AnnArbor.com lays off 14

This is the knock against a college town newspaper? That it was too aggressive toward the local golden goose?

I'll take that over the more widespread alternative any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

 

Let's see if they go after their own with even 1/10th the zeal they went after a guy they clearly did not like. And when I use the word "they" I mean the media in that state in general, but in particular those who covered Me-Chicken and quickly decided Richrod was the devil and an outsider.

 

exactly

 

Finally, a comment from Tony Dearing, chief content editor. (found via someone on facebook)


"While personnel issues are an internal matter and we don't discuss them publicly, I can confirm that we reorganized our newsroom this week to put our focus more squarely on local news coverage. As a new organization, ...we have tried a lot of things. Now that we are well into our second year, the community has told us very resoundingly that what it wants most from us is hard news coverage, particularly in the areas of government, education, police, courts, health, the environment, University of Michigan sports, and business.

"These areas of coverage account for all but a tiny percentage of our readership and revenue. Meanwhile, we also have put a lot of effort toward other things -- including lifestyle topics like Passions and Pursuits, The Deuce, Homes and some areas of Entertainment coverage -- that our community has shown much less interest in, and we are scaling back in those areas.

"We have made tremendous progress since we launched, and we continue to be very happy with the growth we're seeing in audience and revenue. But from the beginning, we said that we would be shaped by what the community wants, and the community wants us to focus more sharply on local news reporting.

"We have repositioned ourselves to throw our energy and resources into our local news coverage and that is how we will operate moving forward as we continue to grow."

 

Then when a local business like Borders tells you to go pound sand up your ass when asked about its own layoffs and restructing, you'd better retreat with your tale between your legs.


Getting rid of 14 people, including an award-winning photographer, puts the focus on local news coverage -- how?

 

Zag - When I was on The Ann Arbor News' sports staff, I took pride in the fact that we didn't drink the maize and blue Kool-Aid. We were fair and we were accurate - two things you look for in any newspaper.

Yes, lots of people wanted us to kiss U-M's ass. We did not. I, for one, will never apologize for that.

Also, the athletics and academics investigation wasn't about RichRod. It reached back well before him, and it touched on the entire department, not just football.

 

Nothing like saying you're going to focus on local news coverage - which you already have been doing - then cutting your staff. Huh?

And, nothing like cutting your local sports presence, either. Two of the part-timers who were let go covered preps. Plus, aa.com didn't have the decency to let Jeff Arnold finish the U-M hockey season. On Saturday night, U-M beat Bowling Green to finish their CCHA playoff series AT YOST - and aa.com didn't send anyone. Uh, you can walk to Yost from the aa.com office, though it is a bit of a walk.

This is complete bulls---.

 

The lifestyle topics they mentioned were going to be losers from the start in their format. Back in the day, the Homes section might have been a cash cow for ads as a print product, but did anyone care about the filler articles in that section?

Focusing on that stuff online was a mistake. Also, what was The Deuce?

 

No offense to anybody intended about aa.com, but I've been booking my airline travel on that site for quite some time, so what's the URL?

 

nice...

 

Mary Morgan, a former Ann Arbor Newsie, wrote this analysis piece in her online publication, the Ann Arbor Chronicle. She did a good job.

http://annarborchronicle.com/2011/03/13/history-repeats-at-annarbor-com/

Also, another layoff was James Dickson, a general assignment news reporter.

 

A little birdie told me that annarbor.com didn't even budget to cover the U-M hockey game Saturday night. It was a last-second "whoops" rewrite.