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.
Abby Smith
Abby Smith’s most distinctive work combines motorsports coverage with live digital and radio reporting. She is Digital Director at KRDO13 and covers the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, including race updates, weather shifts, breaking developments and ways to follow the action. Her beat also includes automotive news, crime, public safety, politics, city government and community life. Notable work includes coverage of homicide arrests, a major drug bust, a presidential address about the war with Iran, a family’s effort to bring Stephen Hubbard home, a state governor candidate and a city security ordinance. She also reports on fitness, school spirit and station staff. Smith writes in a concise, factual style shaped by investigative documentary experience. She turns live events, official announcements and daily developments into clear coverage across digital and radio platforms.
Adele Peters
Adele Peters covers climate solutions and other structural problems as design and policy questions, focusing on what can work in practice. She is a senior writer at Fast Company, where she reports on energy, transportation, housing, materials, agriculture, corporate sustainability, and social impact. Her stories examine climate technologies, grid resilience, electric vehicles, renewable energy, modular construction, homelessness, affordable housing, compostable materials, regenerative agriculture, and ecosystem restoration. She looks at whether projects can scale, their real-world constraints, and their measurable effects. She interviews political and philanthropic leaders, startup founders, and climate tech entrepreneurs, anchoring stories in what is being built and tested. She has written more than 3,000 stories and contributed to Worldchanging: A User’s Guide for the 21st Century and State of Housing Design 2023.
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.