Closure of Ann Arbor News leaves city newspaperless

Posted by Emily Dilling on June 29, 2009 at 6:34 AM

The shutting down of the Ann Arbor News next month will result in the first "no newspaper town" in the United States, the Seattle Times reported.

The paper's parent company, Advance, plans to launch an online news site called AnnArbor.com which is said to be a new project that will accept applications from former News staff members, but won't necessarily keep or rehire previous employees.

Poynter's Rick Edmonds reported that reporters and editors from the Ann Arbor News can reapply for positions with AnnArbor.com, "but the pay scale is being dropped to the mid-$30,000 range for reporters," a $20,000 drop for many from their original salaries.

Industry experts have speculated that the demise of Ann Arbor's newspaper industry is due to its literate, young, and tech-savy readers, who are less likely to subscribe to and regularly read newspapers.

Tony Dearing, content director for the nascent AnnArbor.com said as much in an interview explaining, "there are a lot of things about Ann Arbor that make it harder to succeed as a print daily paper. Print papers do a little better with an older audience and Ann Arbor is a little younger."