AnnArbor.com lays off 14

That was actually the Free Press that broke that whole story - or non-story.

 

Mustang - It certainly wasn't a nonstory. DickRod led the U-M football team straight onto probation.

 

If you think the Free Press story was a non-story, I'm glad you're out of journalism.

 

They also used AP or rewrite (forget which now) on the state swimming championships, of which a local team won and their biggest school finished second. They also had pretty big previews during the week.

 

Hey, he's a UM fanboi.

This isn't a great parallel, but I do find it somewhat funny that the same fanbois that were ready to crucify the Freep and Rosenberg for anonymous sources, wholeheartedly accept those same anonymous sources in the Ohio State mess now.

 

I am told the sites that are scratching at annarbor.com also are sweeping some details under the rug.

 

I'm told they are dropping all preps coverage.

 

So much for being local, local, local.

 

So when Dearing says they're focusing on more local news coverage, he really means less...

 

So, who covers preps around there now? That would seem to be a $izable niche to fill.

 

That would be a huge, huge mistake - and that's coming from The Ann Arbor News' weekend preps/nonrev college rewrite guy for two decades. There was tremendous interest in the prep coverage when I was there. No, not the same as U-M's major teams, but still very well worth the effort.

If that's the case, I'll be really curious to see the community backlash.

 

So apparently Pete Cunningham gets reassigned? I believe he was the main prep writer.




It was always weird with aa.com. They'd post their own stories, but they'd also have links to Freep or News stories as well as ESPN.com. That may have been their version of wire briefs, though, but still weird to see them posting links that would take them away from their site.