My AJC Flashback Fotos: Let's visit the Atlanta Journal

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Flashback Fotos: Let's visit the Atlanta Journal

From the AJC photo archives: We take you back to the 1940s golden days of newspaper publishing at the Atlanta Journal.

Now why would the likes of Bob Hope and Doris Day show up at The Atlanta Journal in January 1949 to have a word with the pressmen? Was it to complain about something we'd written? Was it to laud us for a well-penned review? Or was it to ask "Hey fellahs, where the HECK are the COMICS?" Actually, the Hollywood duo was in-house to tour our then-new building on Forsyth Street in downtown Atlanta. So let's all take a tour of the swank Journal building and see how your big-city newspaper comes together, shall we?

In the foyer area of the new Journal building, you'll find our handy-dandy Want Ads counter.

These Journal city editors, reporters and special writers are hard at work, living up to the paper's longtime motto: "Covers Dixie Like The Dew." Note the fine furnishings. We're especially enamored of the guy in the fedora at right, carrying on a longtime newsroom tradition of "doing research" with that day's edition. We doubt he's just catching up on sports news.

City Editor Bob Collins reads a story from the Journal's teleprinter in 1949. The city room is connected by teleprinter with the capitol, city hall, courthouse and police station. We like to think of them as the big old forerunners of Twitter, just issuing more intelligent (and more intelligible) copy.

It's a busy day in the Journal telephone room. Following is the original 1949 caption: "Here are two of the pleasant voices you hear when you dial WA-5050, or any of The Journal numbers. They are (left to right) Katie Belle Horton, supervisor, and Charlene Wiggonton, two of the staff of five who run the two-position switchboard in the new telephone room." Please note: We can't vouch for the old WA-5050 phone number. Or who might answer it. Let's leave these ladies to their work. Moving right along...

Up in the fourth floor composing room, the staff makes up the day's last edition. Printers arranged pages for the last time before the equipment was moved.

The Atlanta Journal composing room is where the first process in the printing cycle -- setting the type in metal by linotype operators -- happens. We can tell you that the job has changed quite a bit since 1949.

The finished plates travel by conveyor to the press. Late news is in print a few minutes after reporters write it. Again, modern technology has altered this process a bit. But late news never goes away.

STOP THE PRESSES! Just kidding. No way would we say that unless something really, really, really, really, REALLY serious was happening to warrant it. Here's the Atlanta Journal coming off the printing presses back in 1949 and looking mighty swell, if we do say so ourselves.

We were so proud. We just had to crow: "The great Cline control panel for the Journal's new Goss Headliner press. Every morning the master switches are set to connect the press units that are to be used that day, and the panel does the rest." Let's all take a moment to marvel at modern machinery. Okay, finished marveling? We'll keep going.

These days, when we talk about "bundling" in the media it's usually describing a way of combining your phone, Internet and cable TV service. But in the newspaper game, this is how bundling was done back in the day. "This automatic bundling machine lashes papers together and chutes them to trucks at the rate of 26 ties a minute," we boasted back in 1949. It's still pretty darn impressive.

So as we wrap up our look at the Journal circa 1949, we learn that more than 150 editors and publishers of Georgia newspapers were feted by a buffet luncheon and tour of the Atlanta Journal's new plant. Our caption from the time: "At left, Mrs. Brown Tyler, owner of the Fulton County Review, and Bradley T. Porter, vice-president of the Review, cast a view the the presses." Sounds like it was quite a party -- when everyone wasn't, uh, working nose to the grindstone, of course.

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Now why would the likes of Bob Hope and Doris Day show up at The Atlanta Journal in January 1949 to have a word with the pressmen? Was it to complain about something we'd written? Was it to laud us for a well-penned review? Or was it to ask "Hey fellahs, where the HECK are the COMICS?" Actually, the Hollywood duo was in-house to tour our then-new building on Forsyth Street in downtown Atlanta. So let's all take a tour of the swank Journal building and see how your big-city newspaper comes together, shall we?

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