About
Confluence Great Lakes Bay Region is a digital news magazine focused on the dynamic communities, businesses, and residents across Bay City, Midland, Saginaw, and and places in between. We follow the flow of ideas and innovation, covering the people charting new channels and the projects creating new momentum. We report on the connections forming between communities and the energy that builds when different perspectives meet.
Our storytelling is grounded in solutions journalism – reporting on pressing issues like affordable housing, childcare, economic development, and community health with a focus on what’s working and what’s possible. These challenges matter universally across the region, even as people in each community have their own stories to be told. We recognize that our communities’ stories are interconnected, and that regional collaboration creates greater impact for journalism and the people we serve.
The name Confluence is evocative of the rivers that wind their way through the region, flowing into Saginaw Bay. The Tittabawassee, the Saginaw, the Kawkawlin – these waterways carved the landscape and connected our communities long before highways did. Just as rivers meet at their confluence to create something more powerful, our coverage explores what happens when the ideas, innovations, and stories of Bay City, Midland, and Saginaw flow together.
Confluence Great Lakes Bay Region launched in January 2026, uniting two community journalism institutions – Route Bay City (est. 2018) and Catalyst Midland (est. 2017) – into a stronger regional platform. We cover what’s next in entrepreneurship, creative culture, economic development, and community solutions across the region’s population of nearly 400,000 and are part of the Issue Media Group family.
Meet the Confluence team
Misty Barron, Managing Editor
Misty Barron is a Mid-Michigan native who has proudly called Midland her home for the past six years. She served as Editor-in-Chief for the Delta Collegiate, where she earned various awards for her writing, including Journalist of the Year in 2023 from the Michigan Community College Press Association. As Confluence editor, she brings a solutions journalism approach to regional storytelling. In her free time, Misty enjoys spending time with family and friends and enjoying all our beautiful state has to offer.
Contributors:
Kathy Roberts, Amy Hutchinson, Carly Lillard, Sarah Spohn, Denyse Shannon, Mikaila Bluew, and Jennifer Veitengruber
Contact us: contact@confluenceglb.com
About Issue Media Group
Confluence is part of the Issue Media Group (IMG) family. Founded in 2005, IMG operates a national network of online media outlets dedicated to solutions-based journalism that reports on community change. Our publications aim to connect readers to their communities’ most visionary and innovative people, projects, and organizations—fostering civic capacity, improving understanding of key issues, amplifying underserved voices, and building community attachment during a time of local media decline.
We work with like-minded stakeholders across public, private, nonprofit, and grassroots organizations whose values and missions align with ours. Through an underwriting model of publishing, our journalists connect with community stakeholders through regular listening sessions designed to build trust and and shape authentic community news.
IMG’s work has been recognized and supported by leading journalism organizations nationally, including the Knight Foundation, Solutions Journalism Network, Columbia Journalism Review, and the Society for Professional Journalists.
