As a business person, this morning’s announcement about The Ann Arbor News seemed odd. Out of Booth Newspaper’s seven Michigan local news publications, why just Ann Arbor moving to an online-only format?

Well wonder no more. Booth has just announced that their three eastern Michigan papers — The Bay City Times, The Saginaw News and The Flint Journal — will all reduce to three days of print a week. 

Booth’s western Michigan papers — The Grand Rapids Press, Kalamazoo Gazette and The Muskegon Chronicle — will continue printing seven days a week, but are cutting wages and benefits. All of Booth’s Michigan-based print newspapers will continue to publish their content online at their Mlive.com outlet.

It does seem odd that Booth could not have centralized operations to Flint and continued seven-day a week print operations for the four eastern papers. On the other hand, the eastern side of the state has suffered most from job losses due to the downturn in the automotive industry; the loss of so many middle-class jobs over the last decade surely resulted in lower demand for print news. The volatility of fuel costs over the last two years may also have discouraged Booth management from considering centralized printing with trucking product to local papers.