Dexter Township Might Drop Heritage Media as 'Newspaper of Record'

The residents of Dexter might have to look to a new media outlet for township government notices in the near future.

The Dexter Township Board of Trustees announced Tuesday night that it is considering a shift away from The Dexter Leader and The Chelsea Standard as the township’s newspapers of record and instead use the The Sun Times, based in Stockbridge.

Both The Chelsea Standard and Dexter Leader are owned by Heritage Media, a chain of local weekly newspapers covering Southeastern Michigan.

“This is about availability and the cost of availability to our residents,” township supervisor Pat Kelly said.

A newspaper of record is any publicly available newspaper that has been authorized by a government to publish public or legal notices such as meeting minutes.

Kelly said because The Sun Times is delivered for free to all of the township’s 2,500 households weekly, it is more readily accessible to readers than any of the other area publications.

If the township board votes to change its newspaper of record at its meeting on Aug. 16, it will join neighboring townships Lyndon, Sylvan, Stockbridge and Grass Lake, among others.

“We want The Sun Times to be the one-stop shop for all the communities we cover,” owner Robert Nester said.

The Sun Times News' announced a cooperative relationship with AnnArbor.com on June 20. The partnership increased the Time's circulation from 17,000 to 30,000, according to Nester.