Avenue.

James E. Scripps

Scripps envisioned a newspaper for the masses. So at a time when most other papers cost a nickel and served an elite audience, he charged just two cents for The News. He ordered his staff "to write the paper as people talk in conversation."

From day one, Scripps declared his newspaper independent of all influences — except for the truth.

We've carried that commitment through 150 years, and through monumental changes in the newspaper industry and in our hometown.

For a century and a half, The News has been an everyday chronicler of the history of Detroit, and of the world.

If you've followed our anniversary coverage over the last 150 days, as we've shared some of our favorite front pages, fun facts and newsreels, you've seen just a slice of that chronicle. Detroit News reporters were at the scene of President John F. Kennedy's assassination, embedded on battlefields as far back as the Spanish American War and on more than one expedition to Antarctica.

We've covered the triumphs and the tragedies, the heroes and the villains, the notorious and the glorious.

Along with informing the community, we've also been part of making it better. In the 1920s, The News trucked in fish to feed the hungry and distributed ice during a streak of hot summers. With our readers, we raised the money to build the Nancy Brown Carillon on Belle Isle, the little railroad at the Detroit Zoo and to relocate historic Mariners' Church on the riverfront.

Each generation has brought new technology to help us better tell those stories. The News was a pioneer in aerial photography, produced the first commercial radio broadcast, and in 1995 became one of the first newspapers to move its content onto the World Wide Web. Today, 3 million to 5 million unique visitors each month come to detroitnews.com and our app.

Whether the newspaper lands on your porch, your computer screen or your phone, it all starts with teams of dedicated reporters, editors, designers, producers and photographers.

The faces of those journalists have changed over the decades, but their commitment to bring our readers stories that inform, inspire and entertain has not. Every day, across the state and nation, they work to shine a light into dark corners and answer James Scripps' call to produce a newspaper noted for its usefulness to the most loyal subscribers in the nation.

The mission is the same. "We are in relentless pursuit of the truth in Michigan with an especially sharp focus on Metro Detroit," said Kevin J. Hardy, managing editor of The News. "We seek to hold those in power to account and do. We listen and reflect the voice of the people."

A few decades back, a clever advertising executive came up with a tagline for The Detroit News that was true then, true today, and we promise will remain true as we move into the future:

"If you read The News, you know."