As the final AJC editions are printed, an era of local news ends
Ear plugs are recommended. The din of a newspaper’s pressroom is intense. You not only hear it, you feel it. A running printing press causes the floor to vibrate.
Standing about three stories high and stretching as long as a basketball court, a conventional printing press is a massive configuration of machinery. The muscle and noise are required to exert the continuous pressure needed to apply ink to newsprint and to sharply reproduce pages with dense text and detailed photography.
For 157 years, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and its parent publications have produced a printed newspaper.
That ends today. The AJC will be all-digital tomorrow.
The process of print — the daily dance of a newsroom handing its journalism over to a pressroom that turns those pictures and text into a newspaper, then delivers them to a fleet that puts them on subscribers’ doorsteps — has come to an end.
For more than a century and a half, this dance has been the AJC’s routine in service to Atlanta, Georgia and the South. Each day. Each holiday. Each election. Each big community celebration. Each championship. The AJC is always there.
Less visible are the many hands who assemble, produce and distribute the daily newspaper. Understanding that mix of art and engineering and being willing to work each day, virtually around the clock, takes a certain skillset and personality type.
“It’s a rush everyday,” said Michael Novak, who manages the presses for Metro Market Media, which prints The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in its Gainesville plant. Novak started his career in print production in 1981 at The Detroit News’ printing plant. With stops throughout the Midwest and South, Novak has seen both the peak of printed news and its decline as readers and advertisers have moved on to more convenient platforms on the internet.
Over the years, technology has reduced by 50% the number of people it takes to produce a newspaper, he estimated. But those savings, he said, are not enough to make a printed newspaper thrive over the long term. Revenue from the mix of advertising, subscription and single copy sales must be substantial and stable.
He looks no further than his adult children, who do not subscribe to newspapers and have expressed an unwillingness to pay for news, to understand the ongoing challenge of supporting print.
“People are willing to pay Starbucks $5 for a cup of coffee and we have to give you a newspaper for a dollar?”
At its peak, the AJC produced more than 600,000 copies of its Sunday edition and circulation spanned every corner of Georgia into Florida, Alabama, Tennessee and South Carolina. Today, the AJC serves 40,000 print subscribers and distributes a smaller number of single copy newspapers to retailers such as gas stations and grocery stores.
Erica Singleton, the AJC’s director of distribution and circulation, arrived at the AJC 20 years ago from The Wall Street Journal, based in part on the AJC’s reputation as a dominant newspaper in a growing, significant state.
“Those were the days when we still ‘Covered Dixie like the Dew’ and we circulated in 159 Georgia counties,” Singleton said, recalling a time when the AJC print edition blanketed the state.
It was well known in the industry that Atlanta was among the top-three single entities in the country in its consumption of ink and newsprint, a fact Novak confirmed with a call to an ink producer as a reporter listened.
“On Thanksgiving, we were putting out papers with 500 pages” of both advertising and newsprint, including inserted, contained ad sections, Novak said, recalling a time when it was not uncommon for Sunday and holiday newspapers to be several inches thick.
AJC President and Publisher Andrew Morse sees a future where the AJC could grow its digital business to 500,000 subscribers, a calculation that takes into account the AJC’s previous print footprint that covered the state and stretched throughout the South.
While the AJC will cease print operations, it will continue investing in a suite of digital products aimed at meeting today’s news on-demand consumption habits.
Jeff Hood has witnessed the slow and steady shift in demand for a printed newspaper over the years.
Hood is responsible for making sure the printed AJC gets delivered to retailers and subscribers. He is the president of Trans-United Expedited, a company that was founded by his father and has employed him for the past 35 years.
There has been more to his work, Hood says, than late nights, early mornings and a view of Atlanta during the hours when most people are asleep. It also has meant staying singularly focused on making sure newspapers reach their destinations despite ice and snow, power outages, press breakdowns or carrier shortages, so the AJC’s readers can start their day no matter what.
Hood sees that dogged commitment as his contribution to a public that values journalism.
“It’s an honor.”
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