Sorry to learn that the Ann Arbor Chronicle is shutting down. They relied on advertising and donations and were able to grow revenue to $100,000 a year before they plateaued a few years ago. I wonder how much of their resources were allocated to business development. In the past, we've seen that sites that are over-investing in editorial at the expense of bringing in new revenue can be vulnerable. Not sure if that was the case here.
Here's Nieman Lab's take. I would pick a couple of nits with the Nieman post: The headline says the Chronicle was "financially stable." But I don't think a business that relies on grueling days from its staff (the two founders) and has not been able to grow enough revenue to increase its revenue development staff can be considered stable. The post also says small organizations don't have as many funding options available to them as the larger nonprofits that are pursuing memberships. That's true but it should not be construed to mean that two-person operations can't make money and grow to become larger operations. That's becoming a fairly common phenomenon in local news.
Here's the editor's goodbye post.