US: How Ann Arbor, Mich., became a town without a newspaper

Posted by Liz Webber on June 24, 2009 at 2:53 PM

When the Ann Arbor News ceases printing in July, Ann Arbor will become the first US city with no daily newspaper. The publication as it exists now will disappear completely, although a new venture, AnnArbor.com, is set to take over local news on the web and will produce a print product two days a week.

In a column for Poynter's The Biz Blog, Rick Edmunds postulates on what factors led to the decline of the News in Ann Arbor, whose vibrant, educated community would appear to be the ideal location for a newspaper. Edmunds even goes so far as to suggest starting over with AnnArbor.com might not be such a bad idea.

So how did a university town with a population of 100,000 sound a newspaper's death knell? As Edmunds points out, via an interview on the blog Paper Tiger No More with AnnArbor.com content manager Tony Dearing, the young population works against the News in several ways. First, those readers are going online to get their news, not reading the newspaper. Moreover, a smaller percentage of home ownership and a population that's constantly changing make it harder for the newspaper to build a network of subscribers.

Edmunds also speculates that the University of Michigan's campus newspaper The Michigan Daily added to the troubles. A college paper can hold a monopoly on young readers and by extension the advertisers that cater to those readers.

However, the problems that led to the News' demise were not only local. As Edmunds describes, the News' parent company Advance Publications holds some of the fault. Financial troubles at two of the company's holdings in New Jersey seemed to come as a surprise. Comments on discussion forums on the News' current website MLive.com critique management for being out of touch with the community. Finally, Edmunds argues that Advance websites are notoriously clunky and difficult to navigate. For all of these reasons, Edmunds asserts its best to start from scratch with AnnArbor.com rather than salvage something from the original paper.

The 200 employees of the News who are about to lose their livelihoods may not feel quite the same. Reporters and editors will have a chance to compete for jobs at the new venture, but the number of positions will be far fewer and employees will take a pay cut.

Ann Arbor is not the only US city that will soon find itself with one less newspaper, nor is Advance the only company that has had to make some tough decisions regarding the future of its publications. The problems are not unique to the US either, as a recent report in the predicted half of the UK's local and regional newspapers will disappear by 2013.

The effect on news coverage in Ann Arbor remains to be seen. For the time being, AnnArbor.com's presence is a drab-looking blog with information solely about the site itself. A poll asks visitors what kind of content they would like to see in the new publication. It is perhaps telling that the number one response is performing arts coverage, followed by breaking news and politics/local government. It will be interesting to see what direction the new site takes once the News shuts down next month.

Two potential models for AnnArbor.com are INDenverTimes and the Seattle PostGlobe, independent web publications that sprang from the ashes of newspaper closures in their respective cities. Both rely more on local coverage than their print predecessors, and have received positive feedback from the community. While Ann Arbor is a different situation, since the web transition is planned and there is no other newspaper to compete with, it would be prudent for the new publication to take note of these successful examples.

Source: PoynterOnline