Press & broadcasting
Camille Cools
1874–1916 · journalist, newspaper founder
Flemish journalist who founded the Gazette van Detroit in 1914, the Dutch-language paper that served Belgian Americans for more than a century and outlived every other Belgian American newspaper.
- Born
Belgium- Died
- Detroit years
- 1900s–1916
- Field
- Press & broadcasting
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Cools was a Flemish emigrant who from 1898 wrote as a correspondent for Flemish newspapers about the Belgian communities in America. Detroit had one of the largest concentrations of Belgians in the United States, clustered on the city's east side, where they worked in factories, farmed and ran cafés with archery and feather bowling. On August 13, 1914, just as World War I engulfed Belgium, Cools published the first issue of his own weekly, the Gazette van Detroit. It gave the community war news from home and a shared voice in Flemish; after the war it merged with the rival De Detroitenaar and later absorbed the Gazette van Moline. Cools died in 1916, but the paper he founded kept going for more than a hundred years, reaching 10,000 copies in the 1950s, becoming monthly and then online-only, and closing only in 2018.
Highlights
- Correspondent for Flemish papers from 1898
- Founded the Gazette van Detroit on August 13, 1914
- The paper ran until 2018, the longest-lived Belgian American newspaper
- Circulation reached 10,000 in the 1950s
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 1
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Founded · 1914–1916
Gazette van Detroit
Closed · 1914–2018
Flemish-language newspaper founded by Cools in Detroit; in its last decades it was published from Roseville and went online-only before closing in 2018.