Reinvention by arbitrary distinctions

Today Advance Publications announced that the Ann Arbor News will cease to be in July. In its place, a company called AnnArbor.com LLC will take over, printing a twice-daily paper and a weekly "total market" printed product. The News made a sad announcement of the "difficult" news to its readers. It's as if General Mills decided to discontinue production of Honey Nut and Frosted Cheerios, and therefore decided to rename Cheerios "WholeGrainCereal.com" amid much melancholy fanfare.

The Ann Arbor News is a 174-year-old brand. Everybody in the town knows about it and has an opinion on it. Why mothball the brand when you can reinvent it? A change to the printed publication and a retrenchment of the web site can be done within the context of "The Ann Arbor News."

If there's anything that media companies possess, it's brand equity. Newspaper companies may be facing difficult times, but now is not the time to burn the house down to build a shack on the lot.

Kudos to Advance for trying out a new model; every time someone tries something different, we learn more about what works and what doesn't. But distinguishing between your established print brand and web site remains a terrible idea (in related news, the Washington Post has, apparently, finally decided that locating their web staff in Virginia was a mistake). A hybrid, platform-agnostic approach to the news is the way to go.