Booth Adds New Coverage for Saginaw and Bay City

Booth Newspapers is creating a new edition called the Great Lakes Bay Tuesday. This publication will be delivered to stores, racks and newstands in the same distribution area as the Saginaw News and Bay City Times. This is to accomodate readers who are missing the news those two publications used to provide on Tuesdays. The estimated distribution of this edition, which will launch March 30th, 2010, is 23,500.

This is in conjunction with the Flint Journal announcement of a new Tuesday edition, reported yesterday.

Flint Journal Adds Tuesday Edition

The Flint Journal will be re-instating a Tuesday edition, but it will not include the edition in its home delivery. The Tuesday edition will only be available as single copy in racks and newstands. This will be effective March 23rd, 2010.

The Journal had converted from distribution seven days a week to three days a week in June of 2009.

Flint Journal, Saginaw News, Bay City Times Reduce to Three Days a Week

Effective June 1st, three Booth Newspapers, the Flint Journal, Saginaw News and the Bay City Times will cease being daily newspapers and will instead only publish on Thursday, Friday and Sundays. There will also be an effort by these publications to increase their local news coverage.

Booth Newspapers had announced March 23rd that these changes were in place, along with the elimination of the print version of the Ann Arbor News.

The remaining Booth Newspapers have no current plan to change their distribution days, instead focusing on restructuring internally to improve profitability.

Ann Arbor News - Closing / Restructuring

Booth Michigan Publications
AnnArbor.com update April 15, 2009

The Ann Arbor News will cease publication entirely in late July. However that very next week (tentatively planned for a Sunday, July 26-with no lapse in delivery between the existing and new Sunday print publications), AnnArbor.com will begin producing a print publication on Sunday and Thursday mornings. While AnnArbor.com's business model will center around a new, community-driven web site, home delivered and single copy paid, twice-weekly newspapers will maintain a strong market presence.

AnnArbor.com's twice-weekly, paid print publications will look and feel like traditional newspapers. The newspapers will be in a multi-section, broadsheet format. Features and sections similar to those that appear in the Ann Arbor News will also appear in AnnArbor.com's print publications, such as Sports, Travel, Local Business, Entertainment, Opinion, Comics and even puzzles. But these publications will be enriched with more news analysis and community-focused information that's driven from the web platform (reverse publishing). By early May, we'll be able to share section-front prototypes and content highlights for both the website and the printed newspapers.

Matt Kraner, AnnArbor.com's new CEO, understands the significant value a local newspaper provides to advertisers. As such, he plans to continue a high level of market penetration. AnnArbor.com will be home-delivered to current Ann Arbor News pre-paid subscribers who do not choose to opt-out of delivery. New and aggressive pricing models will be also taken to market, encouraging a high purchase rate for the printed publications. Circulation numbers will be shared with advertisers regularly, while ABC audits will also continue.

Matt is confident that Ann Arbor residents will support the new business model. In fact, he and his editorial team are holding Public Forums as a key means of listening to and discussing community reaction to the changes. They are also asking questions and learning from the community. AnnArbor.com plans to build a web and print publication company that's woven tightly into Ann Arbor's local fabric. Early indications are positive. When the original announcement was made, 130 subscribers canceled their Ann Arbor News. While Matt is concerned about losing any readers, he acknowledges that this represents a small fraction of the News' circulation base. More importantly, circulation "stops and starts" have returned to normal since the first week.

Other positive changes will occur with AnnArbor.com's newspaper launch. Advertisers will be able to distribute their preprinted inserts by zip code within Washtenaw and Livingston Counties. AnnArbor.com is also working on sub-zip code opportunities for later launch. And a high-quality TMC product will be carrier-delivered to non-subscribers on weekends.

BoothMichigan will continue to offer multi-market advertiser contract rates, to include AnnArbor.com. Web advertising opportunities will also be handled through Booth or through AnnArbor.com's sales team.