Comments on: Walking away from Marietta Street

By: Brenden

Brenden — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 04:33:08 +0000

I’m curious to learn more about the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s political news staffs’ institutionalized celebration of the losses of incumbent Republican presidents. I was at Manuel’s when practically the whole management and staff along with the local, official Democrat leadership celebrated hand-in-hand at Barry’s election. Didn’t realize there were formal celebrations involved for Republican losses involving cannon and such. Interesting. A testament to objectivity.

By: David Mann

David Mann — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 18:35:43 +0000

Eden . . .

Thanks for this post. I can’t claim any of the AJC-related family history that you and some of the other commenters can; I grew up elsewhere in Georgia and saw the AJC only occasionally, typically when my father would buy the big, fat Sunday edition on the way home from church, most likely during football season to read about the Georgia and Tech games of the day before. But reading those big, fat Sunday editions was a special experience, and I was at the AJC from 1986 to 2007, and when I read Susan Wells say that what has happened “feels like a death in the family,” I felt a shock of recognition. How can this have happened, and so quickly? And this move to near Perimeter Mall, to offices that the AJC won’t even own but will rent? It feels like a bad dream that it’s about time we all woke up from.

At least we have Like the Dew. And for anybody who isn’t aware of it, there’s at least one other site populated by ex-AJCers, namely Pierre Ruhe, Cathy Fox, Wendell Brock, Eleanor Ringel Cater and Steve Murray — http://www.artscriticatl.com. Check it out if you’re into the arts.

By: Tom Baxter

Tom Baxter — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 21:17:44 +0000

Eden:
Reading your piece and the comments that follow, it strikes me that we should begin planning now some sort of observance at Henry Grady’s statue when what’s left of the paper departs for Dunwoody.
I was there the last two times (in 1976 and 1992) they dragged the old brass cannon out onto Marietta Street in front of the statue and fired it to celebrate a Democrat taking the White House from a Republican incumbent. The place had already become so soulless by 1992 that the celebration was unauthorized – some anonymous newsroom denizens commandered the cannon and fired it themselves. The cannon’s up at the corporate headquarters now, but we could certainly think up some proper commemoration. It’s the least we can do for old Henry.
Sorry we didn’t get to know each other better in our years at the AJC.

By: Brenden

Brenden — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 06:33:02 +0000

Sad, yes. Sad that a piece of history in this community that has not preserved enough of what it has is going, going, … But let us not forget that this newspaper, percentage-wise, lost more readers than any other major metro in the country for a string of years. Likely it still does. Let’s not forget all the incompetent managers and leadership who are responsible. They’re still there, I think. The **star** reporters who sat in air conditioned comfort in choice seats downtown — doing little but attending meetings and kissing ass. This is the ajc who many of worked there remember, and it would be a wrong to mark its demise without recalling the facts.

By: Mike Knobler

Mike Knobler — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 04:41:57 +0000

Thanks for sharing your story, Eden. Newspapers are and were special places, and it was my privilege to work seven years at the AJC. It’s sad to think of it leaving downtown, sadder still to see it buffeted by the 21st century forces afflicting newspapers nationwide. My best wishes are with the paper and those still pouring themselves into making it the best it can be.

By: jingle davis

jingle davis — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 14:13:46 +0000

Eden, I share your sorrow. I was on staff for 18 years and freelanced for the AJC a decade before that. My family isn’t from Atlanta but we’re native Georgians and having the AJC (in its various iterations — the Journal, the Constitution) as the state’s flagship paper made us proud, especially when Ralph McGill was proving that not all southern whites were racists. I keep hoping somebody will figure out how the paper can continue a tradition of great journalism and still make enough money to survive. As Doug Cumming says, we all need to think hard about the consequences if that doesn’t happen. (By the way, Susan Well’s dad was on the desk when I wrote my first freelance pieces for the paper. A novice reporter couldn’t have had a better editor.)

By: Tom Eblen

Tom Eblen — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 02:12:23 +0000

Nice piece. I came to the AJC in 1984 as part of the new regional reporting staff, the paper’s effort to live up to its motto of “covering Dixie like the dew.” I spent 14 years at the AJC, the last few as sidekick to my dear friend the above Susan Wells. It was a great place to work, and I will always cherish the many friendships I made there and the wonderful times we all had trying to do our best for our readers. In many ways, the AJC has been the soul and conscience of Atlanta. I hope it can continue to perform that function from the sterile confines of Dunwoody. I know my remaining friends at the ACJ will try like hell to make it happen. I wish them the best of luck.

By: Susan Wells

Susan Wells — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 14:20:56 +0000

Eden, I’m a second generation AJCer myself. That newspaper has supported me since I was four years old. I can rival Furman Bisher in how long I’ve been associated with it. The whole thing, watching the paper slide into chaos and then leave its downtown roots, feels like a death in the family. I still read it every day, and will until there’s nothing left to read. And I still find good things the remaining staff is doing. I imagine them overcoming the knots in their stomachs from the stress of wondering what will happen to their careers (much as I did the last few years I was there) and going out to find the story anyway. Getting into that place of deep concentration where the story is all there is and making it happen, hoping for the best as it heads for print, since there are so few editors to help assure mistakes are caught. Then taking a deep breath and doing it all again the next day. Now they’ll be doing it fromDunwoody. Hard to imagine, but one thing I know is that they will keep doing it again until somebody turns out the lights.

By: Matt Winkeljohn

Matt Winkeljohn — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 13:09:00 +0000

I believe word is out that by late next spring, perhaps by early summer, the buildings on Marietta St. will be vacated. The AJC — or whatever is left of it by then — will headquarter in Dunwoody, somewhere near Perimeter Center. I’m not 100 percent positive, but pretty sure it is a done deal.

Apparently, only about 30 percent of the Marietta St. bldgs are now occupied by the AJC.

BTW, spent 21 years there. Lasted until the second way, and saw no more logical move other than to take the buyout. I go back and forth between sadness and a ho-hum attitude about the paper’s decline. I will always relish the printed product, but have been wrapped by so much chaos in the business that I guess I’ve become a little like a grizzled war veteran who no longer ducks when the bullets fly and mortars land nearby.

By: Doug Cumming

Doug Cumming — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 10:44:19 +0000

I’m sentimental about all that, too, being a fifth generation Atlanta boy, in a family of journalists, and an AJC exile. But this talk of moving the paper to Gwinnett (Gwinnett!?) is not only an affront and grief to the likes of us. It’s also a blow to fifth generation READERS of the Atlanta papers (as well as newcomers, from Athens to Rising Fawn). I was in Pickens County this summer, and was reading the Chattanooga Times Free Press, because, incredibly, the AJC has left a vacuum for that paper. (Not a great paper, but it too has a history, and an owner, Walter Hussman Jr., who understood better than others that giving away news for free on the Internet was not the answer.) I am watching metro papers all over the country struggle, but most are navigating these parlous times pretty well. Not the AJC. Readers need reporters, if our theory about democracy and an informed citizenry is valid. Check out a new book by Alex Jones, Losing the News: The Uncertain Future of the News that Feeds Democracy. Here’s an assignment for the reporters Atlanta doesn’t have much anymore, despite all our wonderful online and on-radio bloviating: Who should be held accountable to the public for the collapse of the AJC (which was perhaps at its very best just a few years ago, and I’m counting the McGill-Patterson years)? What forces, what ideas, what corporate calculations lay behind the current strategy, and what are the likely consequences, now and in the years to come?

By: Rob Barge

Rob Barge — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 04:53:13 +0000

I think I know how you feel, Eden. My grandfather, Howard Paris, was the art director in the Journal newsroom in the 1960s and 70s. As a little boy I would go to work with him early in the morning and pretend to be a newspaper man. In the mid 1980s I went to work for the AJC, reuniting with people who had worked with my grandaddy years before. It was a great homecoming and my years on Marietta Street were some of the best of my career. All of us displaced newspaper people are, in some way, wondering what to do with ourselves. It got in my blood early and it will always be there. Since those pre-dawn trips downtown with my grandfather, my hero, all I ever wanted to be was a newspaper artist. And I was for 20 years. I guess that qualifies as a dream come true. Thanks for your great little story.