It’s very gratifying when I order a Caesar salad at a restaurant and the server says, “No anchovies, dressing on the side – right, John?”
There’s a special comfort one feels when familiar knowledge personalizes a common experience.
MLive’s local news team is leaning into that approach with some new approaches to content, and it’s producing some satisfying results. For us, and for readers.
Earlier this year in Ann Arbor, our journalists had discussions about what makes the community unique: What particular interests, both culturally and as a news town, color the experience of living there? This is not an academic exercise – it’s as relevant to our employees as it is to you.
“What we report on affects our reporters the same way it affects the rest of the community,” said John Counts, who is a news leader, along with Leanne Smith, for The Ann Arbor News.
“We've got reporters who were born and raised in Ann Arbor and still live here. We have reporters who live in Ypsi and all over the county. So, it's that kind of local engagement.”
Because we’re journalists, we turned those discussions into coverage. Since spring, reporters at The News have written stories on topics they know are of high interest to people who live in and around Ann Arbor – food and drink, traffic and road closures, outdoor activities and recreation, business development.
This has been in addition to our normal day-to-day coverage of government, crime and other local news and features. The intent is to lean into what makes living in Ann Arbor not only special, but what makes it a communal experience.
“We send out our education reporter, Marty Slagter, to the bars to take on the tough assignment of sampling a cocktail every week,” Counts said. “These tavern owners see him come in are like, ‘Hey, we know who you are, Marty – you're the cocktail man for The Ann Arbor News! So that feels kind of good.”
Traffic and road construction may seem like common topics for any community, but it has special significance in Ann Arbor, where getting around is compounded by a sprawling campus, diagonal and one-way streets, ubiquitous bike lanes and maddeningly multiple street closures out of the blue.
Speaking of bikes, Ann Arbor has a very active outdoor community. That led us to offer more content this summer on bike trails, connector loops and other useful information for recreation, and that proved popular with readers. Last, you can’t turn your head in Ann Arbor without seeing a construction site or a business being refitted for a new tenant. So, our staff at The News leaned in with more stories on commercial development.
Another part of this effort is how we get the information to you. We have launched two newsletters geared to the Ann Arbor reader – a breaking news update, and weekly letter from Counts called “Hello, Ann Arbor,” delivered every Friday morning.
Counts writes “Hello, Ann Arbor” in a conversational tone that captures our most interesting stories of the week, along with personal experiences and insights from someone who lives here, too.
“My 8-year-old falls off a bunk bed and breaks her arm – very, very painful. At the same time, we were writing about the nurses going on strike at the University of Michigan Hospital,” he said. “She had to have this elaborate surgery, so that's obviously going to bleed into the weekly column because I was just at the hospital.”
Readers in Ann Arbor have responded positively in all the ways we can measure – with metrics, and anecdotal responses – showing there is great engagement around topics that matter in daily life.
We are encouraged, but not surprised. Local news is based on local knowledge, and every one of MLive’s eight traditional communities are different than any other. That has been reinforced with our Ann Arbor content exploration this year, so we plan to bring the approach to all of our communities in coming months.
It’s not simply more – it’s more in touch with you.
“Our staff loves the fact that we're getting deeper on a community level,” Counts said. “They live here, too, and this is the job that they've always wanted to do.”
🎧 In this week's episode of Behind the Headlines podcastJohn Hiner and Eric Hultgren talk about the new newsletter "Hello Ann Arbor" that digs deeper into the community of Ann Arbor and how this newsletter will expand to include other cities in 2023 Listen here on Spotify or here on Apple.
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John Hiner is the vice president of content for MLive Media Group. If you have questions you’d like him to answer, or topics to explore, share your thoughts at editor@mlive.com.
