I Know Most of You are Tired of My Minor Obsession with the Decline of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution UPDATED
...other than maybe Big Rick, Bill, Fermi and maybe Jay. I read the first of the new "better" Sunday print papers today. Fact reporting is down, editorial content is down, and down in quality. As I suspected in my last diatribe on this subject, "Sunday Living," with it's filler pieces, wedding announcements and other fluff, is present in its full glory. (Someone named Judith Martin says "It's OK to tell drugstore about misspelled signs." Rick, the Funny Papers are all there.
UPDATE: I saw my first "two" page version of weekly editorials. It's really only a page of editorial content, a half a page of letters to the editor and a half a page of announcements about things to interest the "thinking reader," museum exhibits and the like.
So this is it for the AJC and this blog (unless I find something else to make fun of.) Here's the real EMail I sent today to the AJC Editor, Julia Wallace:
Ms. Wallace,
From what I've read in the paper and online, you are the public face of what I think is the ill-advised latest downgrading of the AJC. I read my first Sunday paper under the new cost cutting regime this morning. (I only get the print edition on Sundays.) On a good day, meaning the paper is fully worth reading, it takes me something less than an hour. Your new regime product took less than half that. What you are calling editorial content is too narrow and does not meet the quality level of what a metropolitan newspaper should minimally meet. Kind of glorified blogs were all I saw today other than what you've kept from the old format. Contrary to what the paper says readers want, traditional readers of newspapers want what a traditional newspaper has always offered, intelligent, in depth, factual and editorial content. (I'm not at all concerned with bias, I read what your paper offers and many others.) You appear to be getting rid of both.
Your evisceration of @issue, cutting weekly editorial content by a third, the 'USTodayification," (coupled with your total reliance on AP for all but the few stories your remaining staff can write) of the rest of the paper, and more that you are aware of, make what was a marginal paper, totally unacceptable.
I'll continue to read the paper online, because you're are all I've got for what remains of "full" coverage of local and regional news.
My subscription to the Sunday paper ends next Sunday, an interesting coincidence. I'll let it go because it has no "value added," other than the feel of newsprint with coffee, over the online edition. I'll just have to be careful to keep the coffee cup away from the keyboard.
All this said, I'm sad that your business is going the way that it is going. What has been a regular part of my life, is going away. I'm not convinced that it is necessary, given Cox margins; but, it is Cox's business to run as it wishes.
Regards and Regrets,
Dave
12 comments:
Not to defend the AJC but a lot of papers are doing this. Online news is the demise of the paper. I wrote for the NYPA over a decade ago and it was fun. As a journalist you got to go out and do all these neat social things and then write about the facts on the experience. The AP and the internet has killed the local paper (no matter how big or small it is).
But the supposed up side is like saving landfills or something from the newspaper... :)
Less AJC, more Ryan Klesko...
Although the AJC and the little local newspaper I subscribe to (a Mon-Sat publication) can't be compared technically, due to region size, etc.,nor can the Sunday paper I get each week at the local grocery store from State College, a slightly bigger realm, there are points of similarity between your issues with the AJC and mine with our local print media. Our paper, on a normal day, amounts to maybe 5, 10 minutes tops, and you have combed through whatever might be of interest. Any events taking place in the end of the county where I live are normally never published, making most of us who live in this section to feel like second-class citizens. I rant, bitch, moan and complain frequently about the accuracy of our paper too as do many others around here.
It's a far cry from the newspaper that used to arrive back when I was a kid -complete with real editorial content from the editor, no less. Our paper hasn't had that type of editorial content in more years than I can remember. Back in the 50s and 60s, this paper won numerous awards for the paper as well as for various staff reporters there then too. Not so today. No digging for news involved in this publication whatsoever. The Sunday paper on the other hand, does occasionally do some in-depth articles and they do have a fairly decent (considering the area) editorial page too -most of the time. When reporting quality drops off, what makes them think that readership won't follow suit? If this weren't the only relatively local newspaper in this area, I sure as heck wouldn't continue with my subscription. (P.S. Their online sight totally sucks swampwater too!)
Dave, Have you read sonja blog..... it is this sort of thing that she (we) are talking about. CAn't we all just..NOT IMPROVE! Tech. is so over rated and impersonal!
It is scarey that I very soon will be saying to my 5yr, "Back when I was a kid we didn't have remote contorls on our T.V's, I never had a cell phone in the 1st grade and We use to get the newspaper delivered to our door, not have to look the computer"! Wow I have become an old person at 43.
I do see one down fall to reading your news on your computer, What if you read something upsetting and accd. spill your coffee on your laptop or home computer. ....Replacing that computer could cost alot more then the cost of your Sunday paper for a few years.
P.S.
Hey I missed the coffe cup part in your blog, so now I have reread it I realize you are very aware of the potential pit falls of coffee and your computer!
I seem to recall that someone with a lot more time and resources has done some investigation of the demise of newspapers and found that it correlates with the rise in obvious liberal bias.
This seems to make sense from both the consumer and advertisers point of view. Seems like the major TV news networks are suffering the same declines.
"liberal bias" ... what the hell does THAT have anything to do with printing effort, dedication to reporting the news and the ability to write.
Those two seem like such a bizarre correlation, if you ask me!
Dave was commenting on the demise of quality/content due to cost cutting measures claimed by the AJC.
Cost cutting is necessary due to loss of revenue. Revenue is a function of circulation and advertising.
If the papers routinely insult half the potential/current subscribers and most of their advertisers then revenue is likely to drop. See the connection?
Jay, in his first comment, was exercizing his dry sense of humor equating the AJC to Air America and network TV news departments.
Amazingly, AJC.com gets hits numbering in the millions each day, and I'm one of the people doing the hitting. This phenomena cuts against the theory that liberal bias and poor quality reduce the number of readers and thus advertisers.
Web-hits equal quality/value???
I was talking with some thinky person the other night about this very problem - he says that most newspapers are doing exactly the opposite of what they should be - cutting back content and dumbing it all down for the general public. He said they should be focusing on their original purpose as the Fourth Estate and delivering high quality content to very specific audiences, delivered to them how they prefer it. They should embrace the fact that the paper side of the news business is essentially dead and focus on reaching people where they live by pushing content to their computers and phones and PDAs. I like Google reader because it gives me only the news/updates I'm interested in -- if there was a way for newspapers to capture that experience while holding on to loyal readers, they'd have a chance at surviving. Great post, Dave and congratulations on 20k. Glad to be a part of it.
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