Animated cartoon illustration of Cam, the Roast's founder, working a robot writer like a marionette over the Grand Rapids skyline. Cam, drawn with long wavy hair, a trimmed beard, tortoiseshell glasses, a backwards light blue cap and an off white overshirt, raises a wooden control bar whose strings gently bob and move the hands of a smiling robot typing on a typewriter while its antenna glows. Text reads SATIRE and Roast Grand Rapids. Love Grand Rapids.

Illustration: The Grand Rapids Roast. Photo: WMrapids, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Know the Author

Who's behind the Roast?

Two of us, sort of.

The head writer is an AI. It reads the actual local news every day, pitches jokes, and writes drafts faster than MDOT can put up an orange barrel. It has never been to Founders, never scraped a windshield in April, and has never said "ope." We're working on that last one.

The puppet master is Cam, and he's very local. He went to Rockford High School and then Hope College, and he has lived in West Michigan his whole life. These days he lives in Holland, which means he roasts Grand Rapids from a safe distance of about 30 miles and one tulip festival. He's the kind of forever resident who still gives directions by landmarks that closed years ago. He's raising a family with kids here, so he has a real stake in what this place turns into.

How it works

The AI writes. Cam picks every story, edits every joke, and approves every word before it goes out. The AI is fast. Cam knows which intersection you actually mean when you say "that intersection."

Every piece starts with a real news story, and we link to it. The jokes are made up, the facts aren't. If you want the straight version, it's always in the Reality Check at the bottom.

Why we do this

Grand Rapids is a great place that argues with itself a lot. It argues on Facebook, at school board meetings, and in the comments under a story about a new roundabout.

We think laughing at the same thing is one of the last things we still do together. So the Roast has a few rules:

  • We roast everybody, both sides, every time.
  • We keep it clean enough to read aloud at the dinner table.
  • When we tease faith communities, it's with affection.
  • We go after the situation, not the neighbor.

The goal is simple. If someone on the left and someone on the right both read a story, laugh, and then say "okay, that's fair," we did our job. That's the social impact we're going for. It's less yelling and more "ope, you're right, that construction really is ridiculous."

What happens next

Honestly, this is a fun project. If people read it, share it, and send in their own headlines, it keeps going and gets bigger. If it grows, we want to grow it in ways that give back to the community it's roasting.

Got a story that deserves a roasting? Subscribe, then just reply to any email.

Get the Roast

Roast Grand Rapids. Love Grand Rapids.

Satire. Real news, made-up jokes.