Detroit Daily Press hiatus

Man, lack of advertising, press run problems and lack of distribution and sales ... what else is there?
Sounds like a lot of problems to fix. I'm surprised people are able to be paid.
Sounds like a tough venture. Why didn't you guys just start up the paper in Ann Arbor alone? Seems that would have been a way to make a large profit immediately.

Good luck to you all. New ventures are exciting but will they work?

 

If an affluent city like Ann Arbor with plenty of educated people a hospital, google, and U-M can't support a newspaper I don't know what city can.

 

Lot of things went wrong with Ann-Arbor Mustang. But I'm convinced a paper - properly run - (wishful thinking) could make a go of it there.

 

But you see, it did support a newspaper. The News wasn't doing that bad (compared to others) when it closed.


It closed to try something new in the industry. While that's not a bad thing, the replacement has left a void in many things that the News did.


And Droopy, I think I speak for the entire board: STFU.

 

I thought I remember the AA News going to the new version because Booth was doing poorly. That same day didn't all the papers in Bay City, Saginaw and Flint cut daily delivery, plus some other consolidations for their west side papers?

 

Well, if they don't come back, at least they left us with one great moment - the sports editor getting into a huge argument with the Lions PR staff on Thursday. The SE decided to question Matt Stafford's manhood because he didn't call a quarterback sneak when the Lions had the ball on the Packers 1.

It was a very strange angle, since Stafford was 1) playing with an injured shoulder, 2) doesn't call the plays and 3) showed no reluctance to run the ball at other points in the game. No one said anything to him when he asked Stafford the questions, but the PR staff shut down an interview when he was trying to get a defensive lineman to criticize Stafford for not running a sneak.

Sadly, he didn't ask one of the offensive linemen. Dominic Raiola cursed some fans that heckled Stafford about a month ago. I would have paid to see his reaction to a question about Stafford's lack of courage.

 

Good luck, Peg and any one else giving this a go. I truly hope you succeed. And I hope you discover a formula for success that can be adopted at other papers.

I think if there is a 'magic formula' it will come from a start up instead of an established paper. So I really hope something good, for all newspapers and newspaper journalists, comes from this.

 

Sports is not the SE's strength. He's a longtime newspaper guy and more of a business writer than a sports guy.

And drippy, there are three people on this thread who know more about Ann Arbor and how its newspaper fits into and can fit into the community than you ever will. Ever. Stop.

 

Correct. That doesn't mean they were necessarily losing money though. BC/Sag/Flint may have been, but Ann Arbor was doing ok, as WolvEagle said earlier.




Back to the DDP, taking a hiatus now, means they lose out on Christmas ads. And then try to come back in a usual slow time for advertising revenue.

Hopefully, it does come back though.

A better distribution system and some sort of web presence (other than Facebook) would help a lot.

 

The Ann Arbor News was doing just fine. It was greed - nothing more, nothing less. I know. I was there for 21 years, and my final shift was six days before it closed.

Very simply put, Advance hired far fewer people at less of a salary for annarbor.com.

The Ann Arbor market supported The News. Period.

 

Million dollar question for those of you more familiar with this shop than I .....

Was this place charging for online stories or giving them away for free? If they were not charging, is there any indication that had anything to do with this initial setback?

 

It sounds like the good folks starting the Detroit paper should have taken their enthusiasm to Ann Arbor. Detroit doesn't make much sense. But Ann Arbor? How come you good folks didn't do this in Ann Arbor? You wouldn't have had to move too far away to kick some ass with a new print newspaper there.