Michigan's Ann Arbor News plans to close in July and be replaced by AnnArbor.com, an online site that will produce news and other content for the Web on a daily basis and in a print version twice-weekly, The Detroit News reported Tuesday.

The closure comes amid a series of other Michigan papers announcing cancellation of home delivery, reduced wages, or shut downs. The Flint Journal, the Saginaw News and the Bay City Times will from now on publish print editions on Thursdays, Fridays and Sunday partnered with daily Web editions. Other Michigan papers plan to continue publishing daily, while consolidating some operations and reducing employee pay and benefits.

Steve Newhouse, a spokesman for the Newhouse family's Advance Publications Inc., which owns many of the affected newspapers, told The Detroit News that "the economic challenges are pretty horrifying in Michigan."

Michigan leads the United States in unemployment, due mostly to being the home of the struggling U.S. automobile industry, and is seeing a similar decline in daily print publications.

News Industry analyst Ken Doctor called the trend a "parallel downturn" and told The Detroit News that "everyone is trying to figure out the next generation business model. For carmakers, they'll tell you it's hybrid technology. For newspaper companies, it's moving to the Web while holding on to print."

The 174 year-old Ann Arbor News will be the only one of Advance Publications' titles to stop publishing entirely. The publishing company, which owns 26 papers nationwide, has instituted a pension freeze and mandatory 10-day furlough at most of its papers.