Ann Arbor News, R.I.P. in your (kind of) new intangible home

My hometown newspaper is going under, and will officially cease printing in July of this year.  A new web-based news company will go up in its place, AnnArbor.com, which is good, but this is still a sad loss and it still means that some good jobs are gone.

Perhaps they can use this to continue or better the news community in Ann Arbor.  Despite the high level of education in the city, our newspaper does not have a reputation for being near-perfect or particularly typo-free.  They could use this to clean house and fix things up a little.  As the News’s article says:

“The Ann Arbor News was struggling as a daily print newspaper, with steep losses in 2008,” Champion said. “At the same time the demand for local news and information in a wired community has never been stronger.”

There are a lot of talented journalists and web-savvy people in Ann Arbor.  I’m hopeful that this will not mean the death of Ann Arbor News, so much as a new and brighter direction for journalism, information, knowledge and communication in my hometown.