by Mark Silva and updated
It isn't only the auto industry that's struggling in Michigan.
The newspaper business is in serious trouble.
And this is not good for America.
As someone who spent some of his most memorable early years in the business in Michigan, at the Muskegon Chronicle - it took me four hours to get there from Saginaw - and who once traveled to corporate headquarters in Ann Arbor for some management screening which included a couch-session with a psychiatrist - which could be considered essential to continuing work in journalism today - we could not help but wince at today's news of the Ann Arbor News ceasing publication.
The paper's only been in business for 174 years.
Its replacement: A "Web-focused community news operation built from the ground up.'' AnnArbor.com plans to offer "print editions" twice a week, but they will not be the same as the old paper. The Newhouse family's Advance Publications, which now own the old Michigan chain formerly known as Booth Newspapers, also is cutting the print editions of a few sister Booth papers, the Flint Journal, Bay City Times and Saginaw News, to three times a week.
"The Ann Arbor News was struggling as a daily print newspaper, with steep losses in 2008," a spokesman says. "At the same time the demand for local news and information in a wired community has never been stronger."
The Detroit Free Press and Detroit News also plan to cut home delivery to three days a week. There was a time when anyone aspiring to a future in journalism in Michigan was eyeing the Free Press as the place to work.
These trends are not isolated to Michigan.
They follow the Hearst Corp. ceasing printing of its Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper, becoming online-only.
Sources tell us Gannett Co. has the same future in mind for the Tallahassee (Fla.) Democrat, which has laid off senior staffers, in a state which once boasted one of the most robust newspaper businesses and where the separately owned Miami Herald and St. Petersburg Times have now merged the state capital bureau which yours truly ran for 15 years for the Herald.
However, Patrick Dorsey, president and publisher of the Democrat, writes to assure us that his company has no such plans for stopping the presses and moving to the Internet.
"Nothing could be further from the truth,'' Dorsey writes. "While we have suffered in the economic downturn like the rest of the industry, we still maintain a strong newspaper and strong financial results. We make a reasonable profit now and see no reason we will not continue to contribute to the company as a whole. It would make no sense to close down a solid performing unit.''
Back in Michigan, where the old Chronicle recently jettisoned some of its most senior staffers with generous farewell packages - people with whom we worked many years ago -- editing and production work for the Booth-sisters Chronicle, Jackson Citizen Patriot, Grand Rapids Press, Kalamazoo Gazette and Muskegon Chronicle will be "consolidated in Grand Rapids" this summer.
That means senior people are leaving.
For anyone who believes that an independent Fourth Estate is essential to the integrity of American government, be it local, state or national, none of this bodes well for the future of good government or an informed citizenry.
The worst recession in modern times, it seems, will take a certain toll on not only the American economy, but also on American society.
Comments
I wonder if there was as much emotion when we said good-bye to the telegraph !! I sure hope not !! It is such a waste of good sentimentality !!
SUPPORT OUR TROOPS, BRING THEM HOME, ALIVE AND WHOLE. NOW.
Posted by: Don Fitzgerald, America | March 23, 2009 12:59 PM
I started my newspaper career 50 years ago. I recently sold a weekly newspaper in northern Calif. that I owned and operated for 16 years. The buyer has faith that community papers can survive, even thrive. Of course, I believe that, too.
Nevertheless, your last paragraph is chilling, because the little weeklies do not have the resources to do the traditional work of the Fourth Estate beyond their small locales.
Posted by: Mike Wenninger | March 23, 2009 1:37 PM
"For anyone who believes that an independent Fourth Estate is essential to the integrity of American government, be it local, state or national, none of this bodes well for the future of good government or an informed citizenry."
Do these full-of-their-own-importance Swamp writers really, truly believe that they're essential to the well-being of the nation? Outside a mental institution, do any non-journalists seriously believe this?
And does anyone believe that the cover-up artists at The Swamp are "independent" when it comes to Obama?
Posted by: Axelrod | March 23, 2009 2:22 PM
My journalism career begain in the mid-'90s, a time when it looked like the daily newspaper was going to be around for a long, long time and two newspaper towns were on the up, not the down. While I'm sad to see papers such as the Ann Arbor News go, it does not mean quality journalism goes with them.
Dead trees were always a poor format for telling the stories of the day and I don't mourn their passing. Today we can tell news faster, better, and with MUCH less political slant than we could back then. Would that all the reporters recognized that.
An independent Fourth Estate is essential to the integrity of American government, but it's not written in stone anywhere that it has to be bankrolled and published by wealthy people that purchase ink by the barrel. The web is brimming with news and places like the Ann Arbor News and Seattle Post-Intelligencer have a real shot to plant the serious reporting flag in the internet wilderness. We should cheer them on instead of lamenting the loss of their old paper form. It's a brave, new World and I, for one, am excited to be in it.
p.s. It is ENTIRELY unsuprising to me that one of the swamp's least-read posters, Don Fitzgerald, would celebrate this news. This is a man who believed that Edward Liddy was in charge of AIG before the initial bailouts. That pretty much says it all.
Posted by: Jeff | March 23, 2009 3:56 PM
Axelrod -- um, hello, yes, the media IS important. It's how information is disseminated. Without the media to report on the goings on in government, how would the people know what was happening?
Posted by: SouthSideD | March 23, 2009 4:22 PM
Southsider, there is NO licensure or designation of what makes someone a member of the media. Drudge or the regular poster from the Huffpo enjoys just as much right to "disseminate information" as Silva and Rank James.
That's why it's so important to keep governments hands out of the media, if we lose a truly free press through "bailouts" than the citizenry and citizen journalism will take the biggest hit and the government will reap the biggest reward.
That's also what makes me so excited about our new forms of communication, information is becoming democratized again. It used to be there were three or four newspapers in every big city, now you're lucky if there's two. The media had begun to take a gatekeeper philosophy, thinking it was up to them to "judge" more and more of what was and was not news.
The internet has given us more news and information than a 2D newspaper page ever could. You should be glad, it's expanded the public service that is the working media 200-fold.
Posted by: Jeff | March 23, 2009 6:51 PM
Let the liberal papers bomb.
Posted by: Harold Reimann | March 24, 2009 2:13 AM