AJC outlines recovery plan
February 23, 2009 at 6:27 pm by Scott Henry in NewsOn Sunday, the AJC’s brand-new publisher, Doug Franklin, shed a little more light on upcoming changes to the newspaper’s print edition through an article addressed directly to readers. Most of the changes he mentioned were already anticipated, but he provided a few new details.
Here’s what Franklin says to expect:
• In mid-March, the Tuesday-Saturday Business section will merge with an expanded A section. The Sunday section will remain a stand-alone.
• The three Sunday feature sections (Living & Style, Arts & Leisure and Travel) will be combined into one.
• The current TVWeek supplement will be replaced with our own stand-alone, full-color TV section.
OK, I didn’t see the TV supplement coming, although I must admit I can’t be bothered to care. That aside, the other tweaks are fairly conservative first steps toward running a tighter ship. Even so, I’m assuming that a few jobs will be shaved simply by combining sections. With all due respect to the folks who now put together the AJC’s Sunday Living section, that thing’s been in dire need of an update longer than Mickey Rourke’s needed a comeback.
Franklin also announces that, come May, the paper will debut a redesign. He goes on to point out that the paper has hired two new business columnists. Unless one of those new columnists is Thomas Oliver, who’s been doing that gig about six months now, I’m not sure who he means. And he reminds us that the AJC has been turning over rocks looking for a replacement for GOP shill and hack conservative columnist Jim Wooten.
In an especially cringe-worthy disclosure, Franklin brags: “We also have worked hard to create news pages that are free of bias and opinion pages that are balanced.” I get that when you’re losing $1 million a week, you can’t afford to alienate people, but, Jesus! Opinion pages aren’t meant to be balanced; that’s why they’re called opinion pages! Ralph McGill didn’t “balance” out his opinion page by inviting the Grand Wizard to write rebuttals to his columns, and it’s a sad testament that the AJC feels it has to throw a bone to the wackdoodles who believe Cynthia Tucker is a commie. But perhaps that’s the reality of journalism in an era when even congressmen feel the need to kiss Rush Limbaugh’s fat ass.
February 23rd, 2009 at 10:07 pm
First of all, I love the fact that someone from CL is throwing stones at the AJC. Yes, the AJC has problems, but so does your rag. I really wouldn’t judge them to harshly on arts content because CL’s doesn’t exactly shine. And as lacking as their news coverage can sometimes be, their investigative reporting still blows away CL’s.
It’s interesting that Franklin mentioned the redesign because I thought that was supposed to happen this month. Oh well, I guess I can wait.
The paragraph Franklin wrote concerning the business columnists is obviously dealing with changes that have already been made. I know you probably couldn’t help yourself in taking shots at the paper, but this one was a blank. If you’ve truly been following the AJC (you know, researching your story), then you’ll know they announced Andre Jackson as a business columnist months ago.
I think what’s even more cringe-worthy than Franklin saying they’ve worked hard to create opinion pages that are balanced, is that CL so obviously doesn’t. Not only are opinion pieces always biased to one side but the news stories are almost always slanted too. While Scott decides to be oh-so-dramatic and give shout outs to the KKK and wackdoodles, he presents a fine example of why the alternative paper for Atlanta provides a shallow alternative at best.