Uncovered: the story of a smuggling ring by Jingle Davis

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Uncovered: the story of a smuggling ring

by Jingle Davis | 12, Add your Comment | Jun 30, 2009

4a09e413-a4a6-4ff3-a98a-16c334957787 As a former employee of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution now living in Athens, I get lots of complaints from locals miffed that the paper no longer circulates here.

One friend, whose mother is in a nursing home in Winder, says her mother and other residents of the home are still fuming because they can’t get the AJC. “Mother is a lifelong reader of the newspaper,” my friend said. “So are many of the other elderly people at the nursing home.”

Those creative elders, however, have worked out a solution: Several times a week, one or two people from the nursing home drive over to Gwinnett County, in the AJC’s circulation area, buy a stack of papers and bring them back to the nursing home residents. “It’s like they’re smuggling drugs across the border,” my friend said.

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Jingle Davis

Jingle Davis, who lives in Athens, Georgia, has been a journalist for 25 years, freelancing for The New York Times, Sports Illustrated and other national and regional newspapers and magazines. She operated the coastal bureau of The Atlanta Journal and Constitution for about a decade before moving to Atlanta to work as a metro reporter. She became a metro editor in 2003, first editing three weekly zoned editions of the paper (City Life Buckhead, City Life Midtown and South Metro), then moving to metro editing. She served as assistant city editor and was acting city editor before taking a buyout retirement offer from the paper in June, 2007.

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Terri Evans

I love the vision of this. Good for them. Reminds me of Cocoon.
Mark Davis

I was in Athens not long ago, driving an AJC vehicle with the logo clearly printed on the door. I had barely hopped out of the truck at a convenience store when a woman approached me, her eyes narrowed in accusation.

“Why don’t you sell papers here anymore?” She framed the question as if I, personally, had decided to rid Clarke County of the Atlanta daily.

“I wish we still did, m’am,” I replied.
Alice

Here in Dahlonega, we had a “guy” for a while. Each morning, he made the trip to Gainesville to pick up papers and then he ventured back across the county line with our stash. We met up with him at the Wagon Wheel. But, alas, his jeep broke down, we hated the new format, and the pounds were piling up from all the biscuits and gravy that went with reading the AJC. So now we read “Like the Dew” each morning--less fattening and much easier to navigate!
http://marykayandrews.com Mary Kay Andrews

Jingle--a far cry from the smuggling crews we covered as dewy-faced AJC reporters on the coast. remember the shrimpboat full of haitians with the goats tethered to the deck?
Tom Baxter

Lends the lie to all those facile excuses about what’s ailing the newspaper biz these days.
http://www.georgiacenterforthebook.org Bill Starr

An engaging story. Sad to hear. But newspaper owners/managers for too long have derided and dismissed their core reading public, emphasizing non-news over news. This is the depressing result: people making extra efforts to get newspapers which are deliberately being withheld from them by overlords so clueless they blame the wrong people for their problems. I get confused too.
Kris Jensen

I love this story. I, too, have had complaints from folks in Athens about the lack of an AJC. There’s a market there for someone who can figure out a profitable way to tap into the demand.
Doug Cumming

Hmmm. Maybe we could create a whole new section of Like the Dew dedicated to our lover’s quarrel with the AJC, since so many of us reading and writing this volunteer website are former AJC staffers with our special mix of affection, inside knowledge and grievances. The complaints Jingle’s hearing in Athens I hear up in Pickens County. And then there are the more general groans I hear from those core loyal readers who don’t appreciate the beautiful new design. Seems like the designers of the 90s have suddenly come back, showing those old settled adult readers who’s boss. I don’t agree that what’s left in the paper is non-news. It’s the same news you get for free on the web. What’s missing is writing and storytelling worth that nursing-home smuggling trip across the county line. I thought I was getting a lot of such writing and storytelling in the last few years whenever I was in Atlanta, but now I’m too dazzled by the new design to find it in the paper.
jasbro

I would really, Really, REALLY like the current AJC to see this piece. Then, I’d like them to pay attention (on a number of levels) and do something constructive to restore the writing and storytelling that we all miss — even those of us who still access to what they offer. I can’t afford to want it too bad, though, since I expect the time for that has long since passed. *Sigh!*
Joey Ledford

The AJC decided early on to cut off its nose to spite its face and just keeps chopping off various anatomy parts. I noticed during a recent trip to the Georgia coast that the Florida Times Union hasn’t retrenched at all. In fact, its Georgia edition is alive and kicking. Meanwhile the AJC isn’t selling papers south of I-20? Once a regional paper, it now isn’t even a real metro daily. Duh!
Cliff Green

Yeah. I was on Jekyll Island last week and read the Georgia Times-Union. It seems to be doing a pretty good job of covering everything from Valdosta to the coast. Also, I have a friend who lives in Young Harris, where the paper is no longer available. When the AJC quit circulating up there, her carrier offered to drive down to Gainesville on her own dime, buy papers and haul them back to YH and deliver them. The AJC refused to sell her papers! Huh?
Lindy Lou

Unfortunately, the American newspaper, like any other American business, has to make a profit. The papers are no longer distrituted in these areas because it is simply unaffordable. The system doesn’t work for free. For all those who bemoan this loss, I agree it is an American tragedy that newpapers across the country have cut distribution. Someone, someday will figure it out. In England, some papers are subsidized. But somehow, the content has to be paid for including writers, editors, etc. al. The advertising has dried up. The internet’s free content is part of the issue. Who will pay for embedded reporters or deep content news articles that cost thousands to develop without the old system? Hopefully, it will be figured out by someone much smarter than me.

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