President Brewster called today’s meeting to order at the Lansing Center as we overlooked the Grand River and downtown on the river side of the building. The invocation was presented by Laurie Baumer and focused on the message of world peace which was followed by the singing of our National Anthem. Guests and visiting Rotarians were introduced and welcomed to the meeting. Chris Holman sprung big bucks to host 5 guests from China to our meeting. Chris also took a moment to remind us to sign up for the September 18 Golf Outing. Pat Munshaw provided the Remembrance Report and reported that the health of the Club is “superb”! Rich Schaefer provided an informative reminder about Loftus Day activities for our next meeting on September 8. Loftus Day is an 89-year tradition in our Club started by Frank Loftus in which we honor deceased Rotarians. There is a list of each committee and your committee chair will be contacting you about visiting the cemeteries on September 8 following our abbreviated Club meeting. During the meeting, we will honor Jack Bates. If you need flowers, please contact Rotarian Rick Anthony at Rick Anthony’s Flower Shoppe (517-484-5387). Ken Beachler introduced Adam Woolsey as our special music performer today. Adam has performed for the Club a number of times over the years and he recently was nominated for 3 Pulsar Awards from the Lansing City Pulse. He received nominations for each show he performed in this year! Adam is also a teacher at Jackson Lumen Christie High School. Adam performed with the amazing John Dale Smith and they highlighted two selections from She Loves Me, the upcoming musical at Riverwalk Theater in September. The show is a similar story to the Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan movie You’ve Got Mail but set in the 1930s. President Brewster thanked Diane Sanborn for serving as our Chair of the Month and as the Chair of the Day and turned the program over to Diane who introduced our speaker John Reurink, the Publisher of Michigan Information & Research Services (MIRS) and a longtime friend of Diane. John identified himself as a member of the media and offered to be called out at any time for “fake news”. MIRS was founded in 1961 by John McClellan. It started as a way to track bills through the legislative process and provide recaps of what happened at the legislature. In 1981, MIRS added a listing service. John purchased MIRS in 1996 when press coverage of the state Capitol was very different. All the Detroit television stations had Lansing bureaus, the Detroit News had 6 reporters in Lansing, the Free Press and Associated Press each had 4 reporters and MIRS had one reporter. Today, there are no television stations providing a Lansing bureau, there are 2 Detroit News reporters, 2 Free Press reporters, 1 Associated Press reporter and 4 full time and 4 part time MIRS reporters. MIRS is a business to business media company providing subscription services for legislative information to entities such as corporations, health care systems, school districts, multi-client lobbying firms, etc. They track 2-3,000 bills depending on the year within their database and provide analysis on the bills. They also provide real time floor action coverage, bill tracking, an alert system related to tracked bills and a Monday morning podcast service. In 1996, MIRS had 112 subscribers and today they have over 3,000. In a recent EPIC poll, 58% surveyed said MIRS covered the news of Michigan’s State Capitol the best. John answered some questions from Rotarians related to the evolution of term limits and a part-time legislature in our State. President Brewster thanked John for his presentation and thanked him for all the work being done by MIRS. There will be no meeting next week (September 1) due to the Labor Day Holiday. Our next meeting will be at the Lansing Center on September 8th for Loftus Day. See you then! |