Ann Arbor, Michigan is a great mid-sized city. It is a wonderful community – highly educated, middle class, a bedrock American town. And it now has exactly ZERO daily newspapers published. The last daily paper just shut down and has gone - in a much more focused fashion – to an online format. Read the article here.
This is unbelievable and a glimpse of what is coming soon to many more towns and cities across America.
It is still amazing to me that print based news organizations don’t get more love and respect as a “must have” in their communities. They are closing down and no one really seems to care. The business model crumbled faster than anyone expected. The costs went up. The revenues went down. The debt was too high. See oblivion.
Several years ago, a much respected writer at the Washington Post made a bet with me during the lockout. He said he bet that “newspapers would have more value than sports teams” and that “smart people would rather own a newspaper than a sports team” still in 5 years. I guess I am winning that bet and will have to pick a nice place for dinner and he will have to pick up the check.
I file this under sad news. I don’t like having been right on this one.
John Kent Cooke seems to disagree with you about the future of newspapers. He just bought three daily papers and ten weeklies. I personally hope that the Squire’s son is right in his analysis. Here is a link to the Post article, with I originally read in my paper based subscription over my Sunday breakfast (passing the laptop is just not the same as sharing a section of the real paper)… http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/24/AR2009072404266.html
People do care about daily news. In fact I say they now value hourly news, if not minute news. What they don’t care about is paper as the delivery vehicle. The highly educted, middle class of Ann Arbor still values daily news about their city, it’s just that they, the market, have voted with their feet, and prefer to get that news online. The Ann Arbor Gazette may succeed or fail at providing that news online, but rest assured if they fail, the market WILL provide another alternative. AT&T was a telegraph company first. Media organizations will make the transition too.
Having spent more time in Ann Arbor than any city I haven’t live in, and knowing many of the fine journalists now out of jobs at the AANews, I can say that there is no joy in the newsPAPER’s closing. Newspapers still make money. But the 15-22% profit margins they enjoy until just a few years ago have disappeared, and greedy corporate owners have jumped ship to benefit stockholders rather than the public. Hey, that’s business. But it’s not good democracy. I look at (and to) media companies like the Washington Times and editors like John Solomon. The WashTimes is distributing content on multiple platforms and creating new business models the entire industry should be watching. Print has served us well for more than five centuries. It has had a great run. But like trains, which are about transportation (NOT about trains), media is about news and information, not the distribution vehicle. Still, Ann Arbor is not well served by the loss of its print vehicle so quickly. Even Mike Knubble and Brendan Morrison would probably agree!
It is very sad. You miss so much trying to read a digital edition. but the larger newspapers like the NY Times and such will never die (I hope….)