Sunday, April 29, 2007
News

Can smaller be better?

As the AJC shrinks, it promises to upgrade

The AJC headquarters in downtown Atlanta last week. Competition from other papers and the Internet is forcing changes.
CREDIT: Sandy Hooper
By Diane Loupe

First they took Furman Bisher out of Valdosta.

Then the Atlanta Journal-Constitution dropped weekly news sections for Cherokee, DeKalb, Fayette, Clayton and Henry counties.

Now, the city’s literati are up in arms over the newspaper’s plan to cut a book editor’s job.

“Perhaps you are planning to hire a video game reviewer to speed the decline of America,” wrote Ellen Lewis, one of more than 2,400 people who signed an online petition organized by the National Book Critics Circle. “Please reconsider the book review position. The great Atlanta tradition, from ‘Gone With the Wind’ on, needs it.”

The staff cut is part of a massive reorganization by Georgia’s largest newspaper. By summer, readers will see changes in how the AJC covers everything from school board meetings to TV reviews.

But the fact is that every major newspaper in the country is changing, struggling to keep an audience in a world of instant digital information on school shootings and celebrity paternity suits. Add competition from local weekly newspapers and the Internet, and Benjamin Franklin’s favorite medium needs an overhaul.

Americans say they don’t have time for newspapers, but what they may mean is that they don’t find them relevant, says University of Georgia journalism professor Conrad Fink, who studies newspaper management. And maybe they just don’t realize what is important.

“The American public is disengaging from emotional involvement in compellingly important economic, political and social issues of the day,” says Fink. “Take a blank map of the Middle East into the streets of Atlanta and few people could point out Iraq or Baghdad, although we’ve been in a bloody war there for years.”

To survive, newspapers nationwide are targeting advertisers, which includes customizing special sections, reducing expenses and finagling the definition of news “to get closer to what the reader wants and how to present it,” Fink says.

To that end, the AJC stopped daily distribution of the paper to south Georgia at the end of March, trimming back circulation to 73 counties surrounding Atlanta. In a statement to readers, publisher John Mellott said, “The $5 it costs to deliver a 50-cent newspaper to those areas makes little business sense, especially when our advertisers demand an audience closer to their stores and places of business.”

To make the news staff more nimble, Editor Julia Wallace is spearheading a massive reorganization of the newsroom aimed at removing layers of bureaucracy and beefing up online content. Metro, business, features and sports will now be combined into a “news and information” department under the direction of Managing Editor Mike Lupo, according to a staff memo issued by Wallace.

Recent Pulitzer Prize winner Hank Klibanoff will head an enterprise division meant to oversee special projects, but also charged with building “more loyalty among regular print readers by providing them a menu of first-rate enterprise every day,” Wallace told staffers. Editors will staff a print department and a new digital division, tasked with “growing [the paper’s] online audience by offering local news and information; providing a platform for interactivity and social networking; and extending our selection beyond news to attract new audiences,” Wallace said.

News bureaus are being rearranged to favor readers in affluent, predominantly white areas prized by advertisers. DeKalb will now share a weekly section with in-town Atlanta, and the paper will continue a weekly southside section while dropping separate sections for Fayette, Clayton and Henry counties. But readers in north Fulton and east Cobb will get a local section three times a week, and Gwinnett readers will continue getting the daily local coverage they’ve received since the AJC drove the New York Times-owned Gwinnett Daily News out of business more than a decade ago.

Some local news coverage will move online, such as a site (http://yourcommunity.ajc.com/peachtreecity/) devoted to news of Peachtree City, says newspaper spokeswoman Mary Dugenske.

Three choices

AJC staffers all got an envelope laying out the choices: Keep your current job, reapply for a new position or consider a buyout. Of the 80 staffers offered a buyout—all at least 55 years old and with a decade or more of experience at the paper—about 40 accepted. Veterans leaving by June 30 include film critic Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, fashion writer Marilyn Johnson, political writer Tom Baxter, investigative reporter Jane Hansen—who broke numerous stories on Georgia’s beleaguered foster care system, eventually bringing it under federal scrutiny—and Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer Mike Toner. Meanwhile, veteran Capitol bureau writer Jim Galloway must reapply for one of three jobs in the Capitol bureau, which has had its staff halved from six.

Film, TV, radio and other arts critic positions are being downsized, with the expectations that some locally produced movie and TV reviews will be replaced with wire service content. Instead of a single editor for book reviews, longtime book review editor Teresa Weaver will have to apply for a new position, a single editor responsible for books, arts and movies.
That’s what’s gotten book lovers up in arms. In a letter to Wallace, Paste Magazine book editor Charles McNair wrote, the AJC’s “recent decision to eliminate its book editor position—and, possibly, its book review section—is demoralizing beyond words.”

Dugenske insists that the newspaper isn’t canceling the book section, and readers will continue to see book reviews written in house and from wire services, as well as freelance reviews.
“We’re a town of readers,” says Dugenske.

While some journalists have already left, there are no plans to lay off staffers. In fact, the plan is to end up with a staff of 480, up from 475 before the reorganization, Dugenske says. She declined to discuss any financial details of the reorganization or of the newspaper in general.

While news executives pledge to continue coverage of local news, many worry about the loss of experienced reporters. After all, says Fink, newspapers provide an essential element to an informed democracy, willing and able to critique our own government.

“They fear that the independent watchdog function will disappear,” says Fink. “Who else is watching the Fulton County assessors’ office but the AJC?”

And while modern newspapers may deserve some of the criticism they get for liberal bias, Fink says, naysayers don’t offer any real alternatives.

“I doubt that even 8 percent of online commentators who critique the press do any original reporting. It’s a cheap way of making a living,” says Fink. “We’re [newspapers are] the last ones practicing this informative journalism. That disappearance will be terrible for this country.”