From the editor: Michigan says sad goodbye to several print newspapers

In my Aug. 20 column, I wrote about how much both editor emeritus Rosemary Otzman and your current editor love newspapers.

So it was with great sadness that I read a report Sept. 2 the news MLive Media Group will stop production of printed editions of its eight newspaper editions, switching to digital-only.

The Michigan news organization will print and home-deliver its final printed editions on Sunday, Dec. 6.

MLive’s eight titles are: The Ann Arbor News, The Bay City Times, The Flint Journal, The Grand Rapids Press, Jackson Citizen Patriot, Kalamazoo Gazette, Muskegon Chronicle and The Saginaw News.

That list contains two different papers I’ve written for, so that was a sad announcement to me.

I have mentioned before that I’ve been a journalist since I worked on my high school newspaper, but my first really big byline was in the Kalamazoo Gazette.

I was a technical writing instructor for Western Michigan University in the late 1990s, but I had no benefits and it didn’t really pay that well. My supervisor knew I was in need of more money and introduced me to a contact of hers at the Gazette, and I began writing for their home and garden sections, on things like new fads in holiday decorations, or the difference between stick-built homes and modular ones.

Those articles proved I could write and helped me win another freelance assignment for an weekly entertainment publication in the area that has since ceased publication.

I took my writing samples from those two jobs with me when I moved to southeast Michigan and ultimately used them to get a job as a reporter covering Belleville for The View from 1999-2004.

After that, I worked a few different jobs in media and communication, and then began freelancing full-time in 2009. In those early years, Mlive.com was one of the papers I reported for. I wrote some regular features that only appeared online, but I also had bylines in the print edition, primarily writing about business but also about local faith communities and food as well.

Mlive.com will be fine, I’m sure. They’re the online news site with the fourth highest traffic in the entire United States. But it’s still been tough to watch print papers go under.

More than ever, I am so grateful that Belleville, Van Buren, and Sumpter residents support the print issue of The Belleville Area Independent. I have heard over and over again from readers how much they love having a paper they can hold in their hands or how important a print edition is to someone’s father or grandmother who isn’t online and so doesn’t have access to online news sites.

Here’s to many more years of getting your Belleville area news “hot off the press.”