The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC) is an American daily newspaper based in metropolitan area of Atlanta, Georgia. It is the flagship publication of Cox Enterprises. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is the result of the merger between The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution.[2] The two staffs were combined in 1982. Separate publication of the morning Constitution and the afternoon Journal ended in 2001 in favor of a single morning paper under the Journal-Constitution name.[3]
Not to be confused with American Jewish Committee or American Jewish Congress.The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has its headquarters in the Atlanta suburb of Dunwoody, Georgia. It was formerly co-owned with television flagship WSB-TV and six radio stations, which are located separately in midtown Atlanta; the newspaper remained part of Cox Enterprises, while WSB became part of an independent Cox Media Group.
The Atlanta Journal[edit]
The Atlanta Journal was established in 1883. Founder E. F. Hoge sold the paper to Atlanta lawyer Hoke Smith in 1887. After the Journal supported presidential candidate Grover Cleveland in the 1892 election, Smith was named as Secretary of the Interior by the victorious Cleveland. Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Margaret Mitchell worked for the Journal from 1922 to 1926. Important for the development of her 1936 Gone With the Wind were the series of profiles of prominent Georgia Civil War generals she wrote for The Atlanta Journal's Sunday magazine, the research for which, scholars believe, led her to her work on the novel. In 1922, the Journal founded one of the first radio broadcasting stations in the South, WSB. The radio station and the newspaper were sold in 1939 to James Middleton Cox, founder of what would become Cox Enterprises. The Journal carried the motto "Covers Dixie like the Dew".
Merger[edit]
Cox Enterprises bought the Constitution in June 1950, bringing both newspapers under one ownership and combining sales and administrative offices. Separate newsrooms were kept until 1982. Both newspapers continued to be published for another two decades, with much of the same content except for timely editing. The Journal, an afternoon paper, led the morning Constitution until the 1970s, when afternoon papers began to fall out of favor with subscribers. In November 2001, the two papers, which were once fierce competitors, merged to produce one daily morning paper, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The two papers had published a combined edition on weekends and holidays for years previously.
Prior to the merger, both papers planned to start TV stations: WSB-TV on channel 8 for the Journal, and WCON-TV on channel 2 for the Constitution. Only WSB got on the air, beginning in 1948 as the first TV station in the Deep South. It moved from channel 8 to WCON's allotment on channel 2 in 1951 to avoid TV interference from the nearby channel 9. (WROM-TV since moved, leaving WGTV on 8, after it was also used by WLWA-TV, now WXIA-TV 11.) This was also necessary to satisfy Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rules preventing the excessive concentration of media ownership, preventing the combined paper from running two stations.
In 1989, Bill Dedman received the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting for The Color of Money, his exposé on racial discrimination in mortgage lending, or redlining, by Atlanta banks.[15] The newspapers' editor, Bill Kovach, had resigned in November 1988 after the stories on banks and others had ruffled feathers in Atlanta and among corporate leadership, some of whom complained of a "take-no-prisoners" editorial approach.[16]
In 1993, Mike Toner received the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for When Bugs Fight Back, his series about organisms and their resistance to antibiotics and pesticides.
Julia Wallace was named the first female editor of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 2002. She was named Editor of the Year 2004 by Editor & Publisher magazine.[17]
Mike Luckovich won the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial cartooning a second time in 2006. He had first received it in 1995 under The Atlanta Constitution banner.
Circulation[edit]
The paper used to cover all 159 counties in Georgia, and the bordering counties of western North Carolina, where many Atlantans vacation or have second homes. In addition it had some circulation in other bordering communities, such as Tallahassee, Florida, where the Sunday Atlanta Journal-Constitution was available. Due to the downturn in the newspaper industry and competing media sources, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution contracted distribution dramatically in the late 2000s to serve only the metro area.[18] From Q1 of 2007 to Q1 of 2010, daily circulation plunged over 44%.[19]
Headquarters[edit]
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has its headquarters in Perimeter Center, an office district of Dunwoody, Georgia.[20] Previously the AJC headquarters were in Downtown Atlanta near the Five Points district.[21] In August 2009, the AJC occupied less than 30 percent of its downtown building, which had become outdated and costly to maintain. Later that year, the AJC consolidated its printing operations by transferring the downtown production center to the Gwinnett County facility. In 2010 the newspaper relocated its headquarters to leased offices in Dunwoody, a northern suburb of Atlanta.[20] In November 2010, the company donated its former downtown headquarters to the city of Atlanta, which plans to convert the building into a fire and police training academy.[21] In February 2024, the newspaper announced it would return its headquarters to midtown Atlanta after nearly 14 years, citing a desire "to be at the beating heart of the city" it is named for. The company signed a lease on 21,000 square feet of newsroom and studio space in the Promenade Central building on Peachtree Street, planning to complete its relocation by the end of the year.[22]
Controversy[edit]
In 1996, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution was the first newspaper to report on Centennial Olympic Park bombing hero Richard Jewell being accused of actually being the bomber, citing leaked information of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Even after Jewell was cleared of any accusations by the FBI, the AJC refused to issue an apology and still remains the only paper to have not retracted their story by Kathy Scruggs and Ron Martz falsely accusing him of terrorism. The court case regarding this has been dropped after the death of both Richard Jewell and the initial reporter. Jewell died not long after from diabetes, due to poor eating habits that escalated after he was accused.[23]
Organization of the newspaper[edit]
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has four major sections daily. On Sundays, it has additional sections. The main section usually consists of Georgia news, national news, international news, and business news. The Metro section includes major headlines from the Metro Atlanta area. The Metro section usually reports the weather forecast. The Sports section reports sports-related news. Before social media became popular, the Metro and Sports sections contained "The Vent" features, where readers expressed opinions about current events.[24] The Living section contains articles, recipes, reviews, movie times, and puzzles including Sudoku, crossword puzzle, and word scramble; plus a full page of color comics daily. Comics are printed in a separate section in Sunday editions.