Growing up in a newspaper and printing family, I can easily admit to a bias in favor of tangible, printed products. Though I have become a fan of a few Podcasts, and occasionally will read an E-book with my Amazon Fire, this comic book nerd VASTLY prefers the in-hand hard copy for newspapers, books, comic books, magazines and particularly for the bane of my existence... E-tickets.
I am not suggesting that I have always loved the copy, the editorial viewpoints or even the selection of stories in the AJC...but the talent combined inside was phenomenal, the reporting occasionally award winning, and as to the daily chronicling of major happenings about the state and across the southeast, there was no clearer voice.
At a point in the late 80's, while working for Georgia's Secretary of State, the state and I were paying for three copies of the paper a day. The morning Constitution, the afternoon Journal and the late street edition Blue Streak Journal at 4 p.m., intended as a commuter ride home aide as well as still breaking stories ahead of their broadcast competition in drive-time as well as the evening news.
Our family competed with as well as admired the much more successful Cox Enterprises, through a series of weekly newspapers based in DeKalb County. We even printed the AJC one day, when construction operations at the Five Points MARTA station knocked out power and the presses at 72 Marietta Street.
At the peak of their operations, roughly coinciding with the Centennial Olympic Games, the paper’s editorial/reporting staff was roughly 525, and the revenue generated by the AJC alone in those years reportedly reached $4-billion. Though as a private company, they did not publicly report earnings.
The biggest shock to my system with news of the demise of the print edition was learning that across a 20-county metro region of more than 6-million, there are just over 40,000 remaining print subscribers. Doing the math on those household percentages makes voter turnout on a Special Election Primary Day look robust.
But ready or not, we will all be soon turning this big page. No daily newspaper marketwide will change the way we share and broadly communicate the news of the day. Many tell me this window already passed, I just missed the shift change.
Wishing the AJC.com, AccessAtlanta (a founding subscriber via Prodigy) and the AJC E-Paper all well...a few pointers to maximize your chances of success.
- Fix your search engine. You have better luck finding AJC stories on Google, Yahoo or any number of specialized media databases.
- Offer NEW and additional tiered content. I would not pay more for all of the interviews the Sports Desk did with UGA Dawgs Coach Kirby Smart, but there are plenty of folks who would. Add live feeds of multiple municipal, county and school board meetings across the metro area, and an archive of the same. Create a one-stop market place for the public facing version of local governance.
- Stream the Georgia General Assembly Committee meetings and legislative sessions, stepping into a space that Georgia Public Broadcasting, minus federal funding, may not be able to afford in 2026 and beyond. Go deeper there.
- Simplify and make more intuitive the ability to clip, download and share content, if well marketed you create an additional revenue stream.
- Expand partnerships and share credit with other news outlets for more in depth coverage, the AJC of today cannot be everywhere at once.
I plan to remain a subscriber and already opted in during an earlier Online Sale rate, as readers are not likely to pay several hundred for the electronic version alone, without some of that 'added' new content I referenced above. The AJC voluntarily retired some of its best talent last year, which was also to be expected, as payroll expenses began to exceed revenue. I wish Cox Enterprises and the AJC E-paper every success, perhaps going forward consider listening a bit more to your readers and longtime subscribers. It is always easier to keep a longtime customer than it is to develop and convert new ones.
