'Colbert Report' Talks Chelsea, Mich., Newspapers with Jeff Daniels

By: Miki Johnson Although The Daily Show?s senior-everything-correspondent Stephen Colbert has garnered his own show, ?The Colbert Report,? which mainly parodies television news shows, on Thursday night he turned his attention to a weekly newspaper in Chelsea, Mich.

Comedy Central?s fake-news anchor exhibited a penchant for background minutiae worthy of James Lipton?s questions on Bravo?s ?Inside the Actors Studio? when he quizzed actor Jeff Daniels on which local paper the actor prefers, going so far as to quote circulation figures.

Daniels, who grew up in Chelsea and still calls the 4,700-person hamlet home (after abandoning Hollywood), responded that he reads The Chelsea Standard over other local papers.

The approximately 3,800-circulation Thursday weekly, published by Heritage Newspapers, reports regularly on Daniels, mostly in stories about the Purple Rose theater he opened in 1991 and his big celebrity fundraisers, like the annual Comedy Golf Jam.

Heritage Newspapers President/Publisher Jim Williams declined comment to E&P on the ?Colbert Report? mention because he had not seen the Daniels interview.

Although Colbert didn?t specifically mention them as competition for the Standard, the Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News also have carried stories on the Michigan celebrity and his often-discussed choice to pursue a Hollywood career from the outskirts of Detroit.