About 113,000 people live in Lansing, and more than a half-million people live in the Lansing metro region and either work, shop, or in some other way frequent the Capital City.

The Detroit Free Press, Michigan’s biggest newspaper, has insulted them all.

Freep Editorial Page Editor Nancy Kaffer penned a column published Monday in which she called Lansing “a sad little town” and suggested the state move the Capitol to Detroit.

She was wrong on both counts.

While not nearly as big as Detroit, Lansing is a bustling metropolis — the state’s third-largest metro region — full of arts and culture and industrious residents who care about their town and work every day to make the city a better place. That’s not sad in any way, and it was wrong for the Free Press to disparage an entire city and its people.

Graham Couch, a Lansing State Journal sportswriter who frequently contributes to the Free Press, wrote in a column answering Kaffer’s writing and published by the Freep that “the shots fired at Lansing were laced with disdain and BS and, given the size of Kaffer’s platform and how often people ignorantly punch down at (Lansing), the column cannot be ignored.”

Lansing Mayor Andy Schor, his own Free Press piece, said Kaffer’s “column, even if a joke, chose to spread negativity. The governor created a task force to find ways to get more people to live and work in Michigan. We’re certainly not going to do that by tearing each other down or through ill-informed editorials that call any of our cities ‘sad.'”

We agree with both Couch and Schor.

Lansing has been the state capital since 1847, when famed architect Elijah Myers designed a beautiful statehouse full of incredible architecture and symbolic art. The state recently invested in the Capitol facility to add a new welcome center that improves security and provides the tens of thousands of schoolchildren who visit the Capitol every year with new educational opportunities.

The statehouse should stay where it is.

We’re glad Kaffer has pride in her hometown, and, certainly, one could make some academic arguments for moving the capital. We’d disagree with those arguments, but one could make them.

But one doesn’t have to discredit an entire town and its people to make one’s point, even if that point is tongue-in-cheek. Doing so only undermines any academic arguments one makes.

We’re glad the Free Press gave space to Schor and Couch to answer Kaffer’s ill-advised writing, but we think the Free Press should formally retract Kaffer’s piece and issue an apology to the people of Lansing.