Monday, March 23, 2009
Advance Publications Folds The Ann Arbor News, and Changes Publication Frequency of Other Properties
Via Editor & Publisher:
CHICAGO — The Ann Arbor (Mich.) News, after 174 years, is folding in July and being replaced by “AnnArbor.com,” a new company that will publish a print newspaper twice a week and distribute a total market coverage (TMC) print product weekly, Publisher Laurel Champion told the newspaper’s staff Monday morning.
“While this is an incredibly difficult decision for us, this is by no means the end of local journalism in Ann Arbor,” Champion told the paper. The News is hosting community forums about AnnArbor.com on April 2 and 3.
The newspaper is owned by the Newhouse family’s Advance Newspapers.
Also today, three other newspapers owned by the Newhouse family’s Advance Publications — The Flint Journal, The Saginaw News and The Bay City Times — announced they are cutting print publication to three days a week starting June 1. Advance owns eight daily newspapers in Michigan.
Major announcements have also been scheduled at Newhouse’s dailies in Newark and Harrisburg, Pa. E&P has also confirmed that Advance is mandating 10-day furloughs and a pension freeze at nearly all of its papers (see separate story).
Editing and production work for Michigan’s four remaining Advance dailies — the Jackson Citizen Patriot, The Grand Rapids Press, the Kalamazoo Gazette and The Muskegon Chronicle — will be consolidated in Grand Rapids this summer, the Gazette reported.
Read the full story here.
