Over the past few years, we at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution have worked to improve your newspaper with each passing day.
I hear from many of you that you appreciate that, and you enjoy the work we do. And you don’t hesitate to suggest ideas – or to let us know when you think we can do better.
These very opinion pages have changed to better provide the kind of content you depend on your newspaper to produce.
Last week marked a big moment for us, and one that I thought I’d share some information about.
We formally launched MyAJC.com, our new website that’s for subscribers. For the past few months, we’ve given a free preview of the site; now it’s exclusively available to subscribers.
Our goal is simple: we want to make sure that you can read your newspaper when you want, where you want, on any device you want.
We’ve had a successful website, AJC.com, for years. It will remain free, and we’re working on a plan to make it even better. It will still provide breaking news and entertainment content.
But we’ve heard our subscribers loud and clear: you want a web site all your own, that’s more like your newspaper – a site for readers that’s organized around the in-depth content for which you depend on us.
If you haven’t already, you’ll have to register at the site – but it’s free if you subscribe to the newspaper.
MyAJC.com will give you all the content printed in today’s newspaper – plus breaking news as it happens.
Some other key features:
• It’s organized like the newspaper, section by section, to help you find what you’re looking for.
• You can find our investigative stories grouped together too, for when you’d like to find them.
• In-depth content that lets you seek information that you want. For example, we have a database of the state’s latest school report cards that lets you look up your own schools and view their ratings.
• Simple design that provides you with an enjoyable reading experience.
• It’s a website that displays easily on any device you choose.
Many of you have helped us with developing the new site, and with the other products we now offer, including our iPad and smartphone apps. And in that process we’ve learned important things from you, and what you want from us.
We can deliver all the content from the print edition plus use digital capabilities to provide readers even deeper content – things like government databases we acquire through Georgia’s open records laws.
We’re doing all of this because your newspaper must respond to your needs in today’s digital world.
Your “all-access subscription” means that as a subscriber, you have total access to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: In print, online, on your smartphone and tablet – and anything else that might come along.
Many of you, of course, still love the printed newspaper – especially on Sunday. And some people ask me if all of this means we’re planning to stop bringing the printed newspaper to you. We’ve no such plans. We know how much many of you enjoy that morning cup of coffee with the newspaper.
And we’ll stay focused on the important things that no technology can change.
Those things include writing in-depth stories about important issues, being the watchdog of government and providing deep investigative reporting that only we can do.
Each day, you demand that we cover the world and metro Atlanta, giving you information that gets to the “real” story.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution now has more ways than ever to do its job of reporting news with urgency, insight and depth. The technology available to us allows for creating even more journalism that matters to you.
Our subscribers believe it’s worth paying for our reporting, as they’ve been doing in print for nearly a century and a half. They respect that good journalism requires an investment and they value what we do.
These new things are just our latest way of holding up our end of the bargain.
