by P.D. Lesko If the down-sizing and attrition continue apace at AnnArbor.com, Laurel Champion, former publisher of the Ann Arbor News, will be left to head the organization as Executive Vice President in Charge of, Well, Everything. Steve Pepple (pictured below, right), former Print Director for AnnArbor.com, has decamped to the Detroit Free Press. You didn’t hear? [...]
by P.D. Lesko The history of the telescope is fascinating. This piece is not about that. However, it is about The Ann magazine’s futile and ultimately disappointing attempt to give readers insight into AnnArbor.com using what amounts to a journalistic telescope. Don’t get me wrong. Writing about AnnArbor.com and getting the Big Brush Off from [...]
Charles R. Eisendrath directs the Knight-Wallace Fellows program in journalism at the University of Michigan. He’s a former Washington and foreign correspondent for Time magazine. Suffice it to say that Eisendrath has not shied away from opportunities to smack around Advance Publications and AnnArbor.com in the national media. First he told the New York Times in July [...]
by P.D. Lesko Over the past 24 months, AnnArbor.com has seen the departure of most of its experienced reporters to more prestigious and higher paying surroundings—such as the Detroit Free Press. There are media analysts, however, that expect the Freep to be closed by 2015, as Detroit is no longer able to support two daily [...]
by P.D. Lesko I voted absentee for the first time. No lines. No waiting (well, maybe 5 minutes while the ballot was prepared). Overall, an excellent experience compared to voting at my local polling place with its cantankerous poll workers, God love ‘em. For A2P newbies, you might be shocked, just shocked to learn that [...]
During the course of recent Ann Arbor City Council candidate forums put on by local groups such as the League of Women Voters, as well as neighborhood groups, one question that popped up was this one: “How can residents get information about city government without a daily newspaper?” The sub-text is clear: how does city government [...]
by P.D. Lesko There’s a good ole tug o’ words going on between two local news media outlets at the moment. It’s not quite as juicy as the recent Washington, DC thriller that has WaPo big wig Ben Bradlee’s former assistant Jeff Himmelman publishing a tell-all book with allegations that cast Bradlee (not to mention [...]
by Amy Kerr Hardin When you next tune into your favorite National Public Radio broadcast, say… maybe it’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross, you might expect to hear a story like the one aired in 2010 about the billionaire Koch brothers and their ongoing egregious attempts to wholesale purchase our political system. NPR ran this segment [...]
A2Politico Notes: This is filed under “Scoops & Scores!!” because you read it here first. by P.D. Lesko England’s Queen Elizabeth had her “annus horribilis” in 1992. AnnArbor.com had its own annus horribilis in 2011. First, in late-February 2011 the news blog lost a trio of its most experienced staffers to the Detroit Free Press. [...]
by P.D. Lesko This month A2Politico.com becomes a pay-to-view site. Editor & Publisher published a feature recently titled, “How Can Newspapers Convince Content Is Worth Paying For?” I believe the answer is simple: Provide compelling, smart, well-written and thoroughly-researched content that people can’t get anywhere else. Employ carefully chosen and talented writers, and always assume readers [...]
