by Katherine Wisen

As the ailing economy causes newspapers around the state to stop their presses and move online, The Grand Rapids Press’ Meegan Holland finds herself at the center of the movement.

“We aren’t just a newspaper anymore,” the Web editor said while speaking to Cornerstone University journalism students on April 14.

And, if the condition of Michigan’s other newspapers means anything, being “just a newspaper” is a thing of the past.

Although The Press continues to publish daily, three of the eight Booth newspapers — The Bay City Times, The Saginaw News and The Flint Journal — they are reducing publishing to three days a week and are increasing their online content.

And on March 23, Booth’s Ann Arbor News announced it was shutting down its print production entirely and was being replaced by the Web site AnnArbor.com.

But as newspapers move online to cut production costs, they’re finding the World Wide Web has created a new dilemma: reporting the news costs money, and newspapers have failed to discover how to earn enough online.

For The Press, charging people to read online content is out of the question.

“We committed the original sin of giving it away for free,” Holland said, adding that readers now feel entitled to the news. “Once one paper did, we all had to and we can’t go back now.”

The Press’ temporary solution is getting advertisers to partner with its Web site, MLive.com. But, as Holland pointed out, marketing is a weakness for most newspapers.

“Newspapers have always been bad at blowing their own horn,” she said. “The world is moving so fast and, in marketing, we’re not moving fast enough to show the world what we have to offer.”

Holland said the best way to get advertisers to see what The Press has to offer through MLive.com is to get a higher number of readers to view the online content.

This happens by doing two things: making their site as visible as possible and connecting with readers in new ways.

“The one smart thing our company is doing is putting our eggs in the Google basket,” Holland said, explaining that The Press has learned how to make their stories show up when readers search for stories on Google.com. “If we’re on the top of the list, they’ll come to our site — that’s the hope.”

Readers also flock to the site to be involved in the live chats about popular television shows.

“You can’t believe the community that has come together on those live chats,” Holland said, adding that 8,000 readers participated on MLive.com’s live chat about The Bachelor’s finale show, and the American Idol chat draws participants from Hawaii and Scotland.

Holland said Twitter, a micro-blogging Web site, has also drawn readers by giving them an easy way to communicate directly with Press editors.

“We really blew off Twitter for a long time until we realized the power of it,” she said. “We’ve started conversing with people … and it’s given a face — a Twitter face — to the newspaper.”

But even though MLive.com is the top news site in Michigan with 1.6 million unique visitors, getting local advertisers to sign on is still a problem for The Press.

“Why would a local advertiser put an ad up so that a person from Scotland can see it?” she said. “It doesn’t make sense, and so we’re still trying to figure some of those things out.”

But the clock is ticking on newspapers that aren’t effectively raising money online, and The Press knows it.

“I think we’re worried,” she said. “That’s the scary thing — we all know that, if we don’t keep up on things, we could be the next closing.”