Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s $150 million plan for Georgia and the South : NPR

Dashed hopes and slashed jobs outline the native information business in far too many corners of the nation.

In Atlanta, Andrew Morse, the president and writer of The Atlanta Journal-Structure, has splashy plans to revive the ailing newspaper. And he is been given a $150 million runway over the subsequent a number of years to determine it out.

“I didn’t come right here to handle decline,” says Morse, a former CNN government who joined the newspaper in January 2023. “We perceive that the advert market has been hollowed out by Google and Fb. We all know that information deserts have emerged all through a lot of the nation.

“As an alternative of studying story after story concerning the futility of this,” Morse asks, “why do not we grasp onto notions of, ‘How will we construct for the longer term?'”

From a journalistic standpoint — heck, from an actuarial standpoint — the native newspaper business is in dire straits.

The businesses are largely concentrated within the fingers of some company titans, many managed by funding funds. House owners usually search to prop up fast earnings whereas shrinking their newspapers’ workers in what’s thought of by critics to be a money-making death spiral.

Greater than 2.5 newspapers, on common, closed every week over the yr ending in October, in keeping with Northwestern University’s Medill State of Local News Report.

President-elect Donald Trump’s win earlier this month led to much more hand-wringing amongst journalists concerning the significance Individuals place on information based mostly on the normal rules of objectivity, accountability and the details. Trump eschewed interviews with many mainstream information retailers, selecting as an alternative sympathetic podcasters. And many citizens merely gained details about the candidates and the race elsewhere.

The Journal-Structure’s personal current previous options retrenchment and cost-cutting. In current a long time, it retreated from overlaying Georgia past the Atlanta suburbs. It stopped circulating in farther reaches of the state.

Its mother or father firm, Cox Enterprises, shed most of its different newspapers, however not the Journal-Structure. Cox Enterprises CEO Alex C. Taylor, a great-grandson of the corporate’s founder, says the newspaper performs a crucial function in Atlanta — one in all offering dependable information and data.

“We consider that journalism and details are a vital part of our neighborhood, significantly now,” Taylor writes in a press release to NPR. And he says that the corporate embraces Morse’s imaginative and prescient for a sustainable enterprise.

The plan

Morse has undertaken a literal rebuilding: After I visited within the spring, we spoke exterior the midtown Atlanta web site the place Morse is having a state-of-the-art newsroom constructed from scratch for reporting, podcasting, streaming video reveals, reside occasions and extra. He is transferring the paper again into the guts of the town from the northern suburbs. The workplace is ready to open on Monday.

“Our mission is to be probably the most important and fascinating supply of stories for the individuals of Atlanta, Georgia, within the South,” Morse says.

On his first day, again in January 2023, Morse drew concentric geographic circles for readers’ pursuits. Politics got here first.

“Georgia’s the middle of the political universe,” he says.

Earlier than the election, each Trump and Vice President Harris have been frequent guests to the purple state, which finally went for Trump. However he additionally faces a multicount indictment right here for conspiring to overturn Georgia’s 2020 presidential vote, which was narrowly gained by President Biden.

The paper’s protection of the race and the authorized case has been broadly cited within the nationwide press.

“If we cowl Georgia politics exceptionally properly, we’ll choose up subscribers in Atlanta, Georgia, the South and past,” Morse says.

Andrew Morse, the writer and president of The Atlanta Journal-Structure, stands earlier than a mural promoting the newspaper.

David Folkenflik/NPR

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David Folkenflik/NPR

After politics, sports activities and Black tradition

Morse subsequent drew circles round regional sports activities, meals, tradition and Black life. The paper’s protection of that final class falls underneath the heading “UATL,” for “Unapologetically Atlanta.” Morse green-lit a six-figure price range for a documentary on the rise of hip-hop there referred to as “The South Received One thing To Say.” It featured interviews with Killer Mike, Jermaine Dupri, and T.I. amongst others.

He met ceaselessly with Atlanta Hawks CEO Steve Koonin to find out how he reconnected the basketball staff to an alienated Atlanta fan base, particularly African Individuals.

This fall, the paper began the UATL as a stand-alone product, inviting readers to change into members. Greater than 5,000 individuals signed up as members within the first few weeks. The strategy echoes the New York Instances’ technique of making separate apps for video games and cooking.

Because the quantity two at CNN, Morse adopted an analogous technique, additionally impressed by the Instances, in constructing the streaming service CNN+, knitting a journalistic core with packages serving as ebook golf equipment, parenting guides and occasional klatches.

That playbook lasted only a month; it fell sufferer to a change in each the possession and CEO at CNN. Morse left shortly after.

A hands-on strategy at a time of disaster

Morse operates with a private contact. Staffers say he reveals up routinely at firm softball video games and civic occasions. He has met all 400 staff in small teams and dinners and written front-page editorials, together with one promising longtime subscribers that the paper will not be shelling out with the every day print version — not for the foreseeable future.

Certainly, Morse has doubled down on print, for the second. To promote the Journal-Structure’s protection and its revived ambitions, it is supplied without spending a dime at shops within the Georgia cities of Athens, Macon and Savannah — all locations the place the native papers have declined in staffing, circulation and breadth of protection.

The Athens Banner-Herald and the Savannah Morning Information are owned by newspaper big Gannett. The Macon Telegraph is owned by McClatchy, which is held by a hedge fund. The newsrooms of all three have been in the reduction of severely. Like many native newspapers, they now not publish seven days every week.

The AJC took its podcast Politically Georgia, which additionally airs as a show on the public radio station WABE, on the street as properly, to enchantment to listeners and potential subscribers.

Again in Atlanta, Morse frequently leads every day information classes in tandem with Editor-in-Chief Leroy Chapman Jr., a 13-year veteran on the paper whom Morse elevated to the job final yr. It is a TV information transfer: Morse’s longtime boss at CNN, the previous President Jeff Zucker, was well-known for steering protection on the community.

Atlanta Journal-Structure Editor in Chief Leroy Chapman Jr. says the present media disaster requires “all fingers on deck.”

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Paras Griffin/Getty Photographs

At most newspapers, against this, the writer’s direct involvement in coordinating information protection can be problematic — even a disaster — with the potential to blur strains between enterprise and journalistic imperatives.

Chapman tells NPR that the actual disaster — the specter of monetary collapse in native newspapering — is already right here. And he argues that Morse helps the Journal-Structure pull by way of it.

“The duty on the high for transformational change is a dedication,” says Chapman. “It may well’t essentially be successfully carried out by emails and by stuff you write.”

“Change and the dedication to alter actually does come from hands-on [involvement], each day, second to second,” he provides.

Morse rejects issues about his involvement.

“All people needs to attempt to play an angle. They attempt to exert their affect,” Morse says. “If not for our editorial integrity, we do not have a enterprise mannequin. So long as everybody understands that, there is not any downside.”

Morse says he shields the newsroom from political or company pressures, together with any potential stress over coverage of the Cox family’s holdings.

So will it succeed?

“We have set a imaginative and prescient to have the ability to rework the AJC from this storied 155-year-old group into a contemporary media firm,” Morse says.

In a hopeful signal, the newspaper is doing one thing uncommon amongst its form: It is including staffers. By the top of this yr, the Journal-Structure can have added almost 100 extra individuals than when Morse began, a rise of a couple of quarter. (That takes under consideration a handful of layoffs and buyouts this yr.)

Lately, a spokesperson says, the paper has a bit north of 100,000 paying print and digital subscribers, a modest improve from not too long ago disclosed ranges. The spokesperson additionally says the Journal-Structure has loved constant progress this yr. Morse is taking pictures for 500,000 subscriptions — that’s, nearly 5 instances as many because it has proper now.

For this story, I surveyed six business executives with expertise in native information about Morse’s plans. I anticipated no less than some skepticism.

5 mentioned they thought Morse stood a reasonably good probability of pulling this off.

All six mentioned they have been rooting for him.