Last week it was announced that our local paper, The Ann Arbor News, is going out of business in July 2009 after delivering the paper to local readers for nearly 175 years. Of course I was aware of the dire state of the newspaper industry, which has been in mortal decline for the past decade. But it never really hit home to me. Those were other newspapers going under—not mine!  The main reason for the decline of the newspaper industry is the loss of ad revenues. Advertisers aren’t placing newspaper ads like they used to, preferring instead to spend their precious ad dollars on online advertising as well as other new media. In response, most newspapers have developed online editions too, but it hasn’t helped them much because they can’t charge anywhere near the same fees for online advertising as for their paper editions.

The root cause: People under the age of 30 don’t typically rely on newspapers for their news the way people my age do. Readership has steadily declined and that is not good for papers trying to convince advertisers about the benefit of print advertising. Of course the state of Michigan’s economy with its dependency on Detroit’s desperate auto industry hasn’t helped. Those big splashy full- and half-page ads for this or that car model have gotten pretty scarce.  But one of my staff told me that the loss of revenue is due less to large splashy ads, and more to those small classified ads you see in the back of the paper. Why spend money on a classified when you can post your job opening or your “Used lawnmower for sale” on craigslist for free? I know a lot of companies that post all their job postings on craigslist, and we did too the last time we had an open position at our ad agency.

I think I was in denial. The truth is I could see it coming. A couple of months ago the paper announced its intent to focus on local news (since a daily can’t compete with the near real-time release of an online news service). That must have been a last-ditch effort to provide something unique, and it made sense, but it was too little, too late. Since then I saw the paper shrink precipitously in size. While I still received both the daily and weekend editions, I complained a lot to my wife about how skimpy the paper had become. Why were we still paying for this puny thing?

Truth be told, I’ll tell you why. Because after coming home from work and eating dinner, there is nothing quite so pleasant as settling in my easy chair, feet up, reading the daily paper. I don’t care if it dates me. I love it. But there is hope! The local news is not going away completely. A new web-based media company called AnnArbor.com will step in to provide online national and local news in lieu of the daily paper edition, and they will even produce a printed edition on Thursdays and Sundays.

I know that the way people access news and information will continue to evolve. And I realize that I may be one of the last people in my office to appreciate a printed paper, but I hope that newspapers like the Wall Street Journal and magazines like Time will stick around. My easy chair lends itself much better to reclining with printed materials as opposed to trying to read from a laptop balanced on my chest. It crimps my neck.

Read more on the passing of The Ann Arbor News.