About Outlier

Outlier Media is a Detroit-based service journalism organization. We identify, report, and deliver valuable information to empower residents to hold landlords, municipal government and elected officials accountable for longstanding problems. By keeping residents first, we hope to give more than we take, and leave people with the information they need to create change in their own communities. 

Candice Fortman (she/her), Executive Director

Candice Fortman has turned her love for all things media into a career focused on diversifying newsrooms and journalistic organizations to reach beyond traditional news audiences.

Before joining Outlier Media, Candice was the Marketing & Engagement Manager for WDET 101.9-Detroit’s NPR station. Candice led the effort to build WDET’s audience and grow the station’s digital communities and content by engaging listeners around news, music, and culture.

Prior to joining WDET Candice served as Promotions Manager at Clear Channel Radio (now iHeart Media) where she led promotional and engagement strategy for three radio stations inside the Detroit cluster for more than five years. In 2018 she was selected for Poynter’s Leadership Academy for Women in Digital Media.

Currently, Candice serves as the board president of the Grandmont Community Association. She is a board member of The Village of Bethany Manor-a senior living community and a member of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra Classical Roots Steering Committee.

If you’re interested in helping Outlier decrease information gaps and increase accountability in your community reach out to candice@outliermedia.org.

Sarah Alvarez (she/her), Founder and Editor

Sarah started her career in civil rights law in New York, but is much happier as a journalist than she ever was as a lawyer. Before founding Outlier Media, she worked as a senior producer and reporter at Michigan Radio, the statewide NPR affiliate.

In that role, she covered issues important to low-income families, child welfare and disability. Her work has been featured on NPR, Marketplace, The Center for Investigative Reporting, Bridge Magazine, The Detroit News, and The New York Times. Sarah believes journalism is a service and should be responsive to the needs of all people.

She developed Outlier’s model after years of trying to figure out how journalists could do a better job filling information gaps and increasing accountability to low-income news consumers. She launched Outlier in 2016, during her year as John S. Knight (JSK) Fellow at Stanford University. She lives in northwest Detroit. To get in touch with Sarah, please contact her at sarah@outliermedia.org or 313-643-5508.

Erin Perry (she/her), Managing Editor

Detroit native Erin Perry is a veteran journalist, editor and media manager. Her experience includes stints with the Scripps Howard News Service in Washington D.C.; Daily Press in Newport News, Virginia; The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk; Atlanta Journal-Constitution; Akron Beacon Journal in Ohio; and most recently, the Detroit Free Press, as a writer and editor. 

In her six years at the Free Press, she directed more than 1,000 students in Michigan’s largest scholastic journalism program of its kind. She trained high school journalists from Detroit public schools, leading them in producing a monthly citywide student publication during the school year. 

She returns each summer to continue in her decade-long role directing the Detroit Free Press Summer Apprentice Program for high school students and graduates – the program that helped launch her career some 20 years ago. She has trained more than 100 students to be reporters at this major market daily publication.

Perry is an adjunct instructor in Wayne State University’s journalism program. She uses her bachelor’s degree in journalism from Hampton University’s esteemed Scripps Howard School of Journalism and Communications and her master’s degree in teaching from the University of Michigan-Dearborn to teach news editing, news reporting, journalistic grammar and style, and public speaking. She serves on the university’s Student Publications Board which selects and advises the editors of the official student newspaper, The South End.

Joey Horan (he/him), Reporter

Miriam Marini (she/her), Reporter

Miriam is a breaking news reporter at the Detroit Free Press where she covers a wide range of topics. She graduated from Wayne State University in May 2020 with a degree in journalism and was a member of the Journalism Institute for Media Diversity. She has worked with the Detroit Metro Times, WDIV-TV 4, Metro Parent Magazine, and Newsday in Long Island, New York. When she’s not handcuffed to her laptop, Miriam can be found rollerskating through the streets of Dearborn where she lives with her family and beloved cat, Pop Pop. Tips and questions at miriam@outliermedia.org or mmarini@gannett.com

Our community – public service minded journalists

Most importantly, we work to serve and learn alongside our news consumers in Detroit.

Our work would not be possible without the help, support, and brainpower of public service-minded journalists like those at City Bureau, Hearken, Free Press, Project Facet, Flint Beat, Tyler Loop, VT Digger, Spaceship Media and so many more!

Outlier Media is a fiscally by MuckRock. We are grateful for the generous grant support from the Community Foundation of Southeast Michigan, News Integrity Initiative, Democracy Fund, The Facebook Journalism Project, the Dodge Foundation and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. This project was initially supported by a pilot grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

Outlier owes a particular debt of gratitude to the JSK Fellowship at Stanford University, Kimberly Springer, James Hamilton, Dawn Garcia, Jim Bettinger, Aaron Glantz, Andrew Haeg, Jennifer Brandel, and former colleagues at Michigan Radio; in particular Tamar Charney, Sarah Hulett, Vince Duffy, Jennifer Guerra, Dustin Dwyer, and Brittany Bartkoviak.