Fresh Loaf

It’s often been theorized that small-town newspapers have the best hope for surviving the withering of the print media that’s occurring in every large city in America — including, of course, Atlanta. If that theory proves to be correct in Georgia, it will be despite the best efforts of state Sen. Cecil Staton, R-Macon

Last year, Staton introduced a bill — SB 391, to be exact — that would effectively deal a death blow to most small and mid-sized newspapers in Georgia by stripping them of lucrative legal ads. Described simply, his measure would shift legal ads and public notices from local papers onto a website authorized by the Secretary of State’s office.

The danger of Staton’s bill, which has yet to be reintroduced this session, is not that it has powerful backers — although it does — or that he’s particularly skillful at pushing bills through. The danger lies in the fact that his idea — or some version of that idea — actually makes a great deal of sense.

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Count me as the last to know — having just seen his obit in the AJC — that longtime Atlanta journalist and one-time CL news editor Tim Bentley died two weekends ago at age 55. I don’t believe anyone left in editorial here but myself worked with Tim when he joined the paper nearly 10 years ago. That’s a shame because he was one of the nicer people I’ve met in this industry — laid-back, upbeat, funny and very competent.

Tim didn’t stay long, no more than a year or so, as I recall. But I got the impression that Tim, who had near-white hair even then, never stayed anywhere very long. He seemed eternally restless to do something different, bouncing between journalism and politics.

By the time I met him, Tim had already written for array of magazines, political newsletters and local newspapers. Between those gigs, he worked on political campaigns for Jimmy Carter, Maynard Jackson, Max Cleland and others. Did I mention he was a Yellow Dog Democrat?

Not long after leaving CL, he was editing Business to Business magazine. I stayed in touch for a few years, partly because Tim was a great sounding board for potential stories, partly because he seemed to know everybody who was anybody in the realm of Georgia politics. But I’m sad to learn we won’t be crossing paths again. Ed Bean, editor of the Daily Report, has a fine remembrance of Tim on the Atlanta Press Club website.

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Longtime Atlanta Journal-Constitution film critic Eleanor Ringel Gillespie isn’t retiring now that she’s left her newspaper home of 28 years. Gillespie was one of more than 40 veteran AJC employers who accepted a buyout package and left the company last week.

But, starting in September, she’ll write weekly movie reviews and feature stories for the Daily Report, a specialized newspaper serving the metro Atlanta legal community.

“We’re still the same paper, with an emphasis on legal issues,” says Daily Report Editor Ed Bean, who says he hopes to blend in more lifestyle coverage to appeal to his readership, which is mostly older and well-educated.

Bean says he called Gillespie as soon as he heard she was leaving the AJC because, after nearly three decades as Atlanta’s best known movie critic, she has a strong local following that trusts her opinion.

“As a reader, I can say that the best critics have a voice and readers calibrate the reviews to that voice to determine whether they might like a certain movie,” Bean says. “The reviewer’s name does mean something to readers.”

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