The event also included national, regional, and local media organizations, who were eventually allowed into Michigan Stadium. But I don’t think most members of the media really listened to his address.

The online New York Times ran at least four different headlines for the Obama speech. In this collage of screen shots, from the upper left, going clockwise: (1) "At a Graduation, Obama Defends Government"; (2) "President's Plea to Graduates: Be Civil"; (3) "At a Graduation, Obama Urges Openness and Defends Government"; (4) "Obama Assails Antigovernment Rhetoric." (Image links to higher resolution file.)

For example, I didn’t see any of these headlines, which could have been attached to an accurate account of Obama’s speech:

Obama Lambastes Media for Sound-Byte Coverage

Obama Takes Aim at Media for Stoking Conflicts

Obama Puts Blame for Coarse Discourse on Media

Obama Erupts But Does Not Confirm Ties to Volcano

The fourth alternative is based on a kindergartner’s question to the president, which Obama reported as part of his speech. That one is admittedly a stretch. It’s included for the benefit of an audience of two, perhaps three, local Ann Arbor readers who might crack a smile when they read it. [For those of you who don't know, Ann Arbor is building a "volcano" in the center of its downtown.]

The other three, however, are legitimate candidates for a headline that summarizes what the president’s speech was “about.” The venerable New York Times tried out at least four different headlines for a single online story on the Obama speech. But none of the NYT alternatives – nor those of any other media coverage I saw – identified as a significant theme of Obama’s speech the culpability of the media in the kind of “over the top” public debates that Obama said “coarsens our culture.”

That’s because I don’t think media organizations were paying attention to all of Obama’s speech the way they would have if they’d approached it like they were cutting up fish.

Slicing, Serving Obama’s Speech

Here’s an outline of Obama’s speech, which The Chronicle overlaid on its annotated version  of his transcribed remarks:

I. Introduction

II. America’s Voices

A. How Obama Keeps in Touch

B. Kindergartners

C. Niceness

III. Contentious Discourse

A. Origins in Current Crisis

B. Historical Context

C. The Nature of American Politics

IV. How to Preserve Democracy

A. Adapt Role of Government to Changing World

B. Maintain Civility

C. Participate In It

V. Conclusion: Calling Graduates to Action

Obama’s speechwriters probably worked from a different outline. But those are some slices that I thought would allow readers to chew easily through the material of the speech. So that’s the way The Chronicle served up the president’s address. The Chronicle’s headline: “Obama’s Michigan Commencement Speech.”

The Chronicle thus served it up relatively raw, and uncooked over the flame of analysis of what Obama was using the occasion to do. In this regard we took an approach to the commencement coverage similar to the approach a sushi chef takes to serving fish. The skill of the chef is not in the cooking but in the cutting.

I first encountered this kind of analogy in a 1989 essay by Japanese biologist Tatsuo Motokawa: “Sushi Science and Hamburger Science.” In that essay, Motokawa applies the comparison of Eastern and Western cuisines to the practice of science, but I think it’s applicable to the presentation of news as well:

A lot of skills are hidden behind the no-cook. This is really an art, and definitely a different kind of art than that found in Western cooking. Some Western cuisines are great: we taste the skills of chefs. Sushi is also great: we taste the materials themselves.

So Motokawa isn’t arguing for the superiority of Eastern cuisine over Western cuisine. He was simply pointing out the specific ways they’re different. Extending the analogy to scientific cultures, he describes the difference this way:

Western science is hypothesis oriented. A hypothesis is a personal interpretation using words about how universal rule works in a particular matter of interest. The hypothesis should be big: the final rule should be one, and therefore the biggest and most general hypothesis is the best one. This drives the hypothesis to become abstract. [...]

Eastern science is fact oriented. It tries to communicate with the truth, not through generality and abstraction as Western science does, but through specificity and objectivity.

So in presenting the text of Obama’s speech – sliced into an outline and lightly garnished with annotations – we took an “Eastern” approach. It was centered on the actual words of the speech, left intact.

It wasn’t perfectly “intact” – that is, we didn’t teleport the physical being of Obama through computers to re-deliver the speech right in front of Chronicle readers – that would be like offering a live fish and asking readers to bite into it. And it would taste terrible, unless you are a grizzly bear.

What Obama’s Speech Was About

Based on the outline, Obama’s speech was a standard graduation speech in theme, and fairly unremarkable and workmanlike in its organizational structure. It can be seen as a longer version of the standard five-paragraph essay that most of UM’s graduating seniors learned to write four years ago – in whatever class corresponds to freshman composition. Obama certainly introduced the three sub-sections under “How to Preserve Democracy,” with a strategy straight out of freshman comp – simple enumeration: “First of all, …” “Now the second way …” and “Which brings me to the last …”

But what was the meat on those bones of an outline?

Focusing just on the fourth section, the one we labeled “How to Preserve Democracy,” Obama talked first about how one key to preserving our democracy is to allow the proper role of government to change to fit the needs of the time. Rhetorically, the strategy for that first point was to emphasize the role historically of Republican presidents in “big government” philosophies: Abraham Lincoln (intercontinental railroad, land-grant colleges), Teddy Roosevelt (national parks), Lyndon Johnson (Great Society), and Dwight Eisenhower (national highway system).

The second crucial ingredient Obama identified to preserve democracy was civil discourse. He called for the debate to center on a common set of facts and for the debate to be civil. And he called on graduates to seek out a diversity of opinion among the various choices in the media that are available to them.

And finally, Obama called on graduates to participate in public life. That was the section that concluded with the one passage from the speech that has a chance of enduring for the ages, the one that likely gave goosebumps to the staunchest Obama supporters:

What is certain, what has always been certain, is the ability to shape the destiny. That is what makes us different. That is what sets us apart. That is what makes us Americans. Our ability at the end of the day to look past all our differences and all of our disagreements, and still forge a common future.

So if we analyze the significance of that “How to Preserve Democracy” section and try to identify the one salient theme there that’s headline-worthy, the possibilities produced by the New York Times for the same online story are, I think, reasonable candidates:

1. At a Graduation, Obama Defends Government
2. President’s Plea to Graduates: Be Civil
3. At a Graduation, Obama Urges Openness and Defends Government
4. Obama Assails Antigovernment Rhetoric

But there was more than one section to the speech.

What the Speech Was Not About

I think it’s fair to conclude that what Obama wanted the speech to be about was the fourth section. One clue, I think, is the presentational strategy of “First of all, …” “Now the second way …” and “Which brings me to the last …”

So the fourth section is what the author of the text wanted the speech to be about. But why should we trust the author of the text to tell us what it’s about?

Maybe it was about something else, too. Was it about U.S. Senators beating the crap out of each other? Well, no, although in the section on “Contentious Discourse” Obama alluded to a physical attack by Congressman Preston Brooks on Senator Charles Sumner in 1856. That came in response to a speech that Sumner had delivered against the Fugitive Slave Act. The speech had insulted one of the authors of the act, Andrew Butler, who was a relative of Brooks.

Was the speech about volcanoes? Not really. In the section on “America’s Voices” one of the questions Obama reported receiving from a kindergartner was, Do you live next to a volcano? But that was there clearly for comedic effect – Obama himself seemed tickled enough that he paused to work through a chuckle.

What Else the Speech Was About

But in that same section with the volcanoes, Obama reported another question: Are people being nice? And Obama’s remarks on that question went like this:

The media tends to play up every hint of conflict, because it makes for a sexier story, which means anyone interested in getting coverage feels compelled to make their arguments as outrageous and as incendiary as possible.

But that came right on the heals and in the same section clearly intended mostly to lighten the mood – it’s only kindergartners and their cute little funny questions, right? That’s not the “news” out of the speech, is it?

But the thread was continued in the meat-and-potatoes section that most the the media seemed to think the speech was about. Right there in the “Preserving Democracy Section”:

Today’s 24/7 echo chamber amplifies the most inflammatory soundbites louder and faster than ever before.

So I don’t think it’s unreasonable to conclude that Obama’s speech was also about the role of the free press in our democracy, and that the press in general might think a little more deeply about whether they’re “writing for the fight” or “writing for the right.”

In Defense of Occasional Journalistic Sushi

It’s certainly possible that I missed other journalists’ presentation of the media’s culpability in the coarsening of the public discourse as a significant theme of Obama’s speech.

If I did, then it’s likely because I was distracted by trying to practice the art of “journalistic sushi.” The hours after the president spoke I spent transcribing the speech as delivered and tracking down the various allusions in the speech that warranted some kind of annotation.

Part of the task of transcribing the actual speech would not, I’m fairly certain, seem very much like journalism to most conventional Western journalists. That’s the part where you determine whether the line I rendered as “Some of these letters tell stories …”  should have been transcribed instead as “Some of these st- letters tell stories.” Obama began with the hint of the /st/ for “stories,” saved it smoothly, and delivered “letters.”

It’s also the part where you determine whether to include the Obama trademark hesitation vocalization that seems to live somewhere in the glottal area and could be transcribed as “erm,” “ehh,” “aah” or the like. For Saturday’s speech that might have looked something like: “And so may I say, ehh, Go Blue!”

I opted against that, reasoning that most readers would be baffled.

I’m not suggesting that in general the “journalistic sushi” approach we used for coverage of the Obama commencement address is always the right call. In this case, the attention to detail gave enough time for reflection to include the annotated material as well as the in-line commentary.

But I’m content that someone who reads along might reasonably feel like a reader is supposed to feel when they read Chronicle material – as expressed in this publication’s tagline: “It’s like being there.”

Definition of bedraggled: Ann Arbor Chronicle publisher Mary Morgan, with White House Press Pool credentials, after a long day at Michigan Stadium. (Photo by Julie Weatherbee)

On Saturday, along with more than 90,000 other people, I was in Michigan Stadium amid the spectacle of the University of Michigan commencement, with the heightened drama surrounding the presence of President Barack Obama.

Despite standing in the rain for two hours, I was glad to be part of the orchestrated pageantry – it’s a perk to living in a city that’s got the pull of a major university, while still being small enough to score access to something that draws national attention. As the day wore on, the event also helped further crystallize for me some aspects of The Ann Arbor Chronicle’s journalistic mission. And because this is our publication’s 20th monthly milestone message, it seems a good occasion to reflect on that.

The most obvious point of clarity on Saturday was the difference between what The Chronicle typically does and what other media oranizations do – whether they are traditional or newly-emerging enterprises. The second observation is linked to some advice in Obama’s speech: Pay attention.

The Media Pen

If you’re a regular Chronicle reader, you know that our focus on local government coverage leads us to extended hours sitting in uncomfortable seats, listening to elected officials. In this way, our typical day (or often, evening) is not unlike the eight hours spent in Michigan Stadium on Saturday – uncomfortable seats, elected officials.

Of course, what differed dramatically from our typical work – ok, other than the fact that Barack Obama was 50 yards away – is that more often than not, we’re the only journalists in the room. These are meetings where the public’s business is conducted, but the public isn’t clamoring to attend. There are no murmurs of anticipation beforehand, no eruptions of applause when someone enters the room, no tight security.

It’s not glamorous stuff. It does not enhance social standing to say you just returned from covering a park advisory commission meeting – most people just tend to offer pity-filled stares, or tell you straight out that you’re a wing nut.

So it’s unusual to find us amid the crush of a media throng, as we were on Saturday. There’s an entire culture to it – and to the “handling” of the media that takes place as well. It’s a caste system, in part, made even clearer when the national media comes to town. I remember it clearly from my days working at The Ann Arbor News, but I had forgotten how much I’d disliked that aspect of the circus. [Funniest aside: Overheard complaints by some Washington media who apparently chose Buffalo Wild Wings for dinner on Friday, and who found the wine list there lacking in diversity. Heads up to BWW corporate management: A letter with suggestions about wine could be headed your way.]

That said, I’m glad I had the experience of hearing Obama’s speech in person, and of witnessing the excitement of the day. This will be a touchstone event for many, and I’m glad I was able to share in it.

I’m glad I could spend some time with photographer Myra Klarman and her husband Rich – Myra graciously agreed to shoot photos for The Chronicle, and one of the best things about the day was the chance to get to know her and Rich a little better. I’m even glad I had the experience of standing next to a grizzled photographer – not Myra – who, to my surprise, joined in as the UM graduates sang their alma mater, “The Yellow and Blue.” It wasn’t clear that anyone really knew the lyrics, including him.

But the day also served to remind me that there’s a reason we chose a different path when we launched The Chronicle, and affirmed for me the value in doing so.

Paying Attention

Obama began by describing some cute questions he’d received from a kindergarten class, segued into a discussion of “niceness,” and linked that to the historical context of our nation’s often raucous political discourse. Throughout, Obama threaded the theme of what it means to live in a democracy, and how as citizens, we have a responsibility to participate. He acknowledged that people might be turned off by the name-calling we witness on a regular basis, but cited the danger of turning away [From The Chronicle's annotated version of Obama's speech]:

…when we don’t pay close attention to the decisions made by our leaders; when we fail to educate ourselves about the major issues of the day; when we choose not to make our voices and opinions heard, that’s when democracy breaks down. That’s when power is abused. That’s when the most extreme voices in our society fill the void that we leave.

Obama was speaking to the national arena, but the sentiment is even more applicable, I believe, at the local and state levels. There are exponentially more sources of information and analysis of national issues than you can find about issues and the actions of public bodies in Lansing or locally. And generally, people are likely to know more about how their Congressman voted than who their city councilmember or county commissioner is, or what decisions they’re making.

One reason we founded The Chronicle in September 2008 was because we thought much of our local community wasn’t “paying attention” – and we wanted to do something about it. We believe, despite what many media pundits assert, that readers care about more than the quick-hit, sound-byte story. We trust readers are smart enough and care enough to value our approach, which pretty much lays out the minutiae of what’s happening in local government. Readers who make the modest investment of time to read our reports will have an understanding of how things work. In fact, I don’t think it’s exaggerating to say that Chronicle readers may be better informed on our local issues than public officials who don’t invest time to read The Chronicle.

Obama also talked about how participation in public life doesn’t have to mean running for public office. “But it does mean that you should pay attention and contribute in any way that you can,” he said. “Stay informed.”

I admire individuals who do this locally, even if I don’t always agree with their positions. People who are engaged in their communities, who take the time to try to understand how things work, who draw their own conclusions from the information they gather – they’ve taken on a Herculean task. And it’s a task that’s not universally appreciated. It’s easier for people in power to have a disengaged public – it can be messy and time consuming to respond to “the public,” whom some of our local officials mock as “the hive.” I get that. And I get that there are people who twist facts to align with their own worldview. The Chronicle’s  job would be “easier,” too, if no one ever showed up at meetings for public commentary – that’d sure be less for us to have to write up. But our community would be poorer for it.

Absent a robust public engagement, we might as well live in a benevolent monarchy. And the more access we have to information, the more able we are to evaluate it and make our own informed decisions, and to influence others to share our views. That’s why we’re unrelenting advocates for openness in government.

The Confluence of Community

Back to Saturday’s commencement. One of the things I cherish about living here is the fact that it’s a small enough town to find connections – if you pay attention. And because our profession takes us out into the community every single day of the week, we’ve been able to meet a pretty interesting range of people.

A fair number of them were also inside Michigan Stadium on Saturday – and running into them amid the thousands of strangers really grounded the event for me. Some were volunteering – like Kathy Griswold, a “regular” at many public meetings, and Anna Ercoli Schnitzer, a frequent Stopped.Watched. contributor to The Chronicle.

Wendy Woods, a former city councilmember who serves on the planning commission, passed by and said hello while we were waiting in the pre-dawn line outside the stadium. She works at UM with the Michigan Community Scholars Program – I’m pretty sure she knew more graduates on Saturday than we did.

On the field, I spotted Washtenaw County Sheriff’s deputy Blackwell, who was working security – I’d seen him just last week at the new location of Camp Take Notice, talking with that group of residents who are homeless.

In the stands, I chatted with Doug Kelley, probably the most affable, consistently upbeat person I know – we’ve met him in many different venues, including others with an Obama connection – and I was glad to add another one to my mental archive.

Matt Hampel passed by the media risers in his cap and gown – he’s been active in the community for so many years that I’d forgotten that he’s just now graduating. Talk about an engaged citizen – Matt’s a role model for that.

In some ways, all of this is really just a long-winded way of saying that I draw great satisfaction from the fact that we’re able to make a living at what we’re doing here at The Ann Arbor Chronicle. Thank you, subscribers and advertisers!  I’m glad that our work has allowed us to cross paths with so many others who call this community their home. We’re glad they’re paying attention to what we’re doing, and find value in it. We hope you do, too.

About the writer: Mary Morgan is publisher and co-founder of The Ann Arbor Chronicle.

Newspapers in Ann Arbor in 1882 when Washtenaw County boasted a population of 8,061: News, Argus, Courier, Democrat, Die Washtenaw Post, Register, Chronicle, University. (Photo of book page made possible by Barbara Tozier.)

Our monthly milestone message, written by either the editor or the publisher, is an occasion to touch base with readers – to bring folks up to date on any new developments with The Chronicle and to engage in a bit of self-reflection as a publication.

Self-reflection once a month is healthy. But self-reflection that persists for a whole month – which has been a natural consequence of the continuing community conversation about the closing of The Ann Arbor News so that AnnArbor.com could be launched – threatens to become a distraction.

Yet here we are at a monthly milestone – a fitting and proper time to reflect on significant questions like: Where does The Ann Arbor Chronicle fit in a media landscape without The Ann Arbor News? In last month’s Tenth Monthly Milestone Message, Chronicle publisher Mary Morgan analyzed that media landscape in terms of pie. As in: Is there enough pie to go around? How big is the media pie?

But given a choice between pie and cake, I prefer cake. In particular, I prefer chocolate cake with white icing – those are more or less traditional newspaper colors, now that I think about it.

But I’ll eat a piece of pie, if there’s not a piece of cake to be had.

As far as media choices go, residents of Ann Arbor and Washtenaw County these days don’t have a choice just between pie and cake – Mary Morgan  lists out various media alternatives in last month’s milestone. And as it turns out, the 8,061 residents of Washtenaw County in 1882 had a few choices as well. 

Dessert

In 1882 as now, Washtenaw County’s media choices were more like a whole dessert tray. The publications listed in that year for Ann Arbor in the 14th edition of the American Newspaper Directory published by Geo. P. Rowell & Co. numbered eight, not counting the Physician and Surgeon. [It's worth noting that I do not own a copy of that newspaper directory and had no prior awareness of its existence, but a co-worker of mine from the Workantile Exchange, Barbara Tozier, gave me a heads up and  lent it to me.]

NEWS; every evening except Sunday; four pages; size 21×28; established 1881; F. W. Dyar, editor and publisher; circulation J J [some reason to believe it's better than "not exceeding 1,000" but not better than "exceeding 1,000"].

ARGUS; Fridays; democratic; four pages; size 26×40; subscription $1 50; established 1845; John N. Bailey, editor and publisher; circulation J [not exceeding 1,000].

COURIER; Fridays; republican; four pages; size 28×41; subscription $2; established 1861; R.A. Beal, editor and publisher; circulation I [not exceeding 2,000].

DEMOCRAT; Thursdays; democratic; four pages; size 26×40; subscription $1 50; established 1878; John L. Burleigh, editor and publisher, circulation J [not exceeding 1,000].

DIE WASHTENAW POST; Fridays; German; four pages; size 30×45; subscription $2; established 1879; Louis J. Liesemer, editor and publisher.

REGISTER; Wednesdays: republican; four pages; size 23×32; subscription 65 cents; established 1874; Ann Arbor Printing and Publishing Co., editors and publishers; circulation I 1 [exceeding 2,000].

CHRONICLE; bi-weekly; twenty-four pages; size of page 8×11; subscription $2; established 1868;  Students of the University of Michigan, editors and publishers; circulation J [not exceeding 1,000]; a college paper; issued during the collegiate year.

UNIVERSITY; semi-monthly; twenty-four pages; size of page 8×11; subscription $1 50; established 1879; Students of the Professional Departments of Michigan University, editors and publishers; circulation K [not exceeding 500]; a college paper issued during the collegiate year.

The circulation figures reflect a fairly competitive market. While the Register enjoyed the widest circulation, it does not seem the case that it dominated the local newspaper market in the same way that The Ann Arbor News has for the last several decades. So back in 1872, it seems unlikely that there was a notion of “the local paper.” It also seems unlikely that residents subscribed to only one of the papers. More likely, based on the population and the circulation figures, one household might have subscribed to multiple local Ann Arbor papers.

That kind of market condition could be described critically as “fractured” – no one single newspaper provided everything that every reader wanted. Alternately, from a publisher’s point of view, that market could be described as “ripe for specialization.” In that kind of market, every publication could identify those things it could offer to readers that no other publication would provide – either at all or as well. And there would be a reward for that specialization – by some segment of the population, not necessarily the “mass market” – for any publication willing to take the risk of offering something specialized.

What’s The Ann Arbor Chronicle’s specialty?

The Ann Arbor Daily News: "The brightest, spiciest, newsiest aspirant for public favor in Michigan."

Potatoes

What we specialize in is description – because if you do description well, you have a shot at eventually offering analysis and explanation. There’s a limit to how far the food analogy can be pushed, but for the purposes of this milestone column, I’ll call our descriptive specialty “potatoes.”

Description is basic, providing a foundation for analysis and explanation – just like potatoes are basic, providing a carbohydrate flame in which fat and protein can burn.

Neither description nor potatoes are sexy. Or spicy. In this we differ from the 1872 Ann Arbor Daily News, which described itself as the “brightest, spiciest, newsiest aspirant for public favor in Michigan.”

Most people like potatoes, but they don’t want to go over to a potato patch and dig them up in order to make some french fries: Chronicle readers don’t want to have to attend or watch meetings of public bodies on TV or go any of the other places we go in order to provide readers with a descriptive account.

Harvesting potatoes takes some effort and you’re going to get your hands dirty. It goes much easier if you know what a potato plant looks like so that you can tell it from random weeds. The same principle applies when a reporter shows up somewhere to record notes on some happening or other.

Pile of potatoes freshly dug from Project Grow garden in Ann Arbor Michigan. (Photo by the writer.)

Small Potatoes

Another way The Ann Arbor Chronicle is comparable to potatoes is that we are now relatively small – as in “small potatoes.” Small potatoes can sometimes be disappointing. For example, I harvested my potatoes yesterday from my Project Grow plot, and they were smaller than I was hoping for, based on last year’s experience. It was, quite frankly, a bit of a let-down. I think the relatively cool summer had something to do with that. Perhaps also a lack of attention to weeding.

In any case, if what you want is smaller potatoes – because you’re not planning to bake them and slather them with sour cream, butter, cheese, and bacon – then a reduced harvest need not be disappointing.

Mind you, I was trying to grow bigger potatoes than I got this year, so I was disappointed.

We’ve grown a somewhat bigger Chronicle potato over the last 11 months than we had at the beginning. It’s heartening that while we’re still small potatoes, we’re large enough that some of the national media covering the story of the death of The Ann Arbor News have taken time to talk to us about our experience.

Still, we’ll be a little disappointed if we aren’t able to grow that Chronicle potato a little bit more in the next 11 months.

Matt Kraner, Tony Dearing and Laurel Champion talk about their plans for AnnArbor.com at a community forum on Thursday.

For nearly two hours on Thursday afternoon, three people leading the new online venture formed to replace the Ann Arbor News fielded questions at a public forum, trying to assuage concerns over news that shocked this community when announced last week.

“Community” and “local” were two words frequently repeated by Matt Kraner, Laurel Champion and Tony Dearing of AnnArbor.com, which is gearing up for a late July launch. “Local journalism is not dead in Ann Arbor,” said Champion, current publisher of The News who’ll be executive vice president for the new company. “We’re just serving it up in a very, very different way.”

About 75 people attended Thursday’s forum at Weber’s Inn, the second of four now scheduled. Several current and former Ann Arbor News employees were in the audience, as were a few community leaders like Patricia Garcia, publisher of the Ann Arbor Observer, Ann Arbor school board member Susan Baskett, and Maura Thomson, head of the Main Street Area Association. (News reporter John Mulcahy filed an article about the event for the Ann Arbor News.)

The forum began with brief remarks by Kraner, Champion and Dearing, followed by questions from the audience. Kraner, CEO of the new business and former chief marketing officer for the Cleveland Plain Dealer (owned by Advance Publications, the same company that owns the Ann Arbor News and that’s funding AnnArbor.com), said he was “very impressed with Ann Arbor so far,” and emphasized that for the new venture, the “quality of local journalism is really our paramount focus.” He also said they planned to build new revenue opportunities for advertisers, and would be able to push advertisers’ messages out “like you’ve never seen before.”

Champion said it’s been a sad week at the Ann Arbor News, but that because they’d had to cut costs and taken value out of the newspaper in recent years, it wasn’t serving anyone very well anymore. The new venture, she said, puts them in a position to do things well. Noting that she loved this community, she said AnnArbor.com would be “of, by and for the community – and we really need your help.”

Dearing, chief content director for AnnArbor.com, underscored the importance of sustaining community journalism, and said that fundamental reporting would be combined with new tools like Facebook, Twitter and blogging. He said bloggers complement traditional newspapers, and that AnnArbor.com wants to engage them, link to them and maybe even employ some of them. But to be successful, he said, “we have to do news and we have to do news well.”

Here’s a sampling from the forum’s Q&A. For this report, we’ve paraphrased audience questions and responses, and grouped them by topic, not sequentially.

Content & Staffing

Q: Will there be an editorial point of view? Dearing said he had mixed feelings about that. He described Ann Arbor as an opinionated community, but said they hadn’t decided how important it is to tell readers what they think via editorials. However, he said if they hear from the community that they should be taking the lead on an issue, that will be a factor.

Q: Will there be national and international news? National and international news is heavily commoditized, Dearing said. The mission of this new venture is “local, local, local.” He also said he was looking at ways to incorporate state news, especially as it relates to this area.

Q: There’s an awful lot of weird bloggers out there – I worry about that. Be careful about giving all bloggers a bad name, Dearing said. Some provide credible, valuable information, and if AnnArbor.com thinks readers would benefit from that, they’ll link to those bloggers. He said if you really wanted an understanding about AnnArbor.com, you wouldn’t be reading only the newspaper – you’d be reading blogs and other sources as well.

Q: You’ve mentioned the site will have elements of social networking – what do you mean by that? The site will take advantage of Facebook and Twitter, Dearing said. For example, if you register on AnnArbor.com, you’ll be able to pull in your entire Facebook profile, if you want. And if you post on the site, you’ll be able in one click to post the same thing on Twitter and Facebook. (The connection with Facebook came up again when an audience member said she’d tried to register online for this forum, and was directed to the Facebook log-in page. “I had no idea what that was about,” she said. Dearing said they’d fix that.)

People who want to can also create their own content on AnnArbor.com, Dearing said. For example, if you want to create a page for your 8-year-old’s wrestling team, you can do that – you can post photos, schedules, results of meets – and “we’re not going to touch it,” he said. Kraner said they knew it was important to differentiate between content that their own staff posted versus the content posted by readers and bloggers.

Q: What’s the geographical reach of Ann Arbor.com? All of Washtenaw County – but starting in Ann Arbor. Since they’re building from the ground up, Dearing said, “I don’t want to over-promise.”

Q: Will there be a health reporter? How about strong investigative reporters? Dearing said they’d cover personal health issues as well as the local health industry. They’d heard from people that business reporting was important, so they’ll staff that “more adequately.” He said he wants some top-notch reporters who’ll get the story – if they aren’t trained in technical skills, “them we’ll teach,” he said.

Q: I haven’t heard anything about arts & culture – will you be covering that? Absolutely, Dearing said. Ann Arbor is one of the most culturally rich communities in America, he said, and that will be a part of AnnArbor.com. He said they’ll have an “exceptional” arts calendar, and that the Arts Alliance has already reached out to them.

Q: I found out about today’s forum by reading about it in the newspaper. How will you communicate events like this? Dearing said that most people get their information online, and that overall combined readership in print and online is going up. Kraner said that AnnArbor.com has to be the source for community information, including events. Being a rich, thorough resource is a high priority, he said.

Q: How many Ann Arbor News employees are losing their jobs? The Ann Arbor News is closing, Champion said, and most employees will be laid off. Kraner added that News employees are being encouraged to apply for jobs at AnnArbor.com, but “it’s a different company. It’s a clean break.” They’ll be outsourcing printing, copy-editing and page layout functions, he said, and will be solely focused on creating content, and on sales and marketing.

Q: How many reporters will be on staff compared to now? Dearing said they would employ fewer people than are now on staff, but that they’re still trying to figure out how many. They want to be transparent, he said, and will have that answer in two or three weeks. (Editor’s note: AnnArbor.com is interviewing now for four positions that will manage coverage in four areas: News, sports, arts & entertainment, and community.)

Dearing said that some people expressed concern because they’d seen the newsroom at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer – which recently ended its print edition and is now online only – drop from 140 people to 20. “We’ll certainly have more people than that,” Dearing said. (Not including the sports staff, there are about a dozen full-time reporters at The News. In addition, there are about 40 other newsroom jobs, including photographers, editors, support staff, and part-time reporters.)

Q: What about Geoff Larcom and Jo Mathis – I enjoy reading them. Will they be hired? Referring to Larcom, Dearing said it’s a pretty strong indication of your grounding in this community when city hall is named after your father. Dearing said he hired Mathis into the Ann Arbor News, and described Larcom and Mathis as “special people to me.” He said they’d had conversations, but didn’t explicitly say what their roles, if any, might be at AnnArbor.com.

Q: A lot of us in local businesses and nonprofits have relationships with reporters at the Ann Arbor News. How much will you be meshing the old with the new? Dearing said he understands that they can’t bring in a bunch of 25-year-olds who don’t know the community. He said they’ll need both experienced reporters as well as people who can help reach a new audience.

Q: Will carriers now working for the Ann Arbor News have to reapply for their jobs to deliver the Thursday and Sunday papers? Carrier jobs to distribute AnnArbor.com’s print editions will be outsourced. Kraner said it’s important to have a strong carrier force, to ensure the papers are delivered “on time and dry.” He said one of the regional newspapers (presumably one owned by Advance Publications) would handle staffing for carriers.

Appearance

Q: What will the website look like? Dearing said the site would be uncluttered, intuitive and easy to use. There will also be tools allowing more sophisticated users to customize the site. The site will be constantly updated, he said – the home page might look dramatically different within an hour or even a half hour.

The site will be organized around topics, locations and people, Dearing said. There will be different levels of sophistication within those areas. A basic page might just contain a story with links and a photo. Another tier might focus on video, with links to bloggers. A third level could be customizable, with videos, text, photos, statistics and more.

Kraner said the challenge is to increase not just the size of their online audience, but also the frequency of use. That means breaking news will be a significant part of their overall mission. He described the site as elegant, and said it would include tools to “connect and communicate.” However, he said they weren’t going to finish building the site until they’d gotten feedback from the community. He said that although AnnArbor.com will launch in late July, they will likely come back with a second version in October and additional changes after the first of the year.

Q: MLive is pretty cumbersome and hard to navigate. How will AnnArbor.com compare? Dearing said they’ll have a “superior” site search and that the site would be easy to navigate. It’s one of their highest priorities, he said, and they’ve hired a firm with a national reputation to help do that.

Q: Are there any plans to make the site more accessible to the visually impaired and for people with other disabilities? Dearing said they hadn’t discussed that, but he wanted to know more and asked the person who’d posed the question to stay after the forum and talk to him. Earlier in the meeting, Champion said that at a Thursday morning meeting with residents at Glacier Hills retirement community, people were concerned about their ability to use computers. The new entity will be prepared to help make that transition, she said. “We’re not going to leave you behind.”

Q: I sit at a computer all day and am not inclined to do that when I get home. Have you thought about using a wireless e-reader? Dearing said they’re looking at delivering content in a number of ways, including Kindle and Plastic Logic. That’s a fairly easy thing to accommodate, he said, and if it wasn’t available immediately, it would be soon.

Q: What will the print editions look like? The printed papers will be broadsheets, like the current newspaper, Kraner said. There will also be a “total market coverage” (TMC) product which will be distributed once a week to non-subscribers. (Currently, the Ann Arbor News has a TMC product called “Food, Fun and Fitness,” which includes reprinted articles from the daily newspaper as well as advertisements.)

Dearing said the Sunday paper would look like a traditional Sunday paper. Thursday’s edition would likely be heavy on entertainment and prep sports. It’s hard to say how much emphasis there’ll be on breaking news for the print editions, he said. There might be more news features and analysis.

Kraner said the print edition will be available in newsstands and stores, as well as by subscription.

Business model

Q: Financially, how will you make AnnArbor.com work? The site won’t charge to access content. It’s primarily an advertising-supported business model. They’ll charge subscriptions for the Thursday and Sunday printed newspapers – when asked specifically what subscriptions would cost, Kraner said they didn’t yet know. Kraner said he expects Sundays will still be a dominant vehicle for advertisers, as it is now. He said they’ll be very aggressive on pricing for ads – ”expect to pay less.”

Later, responding to a different question, Champion said that the Ann Arbor News’ printing plant in Pittsfield Township is being spun off as a separate company, which will essentially be a commercial printer. The plant currently prints the New York Times for this region, the Jackson Citizen-Patriot newspaper (one of the eight newspapers in Michigan owned Advance Publications), and other publications.

Q: What’s your advertising model like? Kraner said they’ll be launching three or four new elements for advertisers on the site, possibly incorporating data provided by advertisers. They’ll also be creating direct marketing opportunities for advertisers, he said. Small- and medium-size businesses are looking for ways to advertise more cost effectively, and AnnArbor.com staff will be talking with advertisers to see what works for them. Traditional revenue streams, like classified ads, have eroded, he said, but now there are opportunities to build out a completely new model that pushes out content.

Q: I think you’re throwing in the towel too soon on the newspaper. Have you considered things like trimming payroll, raising subscription rates, charging readers to publish personal photos or paying your executives $1-a-year salaries? Kraner said this isn’t just an Ann Arbor issue. Newspapers are financially challenged nationwide, even in robust markets. In the current model, he said, costs are high to create and deliver newspapers. The owners aren’t doing this to make more money, Kraner said. Industry-wide, news media are trying to find a viable business model.

Misc. questions & comments

Q: Do you think The News alienated a lot of the community because of its conservative endorsements? Champion, who as publisher has served on the Ann Arbor News editorial board for several years, said that yes, their editorials have probably alienated some readers. But that’s true for any opinion they have, she said. “Did we make some mistakes? Absolutely, we did,” she said. But they’ve been trying to focus more on the community over the past couple of years, and that’s also why they’re now working to change their business model.

Dearing followed up by saying that people he talks to generally have two questions: Does the new venture understand the technology – we do, he said – and do they understand Ann Arbor. “That’s what we’re going to be judged by,” Dearing said. Kraner added that they want to understand what the community wants – that’s why they’re seeking feedback.

Q: I got an email from you saying this forum would be at Campus Inn at 2 o’clock, but it started an hour earlier at Weber’s. I’m a little concerned that your system is already broken. Kraner apologized for the confusion of location and meeting time, and said they do take that seriously and believe it’s important to reach out to the community. They have scheduled another forum for Thursday, April 16 at 7 p.m. in the Pendleton Room of the Michigan Union at 530 S. State St.

Q: How long have you been working on this project? Kraner said that he and Dearing officially joined the project at the first of this year, and that Champion came on board about a month ago. He did not discuss what work was done unofficially prior to that.

One smaller event that unfolded almost immediately was embedded in the larger one. It was a changing of the guard: one vigil participant handed off their sign to another as the one arrived and the other departed. But by this time several participants were beginning to filter away without being replaced. One estimate floated by a participant put the peak number of participants at around 200.

Some of the demonstrators on Thursday had responded to the scheduled vigil in order to make a more partisan point than the organizers were making. But at least one of them had no prior knowledge of the vigil, and had been demonstrating in her usual spot on weekday evenings at Liberty and Fifth – in front of the Federal Building. Seeing the activity just west of her, and already equipped with a sign, “US-RAEL, biggest rogue nation,” she decided to join the larger group.

A group of young men were collecting signatures for a petition (calling for a ceasefire) to be sent to elected representatives in Michigan. Chatting with them, they recognized the name, Ann Arbor Chronicle, and let me know they were in agreement with comment number [5] about a previous article published here on an earlier demonstration. The comment was critical of the inclusion of an interaction between a demonstrator and a passerby, who questioned the motivation of the demonstrators.

On Thursday, I shared with them the same sentiment with which I ended that comment thread: we try to describe what unfolds in front of us. But in some ways that skirts the issue. Because we don’t describe everything that we see. It would be impossible to write, or to read, something that detailed. Every inclusion or exclusion is an editorial decision. A good photograph offers that level of detail, but the photographer has to point the camera somewhere. And that entails a decision about what direction to point it. Once you have the photograph, you have to decide if and how to crop it. That’s another editorial decision.

Below are some photographs from Thursday evening’s demonstration. The captions consist of commentary intended to provide some insight into what I thought was interesting enough about the image to offer them to Chronicle readers.

First shot of the evening. Many of the demonstrators carried the "Ceasefire Now" sheets, which seemed to be the preferred signage for those who'd responded to the Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice request that participants should, "Please bring signs that support a peaceful end to the conflict in Gaza."

I like this one for the way a single candle and a single sign drew the whole huddle of people together.

The irony of the news hotline number: If I'm reading this number, I don't need to call you ... you're already here.

Given the sides represented among the demonstrators, the Channel 7 slogan on the truck prompts the question: "Really?? You're on MY side?? Which side is that, exactly?" (The photograph's angle makes it somewhat unclear what the demonstrator is holding. It's a rectangular sign – edge view.)

What was interesting to me about these signs was the split into two fields of black and white with reversed field lettering, which mirrors the stark contrast in viewpoints on the conflict. Also the pairing of "received" with "rocket" struck me as somewhat odd, making me wonder if the understatement was intended.

The woman next to the sign-holder was energetically wiping her feet on an Israeli flag, which I took to be the sign-holder's point of view as well. I took the sign to be an allusion to an Iraqi journalist's recent attempt to throw his shoe at President Bush – that is, a call to stand up and do something, whatever it might be. But the ambiguity is intriguing.

I liked this one for the contrast between everything that said "warm" (the glove, the candle, the fur-edged hood) against the shivering exhale.

I wondered if this guy was smiling about anything in particular, or if wearing a smile was part of his way of keeping warm.

This photo was cropped to include the signage on the restaurant, because I think it brings out how routine "background" messages would fill our visual field, if demonstrators on street corners did not occasionally offer a different message.

As someone who in many ways "goes green," the sign, in some sense, spoke to me.

This photo demonstrates that photos by themselves don't tell an accurate story. It might appear to show a confrontation between the sign holder and the person wearing the dark hooded coat. In fact, it was chat between friends.

This one, I thought, captured nicely the span in ages of participants.

These photographs give some idea of what happened on a street corner on a cold evening in a sleepy little midwestern U.S. college town. But they don’t give much real insight into events happening half a world away. Most of us, I suspect, don’t make conscious choices about how we want to be informed about far-away places. I sure don’t. We randomly sample from the ubiquitous stream of TV, radio, newspapers, and wire reports that permeate our modern life.

But there’s bound to be some Chronicle readers who aren’t as lazy as that, and who consciously use a specific news source to get information about the Middle East. If so, kindly provide a link (if possible) and a brief description why as a comment below. Feel free to leave other comments as well, bearing in mind our commenting policy.

[Editor's note: HD is Homeless Dave, a.k.a. Dave Askins, editor of The Ann Arbor Chronicle. ]

At last, I thought, Ed has finally written a column about what’s happening at The News. That’s great! So I clicked on the link, and pulled up … a blank page on MLive.

I groaned – the mess that is MLive strikes again! – and I put my head in my hands: This technical glitch reflects so much of what’s wrong with the News’ business model, and shows how far they have to go in addressing this and all the other challenges they face. Maybe, I thought, Ed’s column will confront some of these realities. I’d just have to wait for the newsprint version on Sunday morning to read it.

What’s happening

The timing of Ed’s column was interesting. It came about a month after The News had reported another round of buyouts, part of a statewide restructuring of publications owned by Advance Publications, a privately held Newhouse family company. The use of the word “reported” could be somewhat misleading – locally, the paper ran a 5-sentence news brief in the local section. I wrote about it here, as did former News sports columnist Jim Carty, writing on his blog, Paper Tiger No More. The news was picked up by various other sites that keep tabs on what’s happening in the industry nationwide, like Jim Romenesko’s column on the Poynter Institute website, and blogs like Newspaper Death Watch.

The situation has roiled the local newsroom, where every full-time employee with five years or more of tenure has been offered a buyout. And because there have been very few new hires over the past five years, the offer affects most of the newsroom staff. They have until the end of this month – just a few more days – to make their decisions.

The buyout is complicated by the fact that staff aren’t assured they’ll keep the job they have if they don’t take the offer. Advance Publications is consolidating the production staff of all eight of its Michigan papers at the Grand Rapids Press. But they’ll have far fewer production jobs in Grand Rapids than exist at the individual papers now. So page designers, copy editors, graphic artists and others who are involved in production will have to apply for those Grand Rapids jobs – assuming, of course, that they’re willing to move their families to that community.

The same goes for virtually every other person who stays – it’s a crapshoot. The company has a no-layoff policy – rare in this or any industry. But now that might mean the job they give you is in Bay City selling ads, even if you’ve never done that before. If you don’t take the buyout and don’t like the job you’re offered within the company, you can quit – which means no unemployment benefits.

Communication with the staff about these changes and the future direction of the paper has been poor – and that’s a generous description. Communication with the community has been even worse. People ask me why The News is closing. Answer: It’s not. Or they wonder how the paper can call itself The Ann Arbor News when all the workers will be in Grand Rapids. Answer: The newsroom, advertising and circulation staff are remaining in Ann Arbor – the consolidation hasn’t gone quite that far. But the fact that so many people are confused speaks volumes about how ineffectively The News has communicated its plans to its readers.

Of course the staff size will be reduced after the buyouts, even if only a small percentage of people end up taking them. Due to attrition and a previous round of buyouts, the newsroom already has far fewer people than it had just five years ago. The departure dates for those taking the current buyout will likely be staggered over several months, so the full impact might not be felt until mid- to late-2009.

It’s happening everywhere

All of these local changes are taking place in the national context of a transformation in the field of journalism, driven by the overall economic downturn, lower advertising revenues, rising newsprint and personnel costs, competition from online news sources and a shift in readership away from traditional print to online.

The decision this fall by the Christian Science Monitor to become a primarily online publication was a dramatic indication of these changes, and the recent announcement that the Detroit papers are canceling home delivery on all but three days, revamping their newsstand editions and pinning their future to their online product is just the latest in a string of decisions that seem either boldly visionary or baldly desperate, depending on your perspective. (One blogger sweetly called the moves in Detroit a “crap sandwich.”)

The publisher of the Detroit News, Jonathan Wolman, was in town in early December as part of a panel discussion titled “The First Amendment, Freedom of the Press and the Future of Journalism,” held at the Ford Library. As partners in The Ann Arbor Chronicle, my husband and I have a deeply vested interest in exploring this topic – it’s our future, too.

Based on what the panelists had to say, that future involves a tumult of technology – news delivered via Twitter, video, podcasts, blogs, live-blogging, social networks like Facebook and others methods yet to be invented. These different forms require attention – someone has to file a Tweet, shoot and edit video, record the podcast, get these things into some kind of presentable form and post them on whatever platform they’re using. Often, that someone has evolved to be the reporter. That doesn’t include time spent doing what the job originally entailed: Preparing, researching, reporting, writing, editing, rewriting and, god forbid, just working the beat.

With fewer people employed at news organizations, each person is asked to do more of these things. At some point, something’s got to give. Vincent Duffy, news director at Michigan Radio, said at the Ford Library forum that typically what gets shorter shrift is attention to the story itself.

Technology is also behind the news in other ways. All of the panelists said they factored in website traffic – specifically, what stories online drew the most readers – when deciding what to cover next. They all looked at that data as part of their daily news meetings, when editors discuss how to allocate their staff resources, what kind of “play” a story will get or whether it’s worth covering at all.

I guess this could be seen as the democratization of media – readers are essentially voting on what they’re most interested in, be it Britney or bailouts. But it also seems like an abdication of responsibility, when newsroom leaders throw up their hands and say, “Hey – we wanted to cover the war in Iraq, but our readers were clamoring for cute puppy stories.” It’s happening at a time when newsrooms need more leadership and vision, not less.

The spin

Back to Ed’s column. I was glad to see he at least acknowledged the buyouts and talked about some of the challenges the paper is facing. I was glad that it ran on the front page of the Sunday newsprint edition. Finding it online was more of a challenge – it was placed in the “Real-Time News Coverage” feed, but as far as I could tell there was no direct link from MLive’s home page (an example of the weird disconnect between the online and print versions).

So what did he have to say? The piece began with this curious statement: “In the coming weeks, your News will begin to focus more on local people, local issues and local events.”

It’s hard to argue against more local coverage. Yet it prompts the question: does this just mean more local relative to non-local content, or does it mean more local coverage in absolute terms? The staff of the newsroom, during my 12 years there, at least, has been focused exclusively on covering local people, issues, and events. The state, national and international news was picked up through wires services that The News subscribes to. If we see a reduction in wire-service content – not an unreasonable move given that these are costly services – then of course we’ll get “more” local content, relative to everything else. But providing “more” local content in absolute terms requires the folks who’ve always worked exclusively to provide local coverage to provide even more of it.

The brute reality is that there will be fewer people in the newsroom after the buyouts. So how can there be more local news in the paper if there are fewer people to do the reporting? Ed doesn’t address this, so we’re left guessing. The staff who remain will in some cases be doing different jobs. Editors might be asked to do reporting – for mid-level editors, that’s already happening. Everyone will likely be expected to produce more, and in different forms – video, podcasts, online (see above “Future of Journalism”). Maybe they’ll use more freelancers. Likely they’ll recruit people from the community to write columns – not a bad thing.

In his column, Petykiewicz also says that readership has never been higher than when print and online are combined – no doubt that’s true. (Strip away University of Michigan sports coverage, though, and online numbers would likely plummet.) But the challenge he doesn’t discuss is the digital elephant in the room that is MLive: It’s an ill-conceived, poorly executed, untenable partnership.

Michigan Live is a separate “sister” company to The News. It operates the websites for all eight daily newspapers in Michigan as well as the Business Review publications. Many decisions related to the site have been made at the corporate level in New Jersey – and it shows. The operation runs to a great extent on automated feeds that rely on hand-coding, which if not done accurately by News staff results in all manner of glitches. Headlines can be loaded without the accompanying story, for example.

Since it launched in the mid-1990s, the site has been roundly ridiculed by readers for its confusing, hard-to-navigate design. (It’s not loved by Ann Arbor News staffers, either.) I think it’s improved incrementally over the years, but its generic look, the lack of a decent archiving system, the difficulty in finding content (even when you know it’s there, somewhere) are crippling.

The revenue model is even worse. Newspapers – especially those like The Ann Arbor News, which haven’t faced competition from other traditional media in the form of a comparably-sized newspaper or TV station – have been cash cows for their owners. They’ve delivered double-digit profit margins with the knowledge that advertisers really had no choice but to pay their rates. There was no other game in town.

Now readers and advertisers are migrating online, but without the commensurate revenue. Readers don’t pay subscription fees. Online ads don’t command as high a rate as print ads, and the online revenue is parceled out between MLive and The Ann Arbor News and MLive’s other print partners. For the News, just like any newspaper, that means there’s a smaller advertising pie. But with MLive as part of the picture, it means that more people are eating that smaller pie.

So what’s next?

No amount of spin will change the realities confronting The News, but there is hope. A smaller newsroom could produce a smaller newspaper that’s a must-read, tightly focused on local news and events. But to do that, the paper’s leadership needs to overhaul its own approach to doing business. Here are a few places to start:

• Don’t treat readers like idiots. Don’t tell people they’re getting more when they’re clearly not. They might not like the changes you’re making, but what they’ll really hate is an attempt to mask those changes by saying it’s an improvement. You’re in a fight for survival. You need readers on your side – employees too, for that matter. People will be advocates, even evangelists, for the the local paper, but not if they think you’re trying to swindle them with a product that costs more, delivers less and is being promoted as an upgrade. Everyone these days is dealing with the crappy economy – they understand you’ll have to make hard decisions. Don’t pretend it’s not happening.

• Don’t try to be everything to everyone. For several years after I joined The News in the mid-1990s, “zoning” was the big thing. The paper put out several different editions, swapping out the lead stories in each one so that it related to the edition for a particular community – Ypsilanti, Livingston County, Ann Arbor. The newsroom twisted itself in knots to make this happen, resulting mostly (as far as I could tell) in confusion. Readers in Ypsilanti felt they weren’t getting the “real” newspaper. People who worked in Ann Arbor and lived in Livingston would see two different versions and wonder, “What the…??” The effort was eventually dropped, but the paper still tries to cover a little of everything, both topically and geographically. With fewer resources, you need to hone your focus. And when you do, make sure your readers understand your goals.

• Communicate, communicate, communicate. If you don’t tell your story, someone else will. Vickie Elmer has been interviewing people for an article about changes at The News that’s scheduled to run in the January edition of The Ann Arbor Observer – it’s probably already being delivered to local households. If The News itself had been frank about what’s happening there, she wouldn’t have much of a story to tell. And I would be writing a much different column than the one you’re reading today.

• Get out of the office. Like anything else, loyalty is built through relationships. If people don’t know the decision-makers at The News, they’ll view the institution as just that – an institution, making it a far easier target to lampoon. Speak to community groups, reach out to people you don’t already know, make sure all the senior managers are involved in as many different community efforts as possible. It’s easy to develop a defensive bunker mentality when you don’t leave the building and when most of your conversations are held with others in the newsroom. Relationships shape reality, and when you don’t have deep connections to the community you cover, you can’t really understand what’s important to your readers.

The Ann Arbor News can emerge from its restructuring as a stronger, more relevant publication. But that won’t happen unless its leadership makes some fundamental changes in the way they operate. It’s not clear they’re willing to do that – even when it appears they have no other choice.

Dick Ryan recalls President Ford's response to a proposed bailout of New York city.

“I’ve never seen reporters so excited as when they’re talking about their Twitters,” remarked Gil Klein, moderator of a panel discussion Wednesday night at the Gerald R. Ford Library in Ann Arbor. The discussion was part of a nationwide tour of similar events hosted by the National Press Club as a part of the organization’s 100th anniversary. Klein, director of the National Press Club’s Centennial Forums, mentioned the micro-blogging platform Twitter in the current context of the tremendous period of innovation in the field of journalism.

But the consensus among panelists was that the raft of new technologies and platforms had actually become somewhat of an additional burden on reporters, which ultimately was not yet offering a return on the bottom line that would keep newsrooms fully staffed. Panelist Vincent Duffy, who has been the news director at Michigan Radio since May 2007, characterized the response from managers to innovative technology this way: “That’s great! Do that, too.”

As a result, said Duffy, what suffers is the reporting of news. From the perspective of a news director for a radio operation, Duffy said that for a particular segment that’s aired, (i) there’s a radio version, (ii) a web version, (iii) a printed version for the web, which has to be cleaned up to bring the spoken version to a written standard, and (iv) a web promo for the piece. And then, continued Duffy, radio news directors find themselves asking (v) do we have pictures? (vi) do we have enough pictures for a slideshow? (vii) do we have video? (viii) do we have a Twitter? (ix) do we have a blog post? What is sacrificed in this flurry of media, said Duffy, is what historically would have been attention by news directors and editors to the story itself: requests for additional background information, an additional source, an update.

Further, said Duffy, the vast mix of digital options meant that is was not obvious what the “media of record” was. This role has historically been played by newspapers. With the number of newspapers dwindling, Duffy said it wasn’t clear who might have the resources to cover important events like the Detroit city council meeting, the Ann Arbor city council meeting, and the Fowlerville library board.

Left to right: Marla Drutz, Vincent Duffy, Omari Gardner, Jonathan Wolman

In response to an audience question, Duffy said that in public radio, they were aware that there are plenty of people who don’t have access to computers or else simply prefer not to get their news from a computer screen. However, Duffy pointed out that people under 30 basically do not listen to public radio – median age for public radio listenership is 45. So for public radio, the web is a key to gaining new audience. The idea is to introduce the next generation to public radio via computers.

How to monetize the new audience that comes via the web is something the panelists agreed was a challenge that had not been met. Panelist Jonathan Wolman, who is editor and publisher of The Detroit News as well as publisher of its website, detnews.com, characterized it as a situation where the growth in revenues from web advertising was encouraging, but had not reached anywhere near the levels it would take to replace lost revenue from the print side of the equation. Comparing web to print, the ratio Wolman offered was 1:8. The advertisers, said Wolman, are as confused as anyone else.

But for her part, panelist Marla Drutz, vice president and general manager of WDIV-TV Detroit, seemed to suggest that if there’s a burden of technology that’s not accruing to the bottom line, then it’s self-imposed. The role of managers, she said, is to allocate resources to those activities that make bottom-line sense. She said that one of the main attractions for a television operation was weather information – even though the total amount of time devoted to weather in the course of a day might be a half hour’s worth of programming. This allowed the investment in extremely sophisticated and expensive equipment and could justify the hiring of a meteorologist. If no one is reading the blog, or following the Twitters, or watching the video, then don’t do it, she said. The metrics, she pointed out, are easily accessible.

In fact, the panelists all spoke of the standard place in their morning meetings of the metrics for analysis of web traffic on the various stories from the previous day. Panelist Omari Gardner, news editor for digital media at the Detroit Free Press, described “tailoring the product” based on the web traffic analysis.

Gardner also talked about the impact of buyout strategies in order to keep newspapers solvent. He said that it was typically the most experienced reporters (and most highly compensated) who were being ushered out with buyout offers, and that had the effect of removing an important piece of the system of mentorship. Older, more experienced members of the newsroom could no longer show the new folks the ropes.

The amount of time the panelists spent talking about financial viability and the measurement of success by audience prompted an audience member to wonder if they were more interested in protecting a free press or rather creating a sale-able product. The audience question alluded to the title of the panel discussion, which was “Protecting a Free Press while Journalism Is in Turmoil.” To that, Duffy said that historically the press had always been a business proposition and that the nature of that proposition hadn’t changed.

To be fair to the panelists’ focus on sale-ability of product and reporting the news with fewer resources, it was driven somewhat by the moderator’s questions. In fact, the first question at the beginning of the night concerned whether the panelists felt they had adequate resources to cover the story currently unfolding on the automobile industry. The panelists said they were ready and able to cover that story. But towards the end of the evening, a voice from the audience familiar to Chronicle readers questioned whether the press had been doing an adequate job covering the auto industry in the period leading up to the current crisis. Tom Partridge expressed his disappointment in the Michigan media for not providing more information about the Big Three’s business plans, pointing out that except for Chrysler, these are public companies.

In response to Partridge, Gardner said that reporters did the best they could, but that the auto companies were quite insular and that they had set up barriers and boundaries that made it difficult.

Tom Partridge asked if panelists think Obama will be open to the press.

Partridge also asked the panelists to speculate on whether the election of Barack Obama would herald a new era of openness and freedom of the press. Duffy was skeptical. “They didn’t call him No-drama Obama for nothing,” he said.

The presidential allusion looped nicely back to the beginning of the evening, when Richard Ryan, retired chief Washington correspondent for The Detroit News, talked about his experience covering Gerald Ford. When Ford was announced as the pick for vice-president to replace Agnew, Ryan drove out to Ford’s house that night on the off chance that he might be able to talk to him. Ryan wound up talking to Ford sitting in a blue leather chair, with Susan sitting on the couch, Betty in the next room chatting with friends, and a dog and cat skittering around the house. Ford told him that on Tuesday, he was going back to Grand Rapids … for Red Flannel Day. And that, said Ryan, reflected that Ford was still the congressional representative from Michigan, not yet the vice president.

Klein, the moderator, had been keeping an eye on the time on account of the weather forecast for rain to start around 9 p.m. – perhaps he had visited Drutz’s website before the discussion started. And it did wrap up shortly after 9 p.m.

Paperwork for the buyout won’t be given to employees until Friday, according to several sources. But in broad strokes, they were told that most employees in the newsroom will be offered buyouts, which will likely include two weeks of pay for every year of service and some kind of health care coverage. Some of the people eligible for the buyout need only have a minimum five years of service. It’s unclear if that will apply to all buyout offers. People who don’t take the offer risk being reassigned to another paper.

Copy editors, page designers and graphic artists – essentially, the production staff – are being told that if they don’t accept a buyout, they’ll have to work from the Grand Rapids Press office. The Press is the largest of the Newhouse papers in Michigan. Advertorial products will be centralized at the Kalamazoo Gazette. Other papers in the group are the Jackson Citizen Patriot, Flint Journal, Bay City Times, Muskegon Chronicle and Saginaw News. The Newhouse holdings also include Michigan Live, which operates an online presence for all the papers, and the Michigan Business Review weekly publications.

Part-time employees are not eligible for a buyout, and do not enjoy the benefit of the job pledge given to full-time staffers, which is essentially a no-layoff policy. If part-timers are let go, however, they apparently will be given severance pay.

It’s unclear how many people will take the buyouts or what the target is for staff reduction. A previous buyout offer two years ago and reductions from attrition have significantly reduced the staff size during that period.

The News also recently announced plans to close its Ypsilanti bureau on Michigan Avenue later this month. And plans are underway to slash newsprint costs by cutting the number of sections in the newspaper, dramatically reducing the number of pages and consequently the amount of content published.

Like other traditional news publications nationwide, The Ann Arbor News has struggled with declining advertising revenue and circulation, coupled with increased newsprint and personnel costs. (I’ve written about the situation and its impact previously.) Because the Newhouse newspapers have maintained a lifetime job pledge for full-time employees – even in a challenging economy – the paper has been buffered to some extent from the epidemic of layoffs and buyouts seen elsewhere, including in the Detroit market.

But knowing that they’re not alone doesn’t make it easier for remaining employees. They’ve been running on fumes for a long time, asked to do more work with fewer resources. It hasn’t been an easy work environment, to say the least – even with the job pledge.

My heart goes out to my former colleagues, many of whom will be upending their lives over the next few weeks in ways they never imagined. As I’ve written and said before, there are many talented, hard-working people at The News – journalists who increasingly will not have the opportunity to reach their potential and help our local print newspaper thrive.

Other coverage: Former News sports columnist Jim Carty is writing about the buyouts on his blog, Paper Tiger No More.