Extra, extra! AJC’s print edition goes the way of the 8-track tape.
For almost 50 years of my working life, I have proudly called myself an ink-stained wretch.
But not for much longer. After Dec. 31, I no longer will be working at a newspaper. That’s not to say The Atlanta Journal-Constitution will no longer exist. It will, it just will no longer be in the business of printing the news on dead trees.
It will become a media company or digital news operation or some other such moniker.
On Thursday, myself and 160 or so of my colleagues sat in a large conference room at the AJC’s new Midtown headquarters and were gobsmacked by the news that the physical newspaper was disappearing with the new year.
We all knew this was inevitable, just like we know our mortal being is finite. But you never expect the end. You think/hope/believe it will be somewhere off in the haze of the future.
The AJC, with the blessing of the Cox family, which owns the paper, has been investing in the operation and hiring like crazy the past couple years. Sadly, about 30 of our colleagues who now focus on the printed paper will lose their jobs.
The fact that newspapers are limping, if not dying, is nothing new. (More than a third of the nation’s 8,900 papers have vanished since 2005).
I can tell you firsthand. I started in the 1960s as a 9-year-old delivering the now-defunct Chicago American on my Schwinn Stingray. I moved onto the now-defunct Chicago Daily news, reading columnist Mike Royko and wanting to one day get a job like his. Later, I pushed a cart with 120 Chicago Tribunes at 5:30 a.m. each day.
In 1982, I started my career at the now-defunct West Frankfort Daily American in a coal mining town. I moved onto the now gutted Daily Southtown on Chicago’s South Side.
Notice “defunct” keeps showing up. It is hard to believe, for those of us of a certain age. Newspapers seemed as inevitable as Sears Roebuck printing its catalog. Profit margins were so sturdy even the most inept publisher couldn’t screw it up.
Then, of course, came the Interweb and away went the insanely profitable classified advertising, as well as subscribers who increasingly believed what they read on the web ought to be free as God intended.
Back in the early 1990s, an Atlanta population half what it is now bought more than 700,000 newspapers on Sunday. Today, it’s north of just 40,000 households.
The paper (and I use that term out of habit) has some 115,000 subscribers, including print and digital. Digital subscriptions have been growing, which is a good sign.
Converting print readers to fully digital will be an important arm twist. I, for one, consume both and probably read more of our stories online. But I think you absorb the news better with the printed edition.
It’s certainly more of a tangible experience.
Most of us figured the AJC would nibble away at the daily print product, cutting down to perhaps three days a week, including Sunday, which is the week’s thickest edition.
But publisher Andrew Morse, a hectic fellow who has been described as a human B-12 shot, decided to rip off the Band-Aid rather than go for the slow, measured landing of moving from a print business to one that’s all digital.
The plan is to jump right in and make a go of it in the wild world of digital. Not many big papers have done it.
“The pressure on the business is only accelerating,” Morse said. “The fact that we are growing despite those pressures is a testament to the hard work we’ve done, but we have to put all our effort into the future.”
It makes sense in a macro way.
The newspaper business is a relic, a 19th-Century manufacturing process: You cut down trees, pulp ‘em, turn them into huge rolls of newsprint, have reporters go out and interview people, type up stories, arrange them in a manner to fit the limited newshole, print those pages, truck them off to distribution centers and then have someone in a car throw them on your driveway.
Now, I can type, hit “publish” and you can read it. Much easier.
Nostalgia runs deep through the business. I can envision a 1930s movie with wisecracking reporters in fedoras typing up “scoops” and then a delivery truck tossing a stack of papers at the newsstand with the camera closing in on the headline. It was a Hollywood director’s tool to move a story along.
There is also much that is emotional, and even tactile: The pressure of a looming drop-dead deadline. The cacophony of the presses running. The smell of paper and ink. The satisfaction, and relief, of putting the paper to bed.
Now the news is never put to bed. It’s like a baby who cries all day and all night. Once, the news was daily. Now it’s hourly. Or even minutely.
The Atlanta Constitution was founded in 1868, just four years after Sherman’s March. The Journal arrived in 1883. The Cox family bought the Journal in 1939 and the Constitution in 1950.
The two staffs, once mortal enemies, were folded years later into one unhappy family forced to get along. They didn’t, but when I arrived in 1990 many of those reporters were still around and numbed into a truce.
Through the decades, I have observed hundreds, if not thousands, of journalists pass through the newsroom. The history is rich with notables: Henry Grady and Joel Chandler Harris (Brer Rabbit) from 19th Century, Margaret Mitchell, Ralph McGill and Lewis Grizzard from the last century, and cartoonist Mike Luckovich from this.
The plan is for Atlanta newshounds to cover current affairs well into this century.
But I sure will miss getting ink on my mitts.
About the Author
Bill Torpy, who writes about metro Atlanta for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, joined the newspaper in 1990.
