Fresh Loaf

For weeks, there have been whispers that the Atlanta Journal-Constitution wouldn’t offer endorsements for the upcoming Atlanta mayoral elections. If so, the move would’ve been a startling about-face from an editorial board made famous by legendary editor Ralph McGill.

Late Friday evening, the paper sent word. In a note to readers, the board said it was done with endorsements.

We have heard from readers — and we agree — that you don’t need us to tell you how to vote. What readers tell us they need is information on who the candidates are, what they have done and what they want to do in the new job.

While this sounds very forward-thinking and probably could be spun as “bold new thinking” in NewspaperLand, we think it’s hogwash.

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Thomas Wheatley’s kick-ass cover story about his battle with alcoholism, “Sober,” was named the second-best feature story in the country at the Association of Alternative Newsweekly’s annual conference this past weekend. Yay Thomas!

The AAN awards are the most prestigious for the nation’s altweeklies.

The other winners in the Feature Story category for 2008 were Westword’s “The Good Soldier” (first place), Westword’s “Father of Invention” (third place), Houston Press’s “Mental Anguish” (honorable mention), and L.A. Weekly’s “From Silver Lake to Suicide” (honorable mention).

Our sister papers Washington City Paper and Chicago Reader took home a whopping five and two AAN awards, respectively. Congrats, guys!

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Decatur Metro has a great conversation about my colleague Scott Henry’s news that the Atlanta Journal-Constitution newsroom is bracing for yet another round of job cuts.

Commenters weigh in on what’s to blame for the quickening, whether it’s the Internet, liberal bias, or other factors. (For what it’s worth, Whet Moser, an excellent writer at CL’s sister paper The Chicago Reader, has an excellent piece that nails the various factors at play in journalism.)

One commenter who claims to be an AJC journalist added some firsthand experience to the discussion. This part stood out:

You print lovers need to brace yourself. I think there’s a real possibility that the print version of the AJC may be gone by the end of next year. Yes, I’m serious.

Not good.

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If you thought 2008 was a bad year for print media, don’t hold your breath in 2009. The New York Times Bits blog is reporting that 8020 Media, the company behind JPG and Everywhere magazines, is shutting down. No bankruptcy, no making a run at fresh VC, no, they’re shutting down, clamping-the-chain-on-the-front-door shutting down.

The thing about 8020 Media was its strategy; the company was breaking ground by being one of the first to go from web-only to web/print, tap their user base for content (JPG published user-submitted-and-reviewed photographs), and operate with a low editorial budget. Understandingly, it was being lauded as a model for the future of publishing.

Curiously, not long ago, like in 2007, the Times itself was ga-ga over 8020’s business model, launching a profile of the company thusly:

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 21 — A funny thing happened while Halsey Minor was trying to kill print journalism. He ended up publishing magazines — big, heavy magazines, with beautiful pictures on quality paper — the kind he and others had declared obsolete.

Now, Minor himself (who founded CNET.com) shut the money pump and the company will cease operations immediately.

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Effective Jan. 11, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution says it will shrink its circulation area to 27 counties and cut 156 jobs. The affected counties are mostly located along the Alabama and North Carolina borders (full list is available through the link). Jobs slated to be cut appear to be in the circulation department. (If I’m mistaken, please correct me in the comments or via e-mail. Anonymity guaranteed.)

From the report:

The move will reduce daily and Sunday circulation about 5 percent. But it will not significantly affect overall readership — a measure of readers rather than the number of copies — because that is based on a 28-county area, the AJC said.

The company said 215 employees have been offered involuntary severance packages as part of a restructuring of the circulation department, but that they may apply for 59 jobs created by the changes. The net reduction is 156 full- and part-time positions.

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AIM HIGHER: Edelstein was the yeast in our Loaf.

It’s safe to say that Creative Loafing owes its reputation as the city’s smartest, edgiest, most endearing rag to Ken Edelstein, who up until last week was the paper’s editor for a decade.

The man lived and breathed the Loaf. From his disheveled mess of a cubicle, he’d impart his detailed recollection of a state Senate race circa 1998, or his vision for an Arts & Entertainment mega-section, or his adoration for a clever turn of phrase, a perfectly composed photo, and a well-crafted blog post. He was eager to talk, longwindedly at times, about the philosophy of newsgathering and his strategy for drawing readers to the Web. He obsessed on the grammar of every sentence he edited, calling out writers for their overuse of gerunds and each superfluous “that.”

As editor, Edelstein had high standards and a resume to match. His knowledge of Atlanta – its politics, infrastructure, and history – runs as deep as his desire to improve the city he calls home. In a column he wrote last year, he characterized Atlanta as an impetuous young woman, and he offered her a bit of advice:

“Too busy to hate, too busy to wait, too busy for anything but the next hustle. … You gotta clear your head of all the baggage from your past and aim a whole lot higher.”

Nearly everyone who knows him would agree that “aiming higher” is Ken’s mantra. He pushed his staff as hard as he pushes himself.

Read the rest of this column.

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From Romenesko:

Cox Newspapers Washington bureau chief Andy Alexander will become the Washington Post’s ombudsman for a two-year term beginning Feb. 2. “He brings with him more than 30 years of experience in the news industry and will be an excellent advocate for our readers,” writes Post publisher Katharine Weymouth. Cox Newspaper announced this week that Alexander’s bureau will shut down in April.

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Cox Newspapers, a subsidiary of Cox Communications and owner of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, says it will shut down its national and international news bureau in Washington, D.C. on April 1, 2009.

A company memo posted on Romenesko says the AJC and Dayton Daily News will “manage their own Washington and international newsgathering independently following the national bureau’s closing through dedicated correspondents in D.C.” Eligible employees of the D.C. bureau will be offered “generous” severance packages and continued employment until March 31. Bureau chief Andy Alexander will retire at the end of the year.

“The Washington news bureau and its chief, Andy Alexander, have an impressive and storied history in Washington and in our company,” Sandy Schwartz, Cox Newspapers president, said in the memo. “For more than 30 years, the reporters of this bureau have broken an untold number of stories that have had an impact on the lives of our readers in cities and towns all across the U.S. The Cox Washington bureau has won or shared virtually every major American journalism award, including the Pulitzer Prize.”

After the jump, read the entire memo. It includes details about Alexander’s career — it’s been an impressive one — and information about the international bureau.

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In a move that stunned staffers, Creative Loafing Atlanta Publisher Luann Labedz announced this morning  that Editor Ken Edelstein was fired. A tearful editorial staff followed him out of the building to say goodbye.

Labedz said Edelstein’s firing was a “confidential personnel matter” and that she could not elaborate. A call to Edelstein reached his voicemail.

“This was an involuntary termination,” Edelstein told the AJC. “I feel very comfortable that I did the right thing, and I love my staff.”

Atlanta Magazine senior editor — and former CL staffer — Steve Fennessy has been covering CL’s ongoing Chapter 11 filing and has more details on Edelstein’s firing, including comments from John Sugg, a former CL editor.

Edelstein joined CL’s staff as a senior writer and became managing editor in 1998. Two years later, he was named editor of the paper. Prior to joining CL Edelstein worked 10 years for the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer and was a freelance journalist in Washington, D.C., Australia and Mexico.

During his decade leading the editorial staff, the paper has won more than 30 regional and national awards for investigative reporting, news writing, columnists, criticism, food writing and other categories. While at the helm, Edelstein helped shift the paper’s focus on listings to more hard news and investigative journalism. Recently, Edelstein has led a dedicated effort to increase CL’s online presence despite budget restraints and cuts to his team.

No word yet on Edelstein’s replacement.

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The Atlanta Press Club recently launched a blog for the local journalism community. Let ‘em know what you think, and what you’d like to see on the blog. You can leave them a comment or email me at mara.shalhoup@creativeloafing.com and I’ll pass the info along to the APC’s board, of which I’m a member.

Seems like there’s plenty of media news these days — and a genuine need for a blog that’s singularly devoted to the city’s journalists.

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Last week, 73 Atlanta Journal-Constitution photographers, journalists, editors and staffers left 72 Marietta St. for the final time. Included among them were familiar bylines — Maria Saporta, Michelle Hiskey, Frank Niemier and David Pendered are just to name a few — but also a host of behind-the-scenes characters who helped the paper run and kept the machine moving.

Someone at the AJC assembled a slideshow of those departing staffers and their memories of the job. It was played at a going-away party last week. You can view it here.

It’s an a-to-z 23-minute tribute replete with photographs and a Motown soundtrack. If you love journalism or have felt the bond a work environment can create, it’s a heart-wrenching video to watch. The paper’s losing a lot of excellent talent. We wish all of them the best.

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The Atlanta blogger who got in hot water this morning for taking money from politicians is accusing his accusers of doing much the same thing.

“This just another case of the pot calling the kettle black,” Georgia Politics Unfiltered’s Andre Walker said in an e-mail about Atlanta Progressive News.

APN reported early this morning that Walker received payments from U.S. Rep. David Scott’s campaign (apparently for designing a website) and also ran favorable coverage of Scott. Decaturguy blogged last year that Walker had set up a website for Vernon Jones and also covered Jones’ Senate campaign.

But Walker sent campaign disclosure reports to CL showing that APN received a total of $575 for ads from politicians whom the website endorsed: Angela Moore for Georgia secretary of state in 2006, Able Mable Thomas for the fifth congressional district this year, and Donzella James, who ran against Scott in the 13th congressional district this year. (more…)

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Charles Bethea, a former CL intern, has a piece in this week’s New Yorker about a Norcross man who created a Barack Obama Gmail account on a whim and has since been inundated with criticisms, compliments and Russian spam mail addressed to the Presidential hopeful. Go here to check it out.

Bethea is an associate editor at Outside’s Go. He’s also the son of Sally Bethea, executive director of the Atlanta-based Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper.

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As published in the Columbia Journalism Review.

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Mike Boettcher, a Peabody Award-winning journalist who’s covered conflicts in the Middle East and Africa for NBC News and CNN, is launching a Web venture called NoIgnoring. He’s channeling the ghost of Ernie Pyle and venturing off to Iraq and Afghanistan to tell soldiers’ stories from the warzones.

“We have 200,000 U.S. men and women in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf. The U.S. has seemed to have forgotten about them. We talk about the war, but we’ve forgotten the soldiers and what they are doing,” Boettcher said.

He’s not traveling solo, either — Boettcher’s 21-year-old son Carlos will join him. The two plan to embed with the Fourth Infantry Division and mimic their tours — 15 months in the field, 18 days at home — and post blogs and video reports to the site. The reports will be free for television stations to post on their websites, Boettcher says.

According to various blog posts about the venture, father and son left in late May or June. Interesting fact: Boettcher filed one of the first reports for Ted Turner’s 24-hour news network.

Full disclosure: Boettcher is a friend of mine, but I haven’t spoken with him in months. I googled his name for kicks the other day and came across this news. I wish him and Carlos all the best and look forward to their work.

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Greg Bluestein is a writer with the Associated Press, a former classmate of mine, and a familiar face if you cover anything in Georgia. He’s everywhere, one of the most dedicated journalists out there, and a great guy.

In what seems to be a stray from the norm for the AP, Bluestein was given the chance to write a first-person account of the night Curtis Osborne was executed.

And it’s one of the finer pieces I’ve read about such an event, rich with detail and back story and a glimpse into what a witness to an execution goes through to view the process. The story was posted on the Georgians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty listserv.

Good work, Greg.

JACKSON, Ga. — I’ve never met Curtis Osborne, had hardly heard his name until the last few months. But we shared a powerful and unsettling bond Wednesday night, one that I’ll never forget. His eyes fixed on mine minutes before he took his last breath.

I’ve worked at The Associated Press for three years now and covered more than my share of doom and gloom. But I had never witnessed an execution.

When the chance came up to cover Osborne’s execution, I didn’t think too much about it. I saw it more as a duty than anything else.

But there was also something a bit more primal about it. Very few things we cover as legal reporters ever seem complete, ever seem final. Verdicts are appealed. Sentences can be shortened. Even laws get overturned. There was something unique, though, about a story that has an absolute end.

Click here to view the rest of the story and give the Macon Telegraph and AP pageviews to keep work like this going.

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Feisty former U.S. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney has picked yet another fight — this time with Pulitzer-winning AJC editorial page editor Cynthia Tucker. McKinney has sued Tucker, the newspaper and its owners, Cox Enterprises, for libel, alleging that she suffered “permanent impairment to her ability to continue her livelihood” as a result of two of Tucker’s opinion pieces and another article.

“[W]hat changes to the ‘stinking system’ has McKinney wrought? She doesn’t have the prestige or power to pass a resolution in support of sweetened ice tea.”

— From Tucker’s July 30, 2006, editorial

“Tucker knew that the Power Rankings by Congress.org rated Cynthia McKinney 277 of 435 Congresspersons in legislative effectiveness.”

— From McKinney’s July 2007 lawsuit, in an attempt to prove Tucker downplayed McKinney’s power and prestige

“This is a set-up for the catfight of the century.”

— Posted by “Wings-n-Wind” on the conservative website www.freepublic.com

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The more people know about Big Media becoming Bigger, Bigger and Humongous Media, the more they dislike the idea, the Pew Research Center Found in 2003. Before information was available on media-consolidation schemes pending before the Federal Communications Commission, 34 percent of respondents thought they were bad ideas. After the information was available, 50 percent were opposed. Only 10 percent supported the moves.

So the solution for some media giants is to keep the public in the dark. Atlanta’s Coxopoly does a darn good job of that. Four years ago, there was nary an article on moves by media giants to muscle approval from the FCC to allow daily newspapers to own, without much restriction, broadcast properties in the same city. Here in Atlanta, where Cox already owns the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, WSB-TV plus a number of radio stations, the goal was for the company to snap up another television outlet, maybe two.

Only after it was too late for citizens to voice their feelings to the FCC did the AJC run a story — and that never explored Cox’s role in lobbying for the changes. AJC Managing Editor Hank Klibanoff assured me at the time: “There’s no conspiracy.”

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Kevin Sack, the Pulitzer-winning New York Times Atlanta bureau chief turned Pulitzer-winning Los Angeles Times Atlanta national correspondent, has returned to the Times — er, the NY one.

He tells CL that as an Atlanta national correspondent for the N.Y. Times, he’ll be covering “health care reform and the health care crisis.”

Sack left the N.Y. Times in 2002, unhappy with then-editor Howell Raines’ decision to reassign him to the Washington, D.C. bureau. (He has a young daughter in Atlanta to whom he wished to remain close.) Rather than leave the ATL, Sack signed on as the L.A. paper’s man in Atlanta — and promptly won his second Pulitzer for his and Alan Miller’s 2002 series on a military aircraft dubbed “The Widow Maker,” a vertical take-off Harrier jet that was linked to the deaths of nearly four dozen pilots.

“Oddly enough,” Sack says, “the Harrier story was my first story for them.”

(While at the N.Y. Times, Sack had earned the Pulitzer for his contribution to the 15-author 2000 series, “How Race Is Lived in America.”)

With the recent resignations of two L.A. Times editors, John Carroll and Dean Baquet — who quit in protest of a corporate push to further downsize the paper’s staff — the L.A. paper had, according to various accounts, become a dismal place to hang one’s hat.

Sack says his departure from the paper was “precipitated more by the general instability at the L.A. Times. Certainly, Dean’s departure and the departure of John Carroll before him and the departure of two publishers are part of that, and the recent sale of the company.”

Asked whether he’ll remain in Atlanta, Sack says, “There’s a general understanding that I’ll be here for a while.”

As long as he keeps filing his top-notch investigative stories from Atlanta, it’s no loss for us.

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What’s the value of book reviews? Former L.A. Times cop reporter — and now successful fiction writer — Michael Connelly puts it best: Books foster reading and newspapers desperately need people who are interested in reading.

Here’s the money quote from an op-ed piece he did recently in the L.A. Times:

The truth is that the book and newspaper businesses share the same dreadful fear: that people will stop reading. And the fear may be well-founded. Across the country, newspaper circulations are down — and this is clearly part of the reason for the cuts to book sections. At the same time, the book business increasingly relies on an aging customer base that may not be refueling itself with enough new readers.

In the past, newspaper executives understood the symbiotic relationship between their product and books. People who read books also read newspapers. From that basic tenet came a philosophy: If you foster books, you foster reading. If you foster reading, you foster newspapers. That loss-leader ends up helping you build and keep your base.

What I fear is that this philosophy is disappearing from the boardrooms of our newspapers; that efforts to cut costs now will damage both books and newspapers in the future. Short-term gains will become long-term losses.

Connelly, by the way, is one of my favorite writers with his Detective Harry Bosch series. And he’s dead-on in his assessment. The entire column is well worth the read.

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Two organizers of Thursday’s book-related protest outside the Atlanta Journal-Constitution offices were surprised when top editor Julia Wallace invited them upstairs for a chat.

The demonstration, which drew as many as 60 local authors, literary critics and book-lovers, was staged to express displeasure with the newspaper’s elimination of the job of book editor, a position currently held by Teresa Weaver.

Shannon Byrne, a local publicist for Little, Brown, and John Freeman, president of the National Book Critics Circle, were given an hourlong private audience with Wallace and the newly elevated “managing editor for print,” Bert Roughton.

Byrne says Wallace began the meeting by telling her guests that the two-page Sunday book section is the least-read section in the paper and explained that the paper was going to be devoting more of its resources to local coverage. As she has in recent interviews and memos, Wallace, however, also said the AJC’s commitment to book coverage would not suffer.

Byrne, for one, sees a contradiction there.

“I’m glad they appeared willing to listen to us and I’d like to believe their reassurances,” she says. “But I don’t see how a book section gets better when you get rid of your book editor and you have fewer people doing more work.”

Certainly, there was no shortage of coverage of the book protest. The event was filmed by CNN, C-SPAN and Fox News, and was also covered by Publishers Weekly.

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Certain aspects of the staff shake-up at the AJC have created a stir far beyond the bounds of our fair city. CL had already blogged about the uproar in the local literary community over the planned elimination of the position of book editor as a preview to a related story set to appear in this week’s Loaf.

However, the fuss has attracted the attention of the New York Times, which today contains an article titled “Are Book Reviewers Out of Print?” The article notes similar changes going on at such major newspapers as the San Fransisco Chronicle and LA Times, and quotes such literary heavyweights as Richard Ford and Melissa Fay Greene — who also spoke to CL — who feel that the decision to do away with the job of book editor can only lead to a decline in the quality book coverage at the AJC.
What the NYT didn’t say was that local book-lovers have scheduled a protest — or “read-in” — outside the AJC offices at 72 Marietta St. for 10 a.m. Thursday morning.

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I wrote last week that an industry source predicted that nationwide newspaper circulation numbers would show a 5 percent decline for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Sunday edition. The source was a little optimistic.

The actual Sunday loss was 6.7 percent, declining to 523,687, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

Meanwhile, daily circulation fell 2 percent, to 357,399.

When the AJC reports this, it will be with the explanation that most dailies saw plunging circulation, and that’s true. The smoke screen of explanation by the newspapers is that all of these weird things have conspired to starve them of readers, things like the Internet. What they won’t admit — especially over at the AJC — is that for years they have slashed news staffs and dumbed down their publications. Savvy readers have left.

Don’t expect the AJC to give you historical perspective. Nineteen years ago (the earliest I could dig up complete records), the combined daily circulation of Atlanta’s then two newspapers was 458,700. The Sunday edition was 650,500.

That’s a 22 percent loss for daily, 19.5 percent for Sunday. Meanwhile, from 1990 to 2006, the Atlanta metro area has added more than 2 million people, an increase of more than 67 percent. Thus, the AJC has gone from reaching about 1 in 6 potential subscribers to 1 in 14.

If you’re an advertiser, the AJC likely refers to you as “Hello, sucker.” The more circulation that vaporizes, the higher the advertising rates go (the opposite of what logic would indicate). For the billionaire Cox family owners, lost circulation is a plus. They spend less publishing the newspaper.

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In addition to dealing with a newsroom full of demoralized reporters, AJC execs are weathering a fairly public protest of their decision to eliminate the position of book editor, long held by staffer Teresa Weaver. It’s yet unclear exactly how the AJC intends to alter its book coverage — perhaps using wire reviews or thinning down its two-page Sunday book section — but readers seem to fear the worst.

New York-based John Freeman, who serves as president of the National Book Critics Circle and is a frequent contributor to the AJC’s book reviews, has posted an online petition that challenges the newspaper to reinstate Weaver as book editor and to avoid trimming the section. After praising the AJC’s book section, Freeman is blunt:

I am a subscriber to and/or a frequent reader of the Atlanta Journal Constitution, and I want the AJC to continue publishing a book section edited by Teresa Weaver that gives Atlanta a unique, thoughtful approach to books, one that represents a diverse array of voices, and is not simply fed by wire copy from the Associated Press or the New York Times.

So far, the petition has collected more than 3,000 signatures, many accompanied by comments. AJC editor Julia Wallace has sent several correspondents a letter that seeks to soothe reader concerns:

Let me allay your fears: We are not killing our book coverage or book pages. So long as books are important to our readers, we will continue to dedicate space to them.

Judging from the fast-growing number of signatures on the petition and the tone of many of the comments, readers have not found her words reassuring.

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AJC Editorial Page Editor Cynthia Tucker won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary today.

In a press release, the Pulitzer Prize Board praised Tucker’s “courageous, clear-headed columns that evince a strong sense of morality and persuasive knowledge of the community.”

In 2006, Creative Loafing named Tucker Best Columnist in our Best of Atlanta issue. We wrote that Tucker “produces timely and often courageous columns that dare to expose the clay feet of such local idols as Cynthia McKinney and the King family.”

In addition to a handsome trophy and a $10,000 cash prize, Tucker can now compete each morning with editorial cartoonist Mike Luckovich and Managing Editor Hank Klibanoff for the AJC’s prestigious “Reserved For Pulitzer Prize-Winners Only” parking space.

The award is well-deserved and we wish her congratulations.

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