Running with an idea new for its time, he filled the paper with inexpensive advertising and instructed his reporters to write "like people talk".

His competitors called the News "a cheap rag" and labeled his reporters "pirates", but Detroiters loved it.

After a lengthy European acquisition tour, Scripps aided prominently in founding the Detroit Museum of Art (later, the Detroit Institute of Arts), in 1889 presenting it with a collection of old masters such as Cima da Conegliano's Madonna and Child, costing $75,000 (in 1889 dollars), among the first major accessions of early paintings for any American museum.

[1] A catalogue of the collection was published in 1889 and has been digitized by the Research Library & Archives of the Detroit Institute of Arts.

Together, George and "Nellie" also founded the world-renowned Cranbrook Educational Community in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.