Justine Lofton
Justine Lofton covers Northern Michigan travel, outdoor recreation and breaking news for the statewide digital outlet MLive, with a particular focus on how people experience the region’s landscapes, small towns and attractions in real time.
Northern Michigan travel and recreation
Lofton’s core work follows the places people go in Northern Michigan and what they will find there, from shipwreck sites off Lake Michigan beaches to new trailheads and scenic overlooks. She reports on projects like a $500,000 trailhead that marks the northern end of the long-distance White Pine Trail, explaining how new infrastructure changes access to hiking and biking routes for residents and visitors.
Her coverage highlights distinctive attractions such as a “nature megaphone” in a Upper Peninsula forest that invites visitors to sit inside and listen to the sounds around them, framing these pieces as both travel tips and portraits of local creativity. She often grounds these stories in specific locations, park units and trail segments, giving readers enough detail to plan a visit rather than offering only general travel inspiration.
Public lands, trails and lakeshores
A recurring thread in Lofton’s reporting is the management and evolution of public lands across Northern Michigan. She covers issues like temporary closures at places such as Miners Falls in Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore when deteriorating viewing platforms need replacement, outlining both the safety concerns and the expected improvements once work is complete. Her work tracks how national and state parks, forests and recreation areas adjust trails, overlooks and facilities to handle heavy use while protecting sensitive environments.
Lofton brings the same attention to shoreline sites and inland waters, frequently writing about lakefront access, shipwreck viewing spots and short detours that reward travelers with standout scenery. Short explanatory formats, including social video scripts, extend this reporting by showing when a quick stop along a driving route reveals the remains of a 131‑year‑old shipwreck or a striking lakeshore viewpoint, reinforcing her focus on accessible, on-the-road experiences.
Breaking news in a tourism-heavy region
Alongside feature coverage, Lofton reports breaking news that intersects with travel and everyday life in Northern Michigan. She has covered business developments such as a boat manufacturer shutting down its Cadillac plant that builds Four Winns and other brands, explaining what that means for local jobs and a community tied to the marine and recreation economy. Her breaking coverage extends to incidents and disruptions that affect how people move through the region, including vehicle-related emergencies and other urgent events surfaced through her broader news reporting background.
This mix of enterprise and spot news keeps her travel beat grounded in the realities of an economy built around tourism, manufacturing and outdoor recreation. Readers get not only destination ideas but also a clear sense of how industry decisions, safety issues and infrastructure projects shape the experience of living, working and visiting in Northern Michigan.
Storytelling across formats
Lofton works across written stories and short-form video, often using visuals from the field to complement her travel and recreation pieces. Her shipwreck coverage, for example, is repurposed into tightly scripted clips that show what visitors will see from specific beaches or overlooks, while still anchored in the reporting that runs on MLive. This cross-format approach allows her to surface niche attractions, trail changes and seasonal experiences to audiences who discover them on social platforms as well as through the main news site.
Throughout her work, she keeps the focus on practical detail and place-based storytelling rather than personal voice, making her coverage a steady guide to Northern Michigan’s parks, forests, lakes and small-town destinations as they change over time.
4 more automobile journalists.
Aarian Marshall
Aarian Marshall is a staff writer at WIRED who stands out for covering how cars, software, and policy collide. She writes on transportation systems and cities, from the auto industry to broader mobility systems. Before WIRED, she reported on cities and urban policy for The Atlantic’s CityLab. Her beat runs from electric vehicles, fuel prices, tariffs, and car-buying decisions to autonomous vehicles, robotaxis, and software-defined cars. She reports with a systems view, linking policy shifts, technical failures, and urban life to what happens on streets, in repair shops, and at the pump.
Adrian Leung
Adrian Leung writes engineering-led coverage of Chinese electric vehicles and performance cars for CarNewsChina. He focuses on new energy vehicles, battery systems, powertrains, electric platforms, high-end domestic brands, and track-ready models, and he explains technical details in plain language for non-specialist readers. His reporting treats new models as hardware and systems stories, with precise figures on range, battery capacity, chassis layout, motor outputs, weight, and acceleration. He also covers the Chinese auto industry’s finances and technology roadmap, including sector profits, vehicle volumes, and solid-state battery timelines. His background in Electrical and Computer Engineering shows in the way he writes about vehicle electronics and battery management.
Al Pefley
Al Pefley is a television news reporter for CBS12 News whose work centers on how laws, law enforcement and local decisions shape everyday life for drivers and other residents. He reports in a general assignment role but returns often to transportation, public safety and pocketbook issues, treating driving as a point where policy, disability and policing intersect. His coverage includes driver-focused laws, fuel and tax policy, crime, policing and internal affairs findings, with a consistent focus on accountability and concrete consequences for people’s wallets, safety and trust in institutions. He explains county gas tax debates, campaign positions on teacher pay, property crime and retail theft in short, clear segments. Pefley works primarily on the scene, using live or recorded field reporting and interview-driven pieces to show what happened, why it matters and what comes next.
Aliza Savira
Aliza Savira focuses on the hidden financial costs of owning modern cars, especially how insurance can undermine expected savings. She writes about automobiles for MSN, looking at new technology and electric vehicles through everyday ownership rather than showroom appeal. Her work highlights the gap between promises of cheaper running costs and the full financial picture of owning a vehicle. In electric vehicle coverage, she treats insurance premiums as a key ownership problem that can erode long-term value. She stays close to practical questions drivers face, such as which recurring costs matter most after purchase. She reports on how insurance structures and premium levels interact with new automotive technology. Her beat is consumer-focused automobile reporting, with a clear, utilitarian lens on ownership experience, recurring expenses, and risk, rather than lifestyle or performance.