Arkansas Business

The Thursday edition of the Arkansas Times' Arkansas AutoBuyer weekly newspaper will be the last print edition of the ad-based auto guide.

Times Publisher Alan Leveritt's decision to shutter the free print edition comes less than a month after AutoBuyer's publisher, Heather Baker, left the company to start her own auto guide called Drive Arkansas.

On Thursday, Leveritt said that Baker, AutoBuyer's publisher for 11 years, had taken her business relationships with her when she left the company, and that he wasn't able to get those relationships back.

So Leveritt eliminated AutoBuyer's print edition, and on Wednesday he laid off three AutoBuyer production employees.

Michelle Miller, manager of the Times' special publications division, will now oversee AutoBuyer's website, ArkansasAutoBuyer.com. She will also take on Baker's former roles as publisher of two monthly magazines, Savvy Kids and Arkansas Wild.

Miller has worked for the Times for 25 years.

"She's just a very talented, hardworking person," Leveritt said. "Very trustworthy, which is a plus."

Founded in 2000, AutoBuyer is a weekly guide to new and used vehicles for sale in Arkansas. It had a distribution of about 50,000 copies. The website launched in 2002.