After 174 Years, The Ann Arbor News Will Close

Declaring that its "business model is not sustainable," the publisher of the venerable Ann Arbor News announced today it will cease operations as of this July.

The newspaper has been covering one of the nation's most important college towns and research centers continuously since 1835, the year Charles Darwin arrived at the Galapagos Islands aboard the HMS Beagle; also the year of the first assassination attempt against a U.S. President (Andrew Jackson).

The local media hub in Ann Arbor is now set to evolve into a new web-based company, called AnnArbor.com LLC, which also intends to publish a print edition twice a week. There will reportedly be many fewer reporters and editors employed by the new venture.

All over Michigan, one of the states hardest-hit by the current recession, local newspapers are cutting back their operations drastically. Today, three papers -- The Flint Journal, The Saginaw News and The Bay City Times -- all announced they are scaling back publication to just three days a week (Thursday, Friday, and Sunday).
This step mirrors that taken by the two dailies in Detroit, as we reported back in December.
It seems that Michiganders who don't have online access will no longer be able to count on any newspaper coverage on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, or Saturdays. So in case somebody in Motown wants to cover that old Beatles' classic, they may have to rename it "Three Days a Week..."
The four Michigan papers affected by today's announcements are all owned by Booth Newspapers, which is a subsidiary of Advance Publications (Newhouse).

Personal Note: I was born in Detroit, grew up mostly in Bay City, and graduated from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor as a journalism major 40 years ago this spring.