WHISPER: AnnArbor.com Slashes Staff, Fires Paid Contributors, and Loses Lead Blogger Ed Vielmetti
A2Politico Notes: This is filed under “Scoops & Scores!!” because you read it here first.
A2Politico readers read here last week that AnnArbor.com recently lost three staffers to The Detroit Free Press. Higher education reporter David Jesse, and editors Stefanie Murray and Amalie Nash were joined by their colleagues at Main Street pub Conor O’Neill’s at the end of February for a celebration. AnnArbor.com did not report on the loss of the three staffers to The Detroit Free Press. There was plenty of speculation on A2Politico, however, concerning the loss of the three, and the financial health of AnnArbor.com. Kontent King Tony Dearing recently told members of the Ann Arbor Democratic Club that AnnArbor.com was “on its way” to turning a profit. In July of 2010, he was similarly cagey in a piece he posted to the news blog concerning the progress the site had made in its first year. He wrote that he was not at liberty to disclose financial information, but that AnnArbor.com’s progress was “encouraging.”
In its media kit, AnnArbor.com purports to reach 69 percent of Washtenaw County residents who are 18 years or older. The claim is based, however, on a one-time phone survey of a few hundred people conducted by a media analysis company. The paper’s circulation is not audited, nor are its web site audience numbers audited by the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC), a well-respected company that verifies the print and online circulation numbers of a large number of the news publications/news web sites throughout the United States. Prior to the launch of AnnArbor.com, Executive VP Laurel Champion told the now defunct Ann Arbor News that AnnArbor.com would, indeed, have its circulation audited.
I had an email from a paid contributor at AnnArbor.com this afternoon. This individual was let go, and told that the only sections with paid contributors that would “survive,” would be AnnArbor.com’s “Food & Drink,” “Faith” and “Pets” sections. All paid contributors who were being let go were notified by Community Director Jenn Eyer via phone. An email, Eyer told the AnnArbor.com contributor whom I spoke with, was scheduled to go out this afternoon.
After confirmation from an AnnArbor.com staffer, I pulled up the news blog’s current staff listing page, and a staff listing page cached by Google. A look down the list of staffers, and one quickly notes the omission of one of AnnArbor.com’s initial hires, Edward Vielmetti. Ed was hired as the site’s “blogging leader” in June of 2009. The hire was announced on the site. The last entry by Vielmetti on AnnArbor.com is dated March 10, 2011.
A look at the staffing lists confirms that AnnArbor.com has let go of seven of its 31 content producers, including writers, directors (editors) and lead blogger Vielmetti. (Michigan Radio reported AnnArbor.com cut 14 jobs, total. Tip o’ the keyboard to Bill.) This means that over the past month, AnnArbor.com has lost/let go almost one-third of its staff that produces content. This leaves AnnArbor.com with a handful of paid content bloggers, and two dozen paid reporters and other content producers. AnnArbor.com’s Entertainment section, headed by Bob Needham, took the most serious hit, losing half of its staff. The three executives who oversee AnnArbor.com on behalf of Advance Publications (owned by the Newhouse family) survived the round of cuts. Interestingly, none of AnnArbor.com’s advertising sales staff was let go. It remains to be seen if AnnArbor.com will replace David Jesse, Stefanie Murray or Amalie Nash.
It’s clear now that AnnArbor.com is slashing overhead in an effort to further improve profitability. It’s also clear that Jesse, Murray and Nash jumped ship to The Free Press at, perhaps, a very propitious moment. Twenty months of financial losses (or minimal profits) suggests, one imagines, the outer limit of what Advance Media is prepared to invest in its Ann Arbor “experiment” in digital journalism. AnnArbor.com has been criticized heavily by readers concerning the accuracy, and reliability of its news reporting, and by those who comment on the site over what some perceive as an overly arbitrary comment moderation policy. The paper’s Sunday print circulation dropped from 52,000 in July of 2009, to just about 40,000 in July of 2010. Despite the falling circulation numbers, AnnArbor.com raised advertising rates.
AnnArbor.com, in letting go of one-third of its content producers, yet keeping what amounts to three executives who split the job of a conventional publisher, is sending a signal that the organization is willing to further sacrifice content quality to protect the jobs of top level managers. Like the city of Ann Arbor, whose officials claim that having fewer employees has had no impact on the quality of city services (well, until Roger Fraser recently blamed snow clearing problems on the fact that Ann Arbor has “fewer employees”), such claims are often made by those doing the cutting, not those whose jobs are impacted by the cuts.
As a long-time publisher, I can tell you cutting staff is never a good sign of the overall health of any publishing organization. If I were an advertiser, I wouldn’t sign a long-term contract with AnnArbor.com just at the moment. Signs point to AnnArbor.com going through, perhaps, another round of cuts (sooner rather than later) and then, if revenues are not where the parent company wants them to be, for AnnArbor.com to close.
Short URL: http://www.a2politico.com/?p=6402
[...] the company is top heavy with three executives, each of whom kept his/her personal assistant, then axed reporting staff and lead blogger Ed Vielmetti in March of 2011. This is AnnArbor.com, the company that claimed in a recent advertising campaign [...]
Well, it has been over a week and still we’ve not heard from those in charge of AnnArbor.com about the reason for the cuts (other than Dearing patently ridiculous explanation) and what the cuts might mean. I can understand that they’d like to continue on as before, but that’s not going to happen obviously. Fewer reporters will mean less thorough coverage. The coverage wasn’t so thorough when there were significantly more people on staff.
I have to agree with lighthouse that the real question is why people care so very deeply about the life or death of a local newspaper that has never (even as the Ann Arbor News) delivered high quality material to readers.
The cuts at AnnArbor.com certainly aren’t keeping me up at night though I am willing to bet that Tony Dearing isn’t sleeping as soundly as he once did.
I don’t think anyone is in a panic about Ed Vielmetti losing his position. It’s obvious that he has a loyal following. Good for him. I have to be honest and say I never read his posts, and so can’t comment on whether he was unoriginal or not. I am concerned that AnnArbor.com seems like it’s in the beginning of a death spiral, though as others have mentioned above, why we should care so deeply about a site that isn’t consistently delivering high quality content is a mystery. The way they handled this is just terrible. It appears by the timing of things as though the poor people fired were simply let go then marched out of the building, given no notice.
Only Ed Vielmetti, now removed from his post, would respond by cutting and pasting the same thing from two years ago that didn’t make much sense then.
Politico, huh? Looks like it doesn’t take many thumbs down to hide a comment. If you are interested in discussion on a subject, rather than just parroting what people like, then you might want to change that. Even one of your own comments almost suffered the same fate. You probably should change the settings for that.
I’m starting to think Ann Arbor deserves what it is getting with the media. Numerous content providers have been laid off, and no one seems to care, but there is a panic about an unoriginal blogger getting dumped. Very sad.
Wenalway, whose real name is Robert Knilands, is an interesting character. He has his own web site (wenalway.com) and here’s an interview that the Syracuse paper did with him:
http://blog.syracuse.com/newstracker/2008/08/the_robert_knilands_interview.html
lumping him with the “anonymous haters” does everyone a disservice; he’s been booted from a number of sites, but not for being anonymous.
@Wenalway, comments don’t get “hidden” on A2Politico because of negative ratings, or bumped to the top thanks to positive ratings. We’re an egalitarian blog (that’s the royal “we”) and only we get to indulge in snarky commentary. Keeping these two rules in mind, comment away and rate comments as you see fit. Just remember that this isn’t AnnArbor.com. A2Politico readers tend to interact respectfully with each other. Rip into the content. Treat the other readers to your best, dazzling manners.
The rating on Comment No. 23 is a prime example of the Internet being misused by sheep who cannot think for themselves.
I don’t care about my own being hidden, but No. 23 has hit the nail on the head, and I’m sure the Ed-lovers will rate it negatively until it is hidden.
Shame on anyone and everyone who cannot handle hearing cold, hard facts that might shatter their tender, misguided egos. No wonder Ann Arbor, Michigan, and the rest of the nation are going through tough times — no one can bear hearing about the areas where improvement is needed.
@27 Ed knows about Ed’s future, to be sure. Obviously, since he has been commenting on various blogs about the AnnArbor.com situation without elucidating about his employment, he’s choosing not to share.
Does anyone know about Ed’s future?
Has he been picked up by another employer?
A2PNotes: This comment was edited. Please refer to the comment policy.
Ed, you stink at digging for the truth. Anyway, you are just the latest in the long list of people who eventually got what was coming. The problem, as in many other cases, is it took too long.
Now slink back into irrelevance.
I read on another blog that AnnArbor.com was given two years to make a go of it. Keeping that in mind it’s obvious that these layoffs are part of a plan to get the site out of the red and into the black. I just can’t quite understand-seriously-how cutting out the people who write the articles is supposed to improve the newspaper. I am not a subscriber to be honest, I let my subscription lapse a few months after the site took the place of the Ann Arbor News. I look at the content online though and sometimes enjoy the comment fests. More than anything people are scared that our town will be without a newspaper. We are now I think.
@yale,
Don’t be hard on Ed.
I do not know if this is the case, but most companies require employees whom they let go to sign documents attesting that they will not disparage the company in public. In return, the companies do not contest unemployment insurance filings. As a person who was let go from a job for economic reasons, I had to sign such a document.
@20 ‘Keep digging until you find the truth?’ Really? Isn’t that the job of the local newspaper? Wasn’t that your job until recently? One might note that you, no longer being an employee of AnnArbor.com, might simply come forward and share what happened as opposed to making cryptic pronouncements. You might offer some insight into why the newspaper isn’t following what appears to be standard news practices and reporting on the layoffs in a straightforward manner. I’m sure it was a shock to lose your job, particularly when your boss had the bad manners to tell the public it was because you (and the others) didn’t generate enough readership. However, your comments leave me wondering what you expect to accomplish by waiting for others to ‘find the truth’ you so clearly refuse to divulge.
[...] speaking, it’s still something of a cash cow. (On the subject of paid subscribers, the site A2 Politico says Sunday print circulation has dropped from 52,000 in July of 2009, to just about 40,000 in July [...]
@Ed I’ve never referred to you as an editor, but rather AA.com’s “lead blogger.” Just to be clear. Now, I believe that the lead blogger *should* have been an editor with multiple years of experience for the reasons I did give. Teaching people how to do blog is not as easy as it sounds (as you know). Teaching people how to blog, doesn’t address the issue of shaping quality blogging content. I edit and teach about 20 bloggers at the moment. It’s gratifying to know when they “get it,” as it were.
I think you were given a job you couldn’t succeed at and a job that was to look after the backbone of the business model. You are clearly talented, but newbies need editing and teaching.
Re #7 -
Patricia, you have several material facts about the nature of my employment at AnnArbor.com incorrect. I never held an editorial position, and the task of working with community contributors was more of the nature of “teach people how to do it” rather than “edit people’s copy”.
I’m searching for your post where you assert that you wrote in 2009 that was the wrong person for the job, but alas, I can’t locate that either.
Keep digging until you find the truth.
@Alan, obviously it IS my fault that City employees, over the past decade that Hizzoner has been in office, have been given contracts with what Council member Rapundalo intimated in AnnArbor.com are “shocking” benefit packages. Ryan Stanton either didn’t know about the Budget and Labor Committee changes, or he didn’t understand the significance of splitting Budget and Labor into two committees and continuing to exclude Kunselman, Anglin and Briere from the LABOR committee. John Hieftje, Margie Teall, Stephen Rapundalo and Marcia Higgins are all 100 percent responsible for the contract mess through their negligence. That Stanton didn’t examine that is parr for the course.
Pat, I’m waiting for Mr. Stanton to make YOU part of this story and somehow blame you for City employees and their level of insurance benefits. Lol. It’s a tiny stretch but I’m sure he can figure out a way how to do it if The Mayor calls and tells him to.
Just posted this on the Benefits article and expect it will be deleted:
“Congrats AnnArbor.com. The lede line for this story just made me so appalled with the low level quality of journalism at your publication that I just called to cancel my subscription. This after being an Ann Arbor News/AnnArbor.com subscriber since 1973. ” It’s early on a Friday morning and Ann Arbor City Council Member Stephen Rapundalo is shaking his head, a look of distaste frozen in his eyes.” To allow THIS quote from a political hack, with a passage from a reporter that actually says ‘distaste frozen in his eyes’ like some cheap 50s noir novel shows either you don’t have a clue about slanted news coverage or you do and don’t care. Either way, until reporters and editors like the ones responsible for this sort of ‘news story’ are gone, you won’t be getting any money from me. I was skeptical of all the early promises AnnArbor.com would cover local news in an in depth and world class level way, but was willing to give you a chance. Time’s up.”
Ed’s webpage:
http://vielmetti.typepad.com/
Interesting fact. We have this ‘cutting edge’ journalism experiment and still no app for Apple or Droid phones BUT this week Mlive suddenly has a Droid app. Guess that’s where our Newhouse friends decided to put their bucks and cut their loses at AnnArbor.com?
The valentine to Stephen Rapundalo and his dripping sarcasm about firefighter and cop benefits in this morning’s AnnArbor.com makes it crystal clear Ryan Stanton should be fired, as well as the editor who let that vile piece of union bashing see the light of day. It’s not journalism and if this is Tony Dearing’s idea of listening to the community and focusing on journalism then he’s either a liar or an idiot. Yeah, let’s have FAITH and PET coverage…I know that’s what I want more of, and, you know, the hard cutting edge journalism we’ve come to know and expect from this train wreck experiment in new media. Sorry, got to run. I need to look for lost people in Japan by sending them email on Facebook.
http://www.annarbor.com/business-review/more-store-closings-could-be-announced-next-week-as-borders-considers-corporate-office-cuts/#comments
All the comments on AnnArbor.com have been totally wiped out at the link provided above. Surprise.
“AnnArbor.com has demonstrated incredible editorial unprofessionalism in its coverage of local news. The company has demonstrated incredible poor judgement in allowing Laurel Champion to sit on the Board of Ann Arbor SPARK.”
What an idiots running newspaper in college town.
@Chuck, there is a line from the movie Jurassic Park that I think applies:
Dr. Malcolm: “Dinosaurs had their chance. They were wiped out.”
AnnArbor.com is a similar “experiment” by people with just as much hubris as the rich industrialist in the movie, and just as little respect for the fact that the Ann Arbor News had its chance. Laurel Champion wiped it out.
Life, however, always finds a way!
AnnArbor.com’s vacuous and slanted coverage of local politics is A2P’s gain! I was jumping with joy when the Ann Arbor snooze endorsed W in 2004 since I new they had lost it in terms of any credibility with their readership–which I believe is ultimately a good thing. I was just ecstatic when the Snooze closed it doors for good in 2009! Newspapers like the old Ann Arbor News where and are always mouth pieces for corporate interests that would have made a Joesph Goebbels proud from a purely professional perspective. Laural Champion’s post on the board of Spark was particularly egregious in the 2010 primaries; we will continue to see more of Hieftje as a result.
Well it has become clear that the ‘experiment’ has not succeeded to the extent it was expected to do so. I imagine that there are many who will wring their hands about the ‘loss,’ but I won’t be one of them. @Alan I let my subscription to the print edition lapse soon after the venture was launched. Like you, I am someone who is hoping when they go AnnArbor.com will be replaced with a much more robust news site with content that isn’t the quality of rice cereal. Kudos to A2Politico for the scoop on this. At the link supplied by @JustWatching there is a blistering reply to Dearing’s explanation from someone named Ruth Kraut. At base she implies Dearing’s explanation of why the staff were cut is not the truth. It’s a very frank comment and one imagines Dearing cringed when reading it. I know I did.
‘..the community has told us very resoundingly that what it wants most from us is hard news coverage, particularly in the areas of government, education, police, courts, health, the environment, University of Michigan sports, and business….’
Incredible — from all I’ve seen AA.com continues to focus on fluff. No real journalism; just repeat press releases and whatever politicians say. And Laurel and SPARK? Talk about a conflict of interest. The way Tony made sure there was no criticism of Synder allowed.
Let them fail and let’s find some real journalists out there and get a real news site for Ann Arbor!
@Alan, I am going to say something I said when Ed was hired. He was the wrong guy for that job. He’s quirky, very intelligent and as honest as the day is long, so far as I can ascertain. Supervising bloggers (untrained writers, for the most part) takes experience as an editor. Making a community of bloggers hum takes an editorial genius who has institutional back-up ’til Tuesday. He didn’t bring that kind of experience with him to the job, and from what I’ve heard contributors were not closely enough managed so that blogger content quality was relatively uniform.
His posts never elicited loads of comments, and for a “lead blogger,” it doesn’t look like he was allowed to really bring his curiosity and creativity to bear.
I can’t imagine what it must be like to have been let go from such a public job. They gave his position to another employee (with a different title).
AnnArbor.com has demonstrated incredible editorial unprofessionalism in its coverage of local news. The company has demonstrated incredible poor judgement in allowing Laurel Champion to sit on the Board of Ann Arbor SPARK. Tony Dearing, Matt Kraner and Laurel Champion will be given other jobs when this venture folds, and people like Lisa Allmendinger and other professionals will get the sack.
If the owners of Advance Media had any sense, they would replace the three executives with a single individual who has a boatload of experience running a company that does digital media successfully. Instead, they’ve allowed Dearing, Kraner and Chapion to “learn on the job.” The result?
Fourteen people who needn’t have, lost their jobs on Thursday.
The “community has told us?” Really? So Dearing is going to produce more “hard news coverage” with the same reporters who were unable to produce it before (Ryan Stanton comes immediately to mind), and by employing a smaller staff of people who will be expected to produce the kind of news pieces that take more time to research and write? That’s why they axed staff? I’m rolling my eyes. This guy needs to learn that honesty at this moment would play better than the cart of composted manure he’s trying to sell. AnnArbor.com isn’t yet profitable after 18 months, and no parent company in the world will let Dearing, Champion and Kraner fritter away unlimited millions.
I give AnnArbor.com another 6-8 months, tops. There will be another round of cuts or more employees will jump ship in the meantime.
Another blogger wrote this: “Remember this was going to be a website like no other, it was going to define the new journalism, according to those who started it. Well, let’s hope not.”
Thanks for sharing this snippet from Mr. Dearing.
In response to a query posted in a comment to a story about the further decline of Borders Books, Tony Dearing explained the lack of coverage of the site’s own decline:
“While personnel issues are an internal matter and we don’t discuss them publicly, I can confirm that we reorganized our newsroom this week to put our focus more squarely on local news coverage. As a new organization, we have tried a lot of things. Now that we are well into our second year, the community has told us very resoundingly that what it wants most from us is hard news coverage, particularly in the areas of government, education, police, courts, health, the environment, University of Michigan sports, and business. These areas of coverage account for all but a tiny percentage of our readership and revenue. Meanwhile, we also have put a lot of effort toward other things — including lifestyle topics like Passions and Pursuits, The Deuce, Homes and some areas of Entertainment coverage — that our community has shown much less interest in, and we are scaling back in those areas.
“We have made tremendous progress since we launched, and we continue to be very happy with the growth we’re seeing in audience and revenue. But from the beginning, we said that we would be shaped by what the community wants, and the community wants us to focus more sharply on local news reporting. We have repositioned ourselves to throw our energy and resources into our local news coverage and that is how we will operate moving forward as we continue to grow.”
http://www.annarbor.com/business-review/more-store-closings-could-be-announced-next-week-as-borders-considers-corporate-office-cuts/#comments
The A2 Journal…well it IS free. Lol. I figured something weird was up when the paper started to be placed on my front steps instead of at the end of my driveway about two weeks ago. The Ann Arbor News did have it’s time and place but that last five years (and especially the last year) were just painful. But even it their darkest hours, the stories were not as kiss-ass as the AnnArbor.com stories on local business and politics. The stories sound like they are being written by reporters who have applied to new jobs at the subject’s companies. We got our quarterly bill for the paper in the mail this week (I opted out of automatic payment…) and I was seriously thinking about canceling. I mean, I’m newspaper junkie, have had the A2 News and A2 Dot Com home delivered since ’73 and was ready to pull the plug. This last move and bloodbath with the remaining staff just sealed the deal. Freep, the Metro Times, The A2 Observer. It’s a new era and the great Newhouse ‘experiment’ has failed big time.
@Alan, there is the A2Journal, and I have a feeling that AnnArbor.com will hold on for six months or so. After that, we’ll have to see what happens. AnnArbor.com is, in many ways, like NOT having a newspaper. So, we have been living without one for the past 18 months. The Ann Arbor News? Better than AA.com? Not by much. Ann Arbor has been living with thoughtful, intelligent, investigative reporting for the past decade.
Sorry to see Ed go, if this is true. He seems like a good guy and I enjoyed his posts. Thanks GOODNESS the Pet and Faith sections are avoiding the cuts. I’m sure their remaining readers will be very happy to hear that. Lol. And Bob Needham and the coverage he ran in the Entertainment section was outstanding. That’s bad news. But face it, the articles from a couple of reporters seem like try outs for companies they’ve sent their resumes to. The Com. had their chance, they failed to live up to their promise of quality journalism, the fiasco is being run by a trio of losers who failed in the newspaper business and were somehow expected to make THIS work. I’m sure The Mayor and his Green Shirts are all dancing a jig at an Ann Arbor future without a major newspaper looking at their moral and management failures. More shady deals, million dollar water fountains, roads that look like the surface of the moon and sole source contracts to political buddies. Hope the rumored expansion of Detroit Free Press coverage into Washtenaw County pans out.
http://news.michiganradio.org/post/annarborcom-lays-14-employees