AnnArbor.com Is A Failure Because Tony Dearing Was “Clueless” Argues Former AA News Reporter
A2P Notes: Just after AnnArbor.com was launched, essayist Jack Lessenberry wrote in the Metro Times:
Now I like to think of myself as a fairly sophisticated newspaper critic. I’ve worked for a lot of them, have had bylines in The Washington Post and New York Times, am a newspaper ombudsman, have been on the graduate faculty at the University of Michigan, and have taught journalism full time for years. So I wanted to find just the right way of expressing the quality of Ann Arbor.com in words both the layman and the experienced journalist could understand and relate to.
So here goes: Ann Arbor.com is an appalling pile of crap. And an insult to the intelligence of any functioning adult.
Essentially, it is written for children who are at about the fourth-grade level, possibly, slightly below-average ones. Here’s what the top story on Ann Arbor.com was Sunday afternoon: DEXTER PHARMACY DAMAGED IN MINOR FIRE. (“A damage estimate is not yet available. No information was available on when the pharmacy will re-open.”)
Former Ann Arbor News reporter Tom Gantert posted this comment beneath Lessenberry’s essay. Gantert wrote:
Jack,
Let me start by saying I’m a former reporter for The Ann Arbor News.
After reading this critique (and really learning more about you than AnnArbor.com, do you always insert your resume in every analysis?) I have to say that this appears to be beyond unfair. You talk of being a reporter. But my guess is that beyond your academic experience, you’ve never really BEEN one. Or else you’d know that the first week on the job, no one is breaking the type of stories that you say are vital to journalism. Go talk to the people who broke the Kwame Kilpatrick texting story you opine about. Ask them if they could have done that on their first week on the job. AnnArbor.com’s contribution to journalism should be judged after a year, not on the first day or the day you drove to Dexter to grab one….
A2Politico asked Tom Gantert to judge AnnArbor.com some 22 months after the site’s launch. His verdict is an indictment of Tony Dearing who, Gantert writes, “didn’t have a clue as to what it would take to accomplish the things he said the site would do.”
by Tom Gantert
The day it was announced the Ann Arbor News would close, I was among many of the employees who walked across the street to a hotel to hear the pitch of what the then-start up AnnArbor.com was going to be.
At that March 23, 2009 meeting, Tony Dearing told the crowd that he’d been on news sites and nothing compared to what they had in store. Dearing was the former editor of the Flint newspaper who had worked at The Ann Arbor News before I arrived in 2001. He was hand-selected in December 2008 to join Advance Internet to work on an “unnamed” project. He later became the face of AnnArbor.com as its content director.
Dearing said in 2009 AnnArbor.com would be “an online news and community network unlike anything a media company has done before. It will be something new, created for the people of Ann Arbor by the people of Ann Arbor.”
According to Poynter.org, Dearing told former Ann Arbor News sports writer Jim Carty:
What we’re going to do is not going to look like anything out there … We are creating a model that doesn’t exist … The one thing I guarantee you, when this thing launches, and people look at it, they’re not going to say, ‘Oh, it’s just another newspaper Web site.’ I can assure you this is going to be different from anything you’ve ever seen or can conceptualize.
When AnnArbor.com’s launch was delayed a week, my expectations rose.
Now, more than two years later, Dearing’s statements in 2009 appear to be nothing more than that of a carnival barker promising a 10-foot stuffed panda and instead passing out ribbons.
AnnArbor.com is a typical, ordinary news site.
And responsibility for that ultimate failure rests with Dearing.
From the start, Dearing pushed community involvement. He said AnnArbor.com would be “for the people, by the people.” That’s a trite phrase, but what does it mean?
It meant newspaper reporters would only be part of the attraction of AnnArbor.com.
It appears Dearing didn’t have a clue as to what it would take to accomplish the things he said the site would do. He spoke of engaging bloggers, neighborhood pages and writing with a brash voice. AnnArbor.com failed to deliver on any of that.
Dearing completely underestimated just what it takes to have untrained “citizens” write entertaining commentary.
One of Dearing’s first columns was about “citizen journalists” in July of 2009. He wrote how they would contribute to this new social media journalism. Dearing was commenting on Iran’s election protests where anonymous citizens took video of the riots. Dearing called them “citizen journalists” and would have to be accepted by traditional journalists.
But those “citizen journalists” in Iran were nothing more than people with video equipment who found themselves in the middle of an international event. Right time, right place.
For a daily news site like AnnArbor.com, “citizen journalists” would have a much larger burden. They would have to find interesting topics and write about it in a compelling manner. There may be only a handful of “citizen bloggers” in the city capable of pulling that off. One was Dave Askins, known on his blog as Homeless Dave. Askins interviewed newsmakers on his teeter-totter and was one of the most interesting reads around while The Ann Arbor News was in operation.
Dearing’s failure was that AnnArbor.com never found the Homeless Daves.
Instead, AnnArbor.com’s “citizen” contributions were often uninspiring.
When Dearing spoke of the neighborhood pages in Ann Arbor, I came away thinking it would be something of a “Facebook-esque” approach. Instead, when I checked those pages, I found them boring with sporadic postings that were nothing more of announcements of community events. Those pages no longer exist.
This is not the fault of the community. It’s a failure by Dearing to understand the type of support these ideas needed to be successful.
But Dearing hasn’t shown he has any clue how to effectively bring in the community. An “old media” newspaper guy, Dearing appears to have believed that if he put a blogger on AnnArbor.com, it would be read. But it’s no longer 1984 and newspapers no longer hold a monopoly on content. The quality of the bloggers wasn’t enough to draw readership.
Dearing admitted that in a March 2011 post when AnnArbor.com laid off many of its staff. In his post, Dearing said readers wanted hard news coverage that accounted for all but a tiny percentage of readership and revenue. So Dearing said they were scaling back on the lifestyle topics.
I believe a news site can incorporate some of the things Dearing talked about 2009. I think the vision of what Dearing spoke of two years ago can be the future of “community news.”
But it takes a lot of work, a good sense for identifying talented bloggers and nurturing them. That means resources, which takes money. And it also means someone who knows what they are doing leading the way.
In the end, while The Ann Arbor News was dying, the older journalists were told that Ann Arbor was going to be Advance’s testing ground for a new “digital” style of community news. The community was wired.
In an era where newspapers are desperately searching for a better mousetrap, AnnArbor.com hasn’t come close to what it said it wanted to be.
Closing The Ann Arbor News was an economic reality I understood. But it was especially painful.
AnnArbor.com’s failure to deliver as something special in its wake makes it even worse.
You can watch Dearing somewhat unenthusiastically trying to sell many of the concepts and strategies that Gantert argues have turned out to be epic failures in this May 2009 video of a presentation Dearing gave before a gathering of about 95 Ann Arbor marketing professionals:
AnnArbor.com Tony Dearing speaks at LA2M from Derek Mehraban on Vimeo.
I thought it was funny, at the time, that Advance chose an old newspaper guy to direct content for a new, never-thought-of-before online publication.
@Aaaron:
I noticed that Henry H. appeared before City Council during the public commentary section a few weeks ago and mentioned that Neal Elaykin displayed the Israeli flag in front of his Fifth Ward home.
I wondered if Mike Anglin felt gratitude or chagrin at Henry’s criticism of his primary opponent?
kerry d….may i urge you and your fellow “abuzz” “Green Party”/ Henry Herskov -ites to continue to weigh in loudly on behalf of and against …well… whoever.
It will assure the defeat of your candidates as surely as was the case at the COOP…which has to be a good thing, as your support is a good litmus test of unworthiness, or at least suspicion of same. .
@A2Politico:
Thanks for the story on the origination of the copious e-mails from Neal Elyakin during the Ann Arbor District Library election last year. It appears that Mr Elyakin has been “hoisted by his own petard” and shall be “paying the piper” for the unflattering description of fellow Fifth Warder Vivienne Armentrout and a second candidate for that board in those e-mails. The Fifth Ward is abuzz over Mr. Elyakin’s e-mailing efforts in that raceand whether it warrants his ascension to a City Council seat.
Elyakin, unlike other council candidates, has no campaign website up yet.
The old Ann Arbor News and the new annarbor.com are also part of the old Booth group of papers, all of which are owned by Advance Publications and the Newhouse family of companies.
And yes, I share the concern for the lack of quality political reporting.
The problem with annarbor.com is its model. What is it?
It’s not a news source. I mean, news sources are supposed to be timely, probing, thorough, and informative. That’s not annarbor.com. It’s late, shallow, and often one-sided.
And it’s not a blog. The best blogs are either hilarious, irreverent, have a really strong point of view, or are single minded in their obsessiveness about X Y or Z — or are a combination of all of those characteristics. Annarbor.com doesn’t do that well either. It’s usually boring.
If you care about this city, this is just a very sad, sad state of affairs. I remember very well the promises Tony Dearing made and Tom Gantert talks about. I don’t see any of them being fulfilled.
Perhaps this isn’t directly relevant, but I think the news issue in Michigan goes beyond Ann Arbor and AnnArbor.com … if you look around in the state of Michigan, most of the other major newspapers in Michigan are owned by a pair of brothers (Booth Publications) from Grand Rapids. In addition, they plan on reducing print publication of these papers over the next several years. That’s a pretty miserable state of affairs.
South Carolina, e.g., which I’m sure most of us in Michigan would like to think of as benighted and backwards, has 3 major newspapers, Charleston (Post and Courier), Columbia (The State), and Greenville (Times), owned by three different groups, and despite cuts they’ve had to make in the past years, they are still going strong and doing some very good reporting.
I think the effects of The Ann Arbor News closure (which most often affect those of my parents’ generation (who are in their mid-60’s), who aren’t as familiar with the Internet and how to get news there), are soon to be felt elsewhere in Michigan and one of those is a lack of political reporting.
This leads to being ill-informed about elections and issues, and of course most of these people still vote. Michiganians ought to look at a state like South Carolina (one we wouldn’t normally want to emulate, I don’t think), and be ashamed of the situation here with the newspapers and what it’s come to.
—Daniel (a.k.a. @moselmensch)
Yes – “AnnArbor.com’s failure to deliver as something special in its wake makes it even worse.”
Now I’m reader of the great college’s newspaper from EMU and WCC and I have to say that this newspapers are much better than aa.com
First, I am not a “professionally trained” journalist. Instead, I am a citizen blogger for a “news opinion” resource. Here is a layman’s opinion of what’s happening to Ann Arbor.com. Feel free to disagree.
One issue I have with the online newspaper is the slanted coverage, at best, of the recall campaign against Governor Rick Snyder.
Here is a perfect example. On Saturday, 5.21, an estimated 10K people gathered in at the Lansing, Michigan Capitol grounds for a kickoff rally about an petition to recall the Governor. Ann Arbor.com (which just happens to be seated cyberspace wise at lease, in the home county of Gov. Snyder) sent no one to coverage this event.
Instead, they linked an article from the Detroit Free Press.
Again, just to repeat, Gov. Snyder was/is a resident of Superior Township, which part of its’ landscape is in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Yet, Ann Arbor.com could not send ONE reporter to cover the story. In turn, “reporter” Nathan B. can write on a frequent basis opinion/news articles, in support of Gov. Snyder policies.
Sorry folks but I thought a news resource is suppose to cover NEWS. Meanwhile, a unpaid citizen blogger like myself, covered Saturday’s rally in detail….
Yes Virginia, we have a news issue in our town.
@Junior what Vivienne wrote about Neil was absolutely true. He sent around an email (which I saw) basically calling Vivienne and another candidate “divisive.” I took the trouble to email Neil, then set up a meeting between one of the candidates whom he unjustly accused and Neil. He apologized for his email at that meeting.
I’m terribly concerned that he sent that email out in the first place. He harmed the good reputations of two candidates for office without ever having met them. He wrote in his email that “someone” whom he trusted told him that Vivienne and the other candidate were divisive.
I could care less that he’s Jewish. I care that he’s a sheep who’ll not only believe rumors he hears, but will then spread them merrily along.
I also express some disappointment about the performance of Tony Dearing with respect to his editing out of important viewpoints relative to the City Council race and the Fifth Ward race in particular between incumbent Mike Anglin and challenger Neal Elyakin.
Let me preface my argument by saying I have a great deal of respect for both Democratic candidates and feel either would be a competent and diligent representative if elected. I have in fact previously posted support for Neal Elyakin when his appointment to Ann Arbor Human Rights Commission came under fire from certain quarters. I have also expressed support for Mr. Anglin in the past on various matters.
There were several annarbor.com articles that detailed the candidacy of Mr. Elyakin and his background of activism in various Jewish organizations including the Jewish National Fund and the Jewish Federation.
Vivienne Armentrout, a former County commission chairperson, in issuing a reply to another poster about this activism, noted that Mr. Elyakin lived in her neighborhood and flew the Israeli flag in front of his home; she expressed concern that Neal’s involvement in Jewish causes might place a local focus in City Council on the Israel-Palestine issue which she felt was unwanted due to many other pressing matters of local concern that faced the City of Ann Arbor. Vivienne, a candidate for the Ann Arbor District Library board at one time, also noted that, even though she never met Mr. Elyakin, he sent out an e-mail during her candidacy for a board vacancy indicating her presence on the AADL board would be “disruptive”; Mrs. Armentrout stated she left unreturned telephone and e-mail correspondences with Mr. Elyakin to clarify his statement, but he never responded.
This article was met with a flurry of posts, including one from David Shtulman, current president of the Jewish Federation of Washtenaw County. Mr. Shtulman, who criticized the article for raising Neal’s past of Jewish activism and indicating that his religion should not be a campaign issue. Others, including Vivienne, pointed to Neal’s blog content, which was heavily filled with his observations and opinions of Israel and the Palestinian people and expressed concern that those opinions may give impetus to a greater focus on these matters during City Council meetings.
Tony Dearing not only foreclosed discussion by closing the thread but also deleted the posts of Vivienne and David, two respected civic leaders on a matter of public interest, as well as other informative and thoughtful postings. I found this profoundly disappointing as well as unnecessary.
Neal Elyakin’s record of activism and the public’s approval or disapproval of such coduct as well as his opinions on varoius matters will be diiscussed in other forums to be sure, but Dearing’s editing out of numerous posts regarding these issues was just plain bad journalism.
They hate people using the abreviation AA.com – whatever, it’s easier than spelling it out. They did everything wrong from the start. People just want the news. Now I go to the site and I see their stupid social plugin embedded in the middle of the site. Now I am forced to look at my Facebook friends recent comments all the sudden. I changed my instant personalization settings in FB and the more I use it, the more how I see FB is one huge waste of time and distraction from getting things done. Can’t we just read the news? Nope, we have to stare at “like” buttons and FB posts, and “share” and worst of all the STUPID COMMENT section. That’s nothing but a big distraction. And by the way, where are all the beautiful videos and slideshows that were supposed revolutionize photojournalism? People don’t have time or the attention span to watch that awful, boring, terrible sound, amateur, unedited crap. There ARE none because they don’t know how to do it – TV does. The whole site is just a mish mash of buttons and ugly ad bars. Here’s an idea; print a paper 7 days a week and stop giving away your news for free online. What genius way back when said “I got a bright idea, let’s give it away for free online?” “Yay! We’re so smart!” And newspapers are generally clones. They all follow each other no matter what. They cheapened their product. Now that Lon is gone, they have one staffer and one part-time photog. Every headline is the same font size, and they use postage stamp-sized photos next to the headline. What’s that tell you about how they value photography? They could care less. All they want is more like and share buttons so they can’t gloat to advertisers about the billions of clicks they get. It’s to the point that it’s a Facebook site and nothing close to a newspaper. Advertisers know it and are better off spending money elsewhere. I give it 1 more year, and then bye bye.
@John, I don’t think the folks at AA.com view AAChronicle or A2P as competitors. That the Ann Arbor News never had competition was one of the reasons the quality of the coverage suffered. The quality of the coverage at AA.com has suffered because, as Tom points out, Dearing was not versed in electronic journalism even as he dashed about town selling it to advertisers and potential subscribers. From the cheesy web interface they chose (looks like they just recently hired a full-time programmer to make the site experience less painful), to the management structure which is so top-heavy. I am a firm believer in niche business models, and I don’t think AA.com has a niche because one wasn’t created before the site was launched.
The idea of a general-purpose local website as the electronic version of the old local paper seems not to work.
I use AA.com., AAChron.com and A2P for COMPLETELY DIFFERENT purposes. We have evolved, here in Ann Arbor, the idea of COMPLEMENTARY niche web sites, with low overhead and small staffs, run by people with great passion for whatever niche they cover. The combination of passion and narrow focus makes for a better product in that subject area. People seem willing to pay for this kind of quality. If it can deliver identifiable demographics, advertisers may like it better, too. It looks like this could be the road to financial viability.
If AA.com were to abandon the role of general-interest Electronic Ann Arbor News, pick out some areas of focus, staffed by people with passion for the subject matter (e.g. high school sports, local weather statistics, police blotter, business news, local education, UM sports, etc.), eliminate most bricks-ad-mortor presence & non-reporter staff, and view A2P, AAC.com, and any other focused local-news sites as complements, not competitors, they might find more success. In any case, I think Ann Arbor is creating the future of local news, organically. What an exciting time & place to be!
p.s. In one area i disagree with Gantert: “Homeless dave Askins”s ” teeter talk was far from an undiluted blessing and hardly a standard for a legitimate news organization to aspire to.
He seemed to go out of his way to interview and see-saw with fringe-oid people who should properly have been pariahs…notably synagogue harasser/jew baiters henry herskovitz and aimee smith…and avoided asking them probing hardball questions. Instead he legitimized them ( in their own narcissisistic minds/blogs) with a “respectable forum”.
Askins’stewardship of the Ann arbor Chronicle continues to allow these yobs to claim newsworthy stature, via their interminable (and always properly dismissed ) ‘boycott israel’ blatherings at the city council, which happily has the good sense to recognize the inapproriateness of foreign policy ( and a stupid one at that) to its real local-centric mission.
Although I have alot of sympathy for A2.com staffers in trying to “hold it together” in an era of shrinking print media and competition from a rampant editor-free ranting blogosphere , they crossed the line to incompetence when they allowed as “news’ postings on their community bulletin board from unalloyed hate mongers…notably the self-aggrandizing Henry Herskovitz who was allowed on several occasions to post “articles” celebrating his tiny cult’s multi-year harassment of a local synagogue and it’s picketing of a Jerusalem Quartet concert at the UM.
To it’s partial credit a2.com took quite seriously the outrage this generated, and allowed fairly free ranging and lengthy online responses to Herskovitz’ arrogant and inane posts, but the situation should not have happened at all.
First amendment rights do not automatically include the logistical facilitation by ostensibly unbiased media for proselytizing crackpot-ry.
That’s what soapboxes are for, although even there there may be legitimate consequences , since some words are fighting words..
Yes, I use both your RSS article feed as well as the comment feed. I’ve seen the “fire hydrant” comment emails previously and don’t like those either. If I were to re-write some of the comment code, I’d play with fine tuning the comment emails (I’m sure someone has already, somewhere).
@Joe if you look above at the “stay connected” link you can get updates on threads, comments, pages, anything on the site. You need to use an RSS feed reader. If you don’t have one, give it a whirl. If you do, use the RSS feeds to get updates on the threads you’re interested in, including the discussions. There are tools to do the same thing using email notifications, but people get so much email that I decided not to go that route.
Homeless Dave’s Stopped.Watched is exactly what newspapers need. I think Stopped.Watched is a little shy on graphics at this point but how many people have smart phones? The eyes and ears are everywhere.
Making any money is about scalability. Tony Dearing seemed to have the right ideal but like a bad start-up, he hasn’t learned to pivot and take the business plan a completely new direction (good start-up angels will help guide you better and even kick you out).
They (annarbor.com and annarborchronicle.com) are trying to keep their site within the confines of a web Content Management System and that’s wrong (a2politico.com works better in this medium but still lacks abilities to get updates on threads–of course all three lack that).
@Tom what you’re talking about is a community portal. Here’s the problem, there’s a lot of competition from other companies that want a piece of each of the pies you suggest. Pizza shops want you to use their web sites (Domino’s pizza has invested, I imagine, millions in perfecting their own online ordering site—it’s pretty cool, too!). I would argue that niche is the way to go, as opposed to replicating what a newspaper does (portal) online for a small town like Ann Arbor. No one wants to go to AnnArbor.com to order pizza, or order chocolate. Furthermore, unless a portal were prepared to offer those services as a way to generate traffic, there would have to be some cut involved for the portal which the local businesses would be reticent to pay, I think, because it’s just more advertising.
I like the nonprofit idea, and certainly there are examples of news sites that are making this work (VoiceofSanDiego.org), but in a small community competing with other non-profits this would be a tough way to raise a significant amount of cash, I think. So the question of how a non-profit becomes sustainable is really the one we want to answer.
However, I think before figuring out how to fund a site, it’s pretty clear that there needs to be some serious work done figuring out the kind of site that could thrive and connect to the communities (because I think Ann Arbor is not a single community).
Thanks for writing this piece.
@Robert: Newspapers have been losing print readers and advertising for decades. The new model is the million dollar question. What my hopes AnnArbor.com would become is the one-site does it all. You want to order pizza? Check a movie site? Order something online from a downtown restaurant or place an order for chocolate at Schakolad? You go to AnnArbor.com. The reporting would have been one facet of a community online gathering spot. Print advertising is dying and online advertising will NOT sustain a full-blown news operation. News organizations also have to think like non-profits. $300 a plate fund raisers with Bill Maher or Michael Moore speakers, Top of the Park like concerts they put on during the summer. Would that work? I think over time it could. Instead, news organizations are like dinosaurs with one foot in the tar pit still thinking they can somehow escape with the same old thing. The problem is the industry is run by 60-to-70 year olds that don’t have a clue how to rescue their industry.
My wife finally gave up on the Ann Arbor News, in whatever form it now exists, and dropped our subscription (but they keep delivering the paper faithfully, weeks later) and what was said by Lessenbury and Gantert is exactly what I saw happening. Thank you for the validation.
Tom – you give Ryan Stanton far too much credit. He does write a lot but he doesn’t really SEE a lot. Just ‘reporting’ is one thing but actually seeing and reading in between the lines is another thing. He doesn’t see between the lines practically at all. Our mayor has gotten a complete bye from Ryan despite so many facts and conflicts of interest – Ryan seems blind to them (Laurel looking over his shoulder?).
Nathan Bomey has a bit more going for him but often can’t see between the lines either though once again I suspect it’s the Laurel over the shoulder problem (or Tony over the shoulder for Laurel…).
At this point I find the reader comments more informative than the articles and usually more informative. If Tony had some real news sense he’d look at them (instead of wasting huge amounts of time censoring them) and recruit some of those writers.
Mr. Gantert what do you think it would take for an online news site to be something unlike anything out there, or at least something the likes of which Ann Arbor readers haven’t seen? You imply money is one of the criteria. What else? Do you think it’s likely AnnArbor.com will become the site Tony Dearing told you it would become?
Tom, you nailed it!
Note to Jeff: AnnArbor.com has some talented reporters. Ryan Stanton is a good, young reporter. From May 10-15, Ryan had 12 bylines in AnnArbor.com. That is an enormous work load for any reporter. Those 12 stories covered beats that The Ann Arbor News had six full-time reporters covering in 2001 when I first arrived. Think of AnnArbor.com as M*A*S*H where it’s just patch ’em up and ship ’em out meatball surgery. Under that model, Ryan’s work is quite impressive. AnnArbor.com does have a lot of young reporters and with inexperienced staff, you get superficial stories. But at what the news site pays, you aren’t going to get experienced reporters.
One senses that, perhaps, Mr. Gantert has a bit of an axe to grind. Then again Mr. Dearing comes off in this video as a smug huckster given what we now know about the product that is AnnArbor.com. In retrospect, was Jack Lessenberry’s initial reaction accurate? I have often felt that our local newspaper was an insult to the intelligence of any functioning adult. It’s bland and uninspiring, often. There was, it would appear from Gantert’s recollections, much hype and little understanding of how to live up to it.
From FACEBOOK: “Nail on the head. At the end of the day, AA.com is a failure because it does not have enough staffers and the ones it does employ are not talented enough.”—Jeff Sabatini