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Ann Arbor, the land that newspapers forgot

Wednesday, October 07, 2009

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Ann Arbor

A correspondent from the New York Times recently came to the Ann Arbor area and found it's number of newspapers somewhat lacking.

Excerpt:

This past week, I visited a place that newspapers forgot, or was it the other way around? While working on an article about Time Inc.�s decision to parachute into Detroit for a year, I tried to get used to the fact that the newspapers there get delivered only three days a week and the other days, it is tough to find them. Too bad, because between a city where stories seem to lie around every corner and with such a really talented bunch of journalists on hand, it would be nice to have a newspaper plop into the middle of things more often. But as Richard P�rez-Pe�a points out, newspapers are deathly ill, no more so than in a place like Michigan where the implosion of the auto industry has created collateral damage in all sectors of the economy.

And then I went to Ann Arbor over the weekend to watch Michigan take on Eastern Michigan at the Big House. Ann Arbor seems like a perfect newspaper town: a highly educated populace, abundant retail and a major university that would seem to be the source of endless town/gown stories. But the Ann Arbor News, which has come out under various names since 1835, shut down as a newspaper in July and was replaced by AnnArbor.com, a Web site with a print version that comes out twice a week.

Read the rest of the story here.