AnnArbor.com competition

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Editor Michelle Rogers also oversees seven weeklies in Washtenaw and Wayne counties.

Online, AnnArbor.com, the successor to the Ann Arbor News, will compete for ads and news with an expanded AnnArborChronicle.com, launched last year by former News opinion editor Mary Morgan. Though she and her husband, Dave Askins, remain the Chronicle’s only staff, they have begun to employ freelance writers and commission-only salespeople, and Morgan says they hope to soon begin covering high school sports.

AnnArbor.com’s staff will be tiny compared to the News, but next to the Chronicle and other online competitors, it’s a giant. Tony Dearing, the chief content officer, says he’s hiring between thirty-one and thirty-five full-time and part-time “digital journalists.” There will also be some local “experts,” including former Shaman Drum owner Karl Pohrt.

Dearing says he expects to produce at least four “major investigations or [research] project reports” a year. News director Amalie Nash, a respected News veteran, is already working on early enterprise stories to set “a tone that this is a serious journalism site,” says Nash. “You need to start out strong.”