Clapping out the paper: A farewell to ink, deadlines and the print AJC
There’s a tradition here at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution called the “clap-out.”
I’m not sure how unique the practice is — especially among other newsrooms or long-standing institutions — but here’s how it works:
Whenever someone retires or leaves the paper, after they’ve turned in their badge, gotten their Mike Luckovich drawing, picked up their commemorative personal front page tribute and cleaned out their desk, they walk out of the newsroom one last time.
As they walk through, the rest of us line up to form a kind of gauntlet. We stand, smile and sometimes cry as they quietly make their way to the door.
It’s a beautiful — and sometimes awkward — moment. Some people soak in that cascade of applause. Others seem embarrassed by it, still living by the reporter’s code of never making yourself the story.
In my 28 years at the paper, I’ve seen more clap-outs than I can count — for retirements, buyouts and those chasing greener pastures.
But I never thought I’d see the one we’re preparing for on Dec. 31 — when we clap out The Atlanta Journal-Constitution print edition.
Beginning on Jan. 1, this 157-year-old institution will become a fully digital news operation. No more paper. No more ink-stained fingers. No more paper in your driveway.
As we prepare for that final, echoing round of applause, I keep thinking about former reporter and mentor Bill Rankin.
When we held his newsroom clap-out in May, Rankin did everything he could not to cry — AJC ink runs through his veins. In 1960, legendary Atlanta Constitution editor Ralph McGill hired Bill’s father, Jim Rankin, as an editor.
“Rankin,” as we call him, was 2 years old.
As a boy, he devoured the sports section, then every section of the paper. McGill gave him his first dog and Pulitzer winner Gene Patterson would swing by in his Mustang to take him to Georgia Tech games.
“I always read it because my dad worked there,” Rankin told me Wednesday when I disturbed his afternoon bliss of listening to “Thelonious Monk Plays Duke Ellington.” “We got it every day and I read it every day.”
He delivered The Atlanta Journal on his bike, picked up another route through college and joined the AJC in 1989.
Thirty-six years later, he retired. Together, he and his father gave more than 60 years to this paper. Every morning, he and his wife, Carol, still read the paper over coffee — he in the den, she in the kitchen.
“It’s hard to imagine not being able to hold it anymore,” Rankin said. “But the internet came.”
He saw the writing on the wall.
Rankin — who spent decades reporting some of the most important court and legal stories in AJC history — ended his career with a new kind of storytelling, hosting its award-winning podcast “Breakdown.”
Over the years, the AJC, like hundreds of newspapers across the country, reduced print schedules in favor of finding new ways of reaching readers. We will soon unveil an enhanced mobile app — a customizable hub for breaking news, video, podcasts, newsletters and the e-edition — designed to serve subscribers wherever they are.
But I’m still trying to wrap my mind around something we all knew was inevitable.
I came to the AJC in 1997 from the Durham Herald-Sun. Back then you had to make your bones at smaller papers before even thinking about making it to the big time. And Atlanta was the big time.
“It used to be a big deal to be a newspaper journalist,” said Angela Tuck, who joined the AJC as a writer in 1989 as part of a major expansion into Gwinnett County.
By 1997, she had become the paper’s recruiter. She made me one of her first hires, bringing me on to work for Mike King, who was the revered metro editor at the time.
I caught Angela this week as she sat in the pickup line to get one of her grandchildren from school. She wasn’t surprised to hear that we were shutting down print.
“No matter what, I’m still going to support journalism and support the online product because it’s so important,” said Tuck, who retired in 2015. “You have to look no further than what’s going on in Washington right now to see how important it is to have objective journalists. I definitely believe in adapting, so I will continue to cheer you guys on from the sidelines.”
When Angela hired me, more than 500 people worked on our editorial staff, with bureaus spread across Georgia, the South and around the world. My goal was to work in Atlanta for a few years, then return to North Carolina as bureau chief.
But I was still a kid in a newsroom filled with some of the best journalists in the world — many of whom had been there since the 1960s, maybe even the ’50s.
In fact, Furman Bisher, who was still at the paper at the time, had been here since 1950. But he was a kid too. Celestine Sibley had been writing at the paper since 1941.
Some were abrupt, rude and downright gruff. (I’ll never forget a night editor cursing me out for going to lunch — even though he didn’t realize I had left until I returned with a plate of jerk chicken from Eats).
But they were brilliant and taught me how to meet deadlines, report, write, craft a lede, develop a beat, and navigate a newsroom that could be tense and hostile.
Mike Morris, who along with Herb Steely would put out the old Atlanta Journal every afternoon, taught me how to read maps. He once slapped a massive atlas on my desk and told me to start memorizing neighborhoods. Now, I just plug into my GPS.
Mike started in 1979 and remembers when the newsroom got its first shared computer.
“It saddens me deeply to see the print edition of my old paper disappear,” he said. “But it was inevitable.”
When I first arrived in Atlanta, I worked in the main bureau at 72 Marietta St.
My first job was as a night-cops reporter, the new guy beat.
From there, I covered higher education, K-12 education, Atlanta City Hall, the Georgia Senate and DeKalb County before finally carving out a beat they initially called “urban affairs,” which I’ve since tailored into race and culture — a beat I still hold today.
In that old building, the most exciting time of day was between 5 and 6 p.m., when deadlines loomed. The hum of the newsroom would gradually rise — phones ringing louder, editors shouting across desks, reporters complaining about rewrites — and then, by 7 p.m., silence again.
It’s funny — when I talked to Mae Whitlock Gentry this week, she mentioned something that captured that same spirit. When I called, she said she had to step out of the room so she wouldn’t disturb her husband, who was writing in his home office.
“We are used to working in chaos,” she said about our time in the newsroom.
Ink runs in Mae’s blood, too. In 1927, her grandfather, Arthur Brown “A.B.” Whitlock, founded The Gary (Indiana) American, a cornerstone Black newspaper in the industrial Midwest. Her parents ran the paper until 1960, and another uncle owned The Charleston Messenger.
“I grew up in a time where much of my life was spent holding that product in my hand and reading it in the morning,” she said.
Mae, one of my early editors, worked at the AJC for 23 years, starting in 1984 as a copy editor in the features department. She took a buyout in 2007.
“I had just turned 55 years old and things were changing,” said Mae, who now lives in Oakland, California, where she writes and edits books and helps care for her four grandchildren. “The internet came and the demands were getting greater and I just was thinking, ‘This is a young person’s game. I’m out.’”
Since moving out of 72 Marietta St., we’ve called four different buildings home, including our current spot in Midtown.
They’ve all been quieter. No one yells. Everyone guards their space. Deadlines now come and go in a whisper — a byproduct of desk phones disappearing and everyone living on their cells.
Even the desks are spotless now. I remember when they were stacked with files and old newspapers. Occasionally an office manager would wander through, threatening you to clean up — something about fire codes — but we never listened.
For at least my first 20 years, I clipped every story I wrote. At first, I filed them neatly in labeled folders. Later, I just tossed them into a drawer.
Today, four trunks in my garage hold those clips, and many of my colleagues keep similar archives.
Even now, nothing beats seeing your byline in print — a small daily affirmation that the work mattered. But I don’t clip stories anymore — everything’s online now.
I did a quick search of our library system and it appears that I have nearly 3,000 AJC bylines.
My first byline was published on Oct. 15, 1997: “Clark Atlanta to rush-student aid requests.”
My first front-page story came just 13 days later, on Oct. 28, 1997: “Gifts to Emory top all universities in ’96.”
My latest A1 story — so far — was Nov. 5, “Atlanta’s civil rights museum reopens, reimagined for the next generation.”
When I started at the paper, print circulation topped 600,000. Today, we have about 115,000 subscribers — roughly 40,000 still in print.
Back then, I was at the very bottom of the totem pole, the last of those 500 people in the newsroom. Now, somehow, I’m the fourth-longest tenured member of the staff, behind Carrie Teegardin, Bill Torpy and Mike Luckovich.
How that happened, I’m still not sure. Maybe it is like Rankin and so many others, I have learned to adapt.
The urban affairs beat I created evolved into AJC Sepia, which grew into Unapologetically ATL, and ultimately UATL — the paper’s signature Black content franchise. And along with my every day reporting, I am writing books, producing documentaries and appearing on television regularly as a commentator.
But I’m rooted here at the AJC. Still clapping.
But truthfully, we’ve all been writing for digital for years.
Sometimes, minutes after a story is edited, it’s posted online. Sometimes, it’s days before the same story arrives in print.
Still, I try to craft every story as if it’s headed for the front page. That is how I was trained and I’ll carry that habit into the fully digital newsroom.
I don’t know where this story will “run.”
Maybe it won’t be tossed onto driveways, spread across kitchen tables or stain anyone’s fingers with ink.
Maybe it will live on a phone screen, where someone stops scrolling long enough to read it.
Either way, it’s still the same thing we’ve always done — telling stories that matter.
And on New Year’s Eve, when that final clap echoes through the newsroom, I’ll know we did it one more time.
About the Author
Ernie Suggs is an enterprise reporter covering race and culture for the AJC since 1997. A 1990 graduate of N.C. Central University and a 2009 Harvard University Nieman Fellow, he is also the former vice president of the National Association of Black Journalists. His obsession with Prince, Spike Lee movies, Hamilton and the New York Yankees is odd.
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