http://www.detnews.com/article/20090323/BIZ/903230407/Ann+Arbor+News+to+publish+last+edition+in+July++other+Michigan+dailies+to+downsize
Ann Arbor News to publish last edition in July; other Michigan dailies to downsize
Jaclyn Trop / The Detroit News
DETROIT -- Eight newspapers in Michigan will be downsizing come June, with half scaling back or closing their print publications in favor of
the Web and half consolidating certain operations and reducing wages and benefits for workers.
"The economic challenges are pretty horrifying in Michigan," said Steve Newhouse, spokesman for the Newhouse family's Advance Publications Newspaper Group, which owns the Booth Michigan newspaper chain.
The only newspaper to shutter its print publication will be the 174-year-old Ann Arbor News, which will publish its final issue in July and replace it with a new, Advance-owned online media company called AnnArbor.com LLC. The Web publication will feature more local news as well as community collaboration, publisher Laurel Champion said in a letter published Monday.
"The daily print format was not working," Newhouse said, noting the city's residents are "unusually tech-savvy."
Newhouse said "a significant number" of the newspaper's approximate 200 employees will lose their jobs. The Booth papers downsized last year through voluntary buyout offers.
The Flint Journal, The Saginaw News and The Bay City Times will publish only on Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays starting June 1.
Booth's properties in Western Michigan -- the Grand Rapids Press, Jackson Citizen Patriot, Kalamazoo Gazette, and Muskegon Chronicle -- will consolidate operations but continue to publish seven days a week. The region can support a full print publication schedule because it's "economically stronger" than Metro Detroit and other parts of the state, Newhouse said.
The Grand Rapids Press, the largest of the Booth Michigan chain's papers, with 310,000 daily readers, has reduced salaries and transferred more health care costs to workers. The paper raised delivery subscription prices recently and will likely do so again, according to publisher and Booth Michigan CEO Dan Gaydou.
"Even with a reduced number of pages, which reflects the economy's impact on advertising, we believe putting a print edition on newsstands and into homes is still of significant value," Gaydou said in a press release Monday.
In addition to wage and benefit cuts, the four Western Michigan papers will trim costs by centralizing accounting, technical services, advertising productions, editing and some customer call center functions, according to Kalamazoo Gazette Publisher Jim Stephanak.
Many marketing and advertising operations were consolidated in Kalamazoo earlier this year, he said.
Copy and design operations for the four papers will be consolidated at a central desk in Grand Rapids this summer. Stephanak also said the papers' printing, packaging and distribution systems also may be consolidated.
The news media, particularly the newspaper industry, has been plagued by bankruptcy, layoffs and downsizing as the economy worsens and publishers figure out how to adapt to a growing Web readership. Cost increases for fuel and newsprint coupled with lost advertising revenue have intensified the pressures facing print publications.
Last week, Detroit-based Crain Communications Inc. announced it would cut an unspecified number of jobs and shrink salaries by 10 percent for remaining staff at its 30 business publications around the world. It closed four titles -- Automotive News Europe, Business Insurance Europe, Wireless News and FinancialWeek.com -- earlier this month.
Advance, which owns 26 newspapers nationwide, including The Oregonian and The Times-Picayune, has instituted a pension freeze and mandatory 10-day furlough at most of its papers, Newhouse said.
