The Fifth Estate

THE ANN ARBOR INDEPENDENT is in the midst of conducting its first reader survey. Thus far 170 individuals have elected to take the survey online. “This is a community newspaper,” said Patricia Lesko, whose decades old local publishing…

FORMER ANNARBOR.COM reporter Lisa Allmendinger announced on June 2 that she was shuttering her online news site DexterUpdate.com. Modeled on Allmendinger’s popular ChelseaUpdate.com news site, DexterUpdate.com wasn’t able to get the…

STORIES ABOUT THE misuse of taxpayer money to fund private schools, life-threatening delays in blood testing of newborns and the plight of political asylum seekers won the Livingston Awards today. The $10,000 prizes for journalists under…

ACCORDING TO A new survey, 60 percent of Americans read or watch three to 10 news stories a day. The research also revealed that 56 percent of the 1,000 new consumers surveyed still pay for a print news subscription and 68 percent of those…

IT WAS ANNOUNCED on March 26 that the Detroit Society of Professional Journalists (DSPJ) has awarded a prize for investigative journalism to The Ann Arbor Independent newspaper. The Indy, launched in October 2013, is the first locally-owned…

THE ANN ARBOR Indepdendent accepts no advertising from local, county or state government, local universities or the Ann Arbor Public Schools. It is a policy that takes direct aim at bolstering the newspaper’s editorial independence. The…

THE HOUSE JUDICIARY Committee recently approved House Bill 4770, which among other things, attempts to define what a journalist is to restrict access to motor vehicle accident reports for a period of 30 days after the accident. The…

by P.D. Lesko In 2009, AnnArbor.com Kontent King Tony Dearing announced the "future of journalism in Ann Arbor": "Ding. Dong. The Witch is dead," wrote an A2Politico reader in response to a December 2012 piece about the falling…

In a February 2013 piece about AnnArbor.com, the Columbia Journalism Review called the site's work content-for-clicks journalism. Perhaps the assessment was harsh because MLive leadership had refused the CJR reporter access to the…

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…