Thank you Ypsilanti

By Dan DuChene & Christine Laughren
Jun. 23, 2010    ·    5:07 p.m.

The Ypsilanti Citizen was launched in November 2008 to inform the Ypsilanti community about the news and events that were happening in their area.

Since our launch, the Citizen has continued to see growth in both our readership and revenue. We have used search engine optimization and social networking to drive increased traffic to our site, which helped us carve our niche in the community and attract advertisers.

Every minute of our work on the Citizen has been rewarding and enjoyable. We feel the product we created was a valuable asset and resource for Ypsilantians and we stand behind what we have created.

However, it is with a somber feeling that we announce the Ypsilanti Citizen will no longer be providing news to the Ypsilanti community. This is effective immediately.

We do not view the experiment of creating a professional Web-based news platform for Ypsilanti as a failure. The Citizen was always able to deliver accurate information to the community that was often over-looked by other media outlets in the area. The Citizen was also able to garner profit and continual growth every quarter with no exceptions.

The Citizen was the only locally-owned news source in Ypsilanti and we are proud to have offered that for the amount of time we could. We did this as two residents and community members and we ran it on an experimental Internet-only platform.

As the Citizen is locally owned by two residents, who are recent Eastern Michigan University graduates and young journalists in the area, it is heavily impacted by whatever is happening in our personal lives. Likewise, our personal lives were often heavily impacted by the success of the Citizen.

Although we have seen continual growth, it has not achieved sustainable profit margins that would allow us to rely on the Citizen as a sole source of income. In addition, recent developments in both of our personal lives has created a situation where we find it difficult to effectively run the business.

We feel deep remorse for having to make this decision and we know it will upset our readers, advertisers and stakeholders. We thank everyone who made us a part of their lives and we are sorry we cannot continue.

The more we have worked as journalists in Ypsilanti, the more we have come to love and admire this community. While the Ypsilanti Citizen is no longer part of Ypsilanti, we as individuals very much still are.

It should be made clear that this in no way has any impact on our involvement in iSPY, a monthly guide to arts and entertainment in Ypsilanti we launched earlier this month. We encourage iSPY's readers and advertisers to continue to support the magazine as this successful publication continues to grow.

There isn't any way we can thank all of you enough for the support you have given us in getting the Citizen off the ground and keeping it running. There isn't any way we can repay you for how much you have impacted our lives.

Sincerely,
Dan DuChene and Christine Laughren