The Three Forces That Killed ‘The Ann Arbor News’

Fitz: When newspapers die these days -- and we’ll be getting plenty of practice writing their obituaries, it seems -- their closings are often put in the very general context of the industry crisis with its challenges from the Internet, etc.

But there is, as the great 19th century Chicago columnist George Ade wrote, “a specific bacillus for every known disease.” In the case of The Ann Arbor News, which is closing in July to be replaced by a mostly Web business with a TMC and a twice-weekly print paper, three factors conspired in its doom – its state market, its home market, and its family owners.

Michigan’s economy might have been the heaviest death blow. The brutal recession there that got going long before our national downturn has wreaked havoc on all Michigan papers, especially those nearer Detroit. The Michigan cluster essentially forced Journal Register into bankruptcy, and the Gannett-controlled partnership of the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News adopted the radical step of halting home delivery most of the week in its attempt to stanch the bleeding.

Then there’s the News’ local market, the heavily wired town that’s home to the University of Michigan. A highly educated market was once an unalloyed blessing for a newspaper. Now it’s a double-edged sword at best -- and, the News has apparently concluded, an insuperable challenge for print. The Michigan kids get their news on the Web, and so do their instructors. They’ve had broadband for years, and learned long ago to abandon the print news habit.  Like San Francisco, Ann Arbor is exactly the opposite of the market most likely to nurture a print newspaper: under-indexed in broadband and peopled with folks little interested in finding the next Twitter.

Finally, there’s the family ownership by the Newhouses -- another factor that has gone from being the surest guarantee of a stress-free newsroom to an unpredictable proprietor. Last year, the publisher of The Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J.,  threatened to sell or shut it down if 40% of newsroom employees didn’t depart. Monday, the publisher announced mandatory unpaid furloughs for those who stayed.

In a prescient posting last summer on his Reflections of a Newsosaur blog, Alan Mutter noted that at the same time the Star-Ledger was making the sell threat, the Copley family had decided to put its last remaining daily, the San Diego Union-Tribune up for sale.

“With the publishers deciding, instead, to pursue potential exits at a time buyers are few and far between, the irresistible conclusion is that they foresee only a steady wasting of the assets they have held for multiple generations. Their willingness to consider dumping their papers at what most likely would be fire-sale prices amounts to a repudiation of the businesses that helped build their family fortunes.”   

By establishing this new hybrid Web-and-print business in Ann Arbor to replace the 174-year-old News, the Newhouse family is hanging on in the business -- but barely.

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[Jim]

The Fourth Force: The Ann Arbor News is an afternoon newspaper.