Type
Online/Bi-weekly print (Thursday & Sunday)
Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc. D.B.A. Booth Newspapers, Inc.
Tim Gruber
John Count
1835[1]
July 23, 2009
2013
111 N. Ashley St.
Ann Arbor, Michigan
8,196 Daily
14,352 Sunday (as of 2022)[2]
History[edit]
Original publication[edit]
Published in Ann Arbor under various names from 1835 to 2009, The News was part of Booth Newspapers, owned by Advance Publications Inc. The News was published in the afternoons Monday through Friday and in the mornings on weekends and holidays. It published special sections throughout the year.
The newspaper ended its 174-year print run on July 23, 2009. The publisher blamed the loss of classified advertising revenue (which moved to Craigslist), and noted "the seven-day-a-week print model just is not sustainable here. We have very low home ownership. The population is transient and young. Those demographics have worked against us."[1]
Web site[edit]
The Ann Arbor News was replaced by a Web site, AnnArbor.com, which carried daily news stories and was accompanied by print editions on Thursdays and Sundays.[4][5] Of the 272 people employed as of the announcement of the paper's closing, "more than a dozen" were hired for AnnArbor.com.[1]
The closure also ended Livingston Community News, a free weekly newspaper for Livingston County published from 2003 to 2009 by the Ann Arbor News.[6]
The company closed the Ann Arbor Business Review at the same time and moved the weekly publication under the brand of AnnArbor.com.[7] Several employees of Ann Arbor Business Review were hired by the new company.
The Ann Arbor News is believed to be the first daily newspaper to fail in an American city with only one for-profit daily newspaper.[8] (A Monday-through-Friday paper, The Michigan Daily, is the student newspaper of the University of Michigan and is non-profit.)
Renaming[edit]
In 2013, AnnArbor.com was transitioned to MLive.com along with Advance Publications' other Michigan newspapers and renamed The Ann Arbor News.[9]