AJC circ drops 24.7 percent MORE, quality of sports section drops 2,470 percent

FWIW, the NYT did not start the Gwinnett Daily News. That paper had been around close to 100 years.

The NYT bought it in the late '80s, hoping to buy the Marietta Daily Journal as well and combine them in order to take on the AJC from a base in the North Atlanta suburbs -- where all the money is. It failed because everybody's buddy Otis Brumby refused to sell the MDJ.

NYT tried to make a go of it with just Gwinnett, putting out a damn good product (if this alumnus does say so himself) that included coverage of all the Atlanta pro and college teams (plus UGA), but the AJC undercut them on cost. The AJC slashed its ad and subscription rates for papers sold in Gwinnett County, forcing the GDN to do the same. The Gwinnett paper was selling single copies for 10 cents. I remember the boxes used to say "One dime, limited time," but the limited time turned out to be something like three years, because the AJC had dropped its price to 15 cents in Gwinnett.

Circulation grew through the roof, but the paper was operating at a significant loss. Eventually it was bleeding so much money that in 1992 NYT cried uncle and sold the GDN to the AJC, which folded the paper and appropriated its brand new presses. It was a very sad day, but it illustrated the power of the AJC at the time. It was an absolute juggernaut.

 

Yeah, my bad. Been a while since I studied that history.

And now, 20 years later, the AJC has just given up and ceded the outlying counties, including Gwinnett. Time was the Gwinnett Daily Post wasn't worth the paper it was printed on. They used to give it away free with cable subscriptions. (Do they still do that?) It's gotten a lot better, but the old AJC still would have crushed it like a bug.

 

What's happening in Atlanta is no different than what's happening in Philly, Miami, hell even Podunk. It's a crummy time for the business.
The south ain't rising again.

 

True, Drip. The Inquirer has held its own as of late (still an excellent read), but I'm worried what the latest transaction will mean for that paper's future.

 

What's wrong with that?

 

Todd Cline, who had been the SE, is running the whole she-bang at Gwinnett. He's a good dude and knows what he's doing.
Was in Gwinnett over the weekend (why, I'll never know...). Meant to pick up a copy of the paper on my way out of God's gift to asphalt and pavement, but failed to do so. Got a copy of the AJC Sunday.
Reading it now just breaks my heart. It's like Grizzard dying every day of the week.

 

Not turn this into a Philly thing but the Inky's problems date back decades ago when it was a K-R jewel. AJC is still the heart of Cox but that heart needs a transplant.
Cline has done a good job with the Gwinnett Daily Post. Just wish that his pay scale was better. It's pretty bad considering the area where the Post is situated.

 

Well, in the grand scheme of things, nothing. But it's not something you'd think the AJC would have done a few years ago -- the state's two major colleges meeting in baseball IN Atlanta and getting a stringer to cover it.

 

I'm not going to get into the rest of the inferences made about my paper here, but I covered the UGA-Tech baseball and I'm a staffer. Whoever said they saw a stringer story may have picked up the state edition. The game ran long. I'll post again in another 10 years.

doug roberson

 

Thanks, Doug ... if you read here in the next 10 years.

Stringer for UGA-Georgia Tech didn't make much sense, so thanks for clarifying.

 

I have a friend who worked for the AJC at the Gwinnett Extra, which was the AJC's let's-put-the-local-rag-out-of-business section. This was the mid/late 90s. It worked. Once the Gwinnett market was secure, the Gwinnett Extra was gone, or at least reduced significantly. Somebody who remembers better than I may want to speak up on this, but I think it was cut well before the internet crisis kicked in, though I could be mistaken (I'm going on recollections from conversations with my friend at that far-off city, not as a local AJC reader or employee).

It sort of reminded me of a Wal-Mart coming to a small town, the way it could easily put the "mom-and-pop" community paper out of its misery. How times have changed.

What the AJC is doing now is the same mistake I've seen several other papers and parent companies make. Basically, the baby's been thrown out with the bathwater. I've worked at three papers in the last three years (the first of which was my employer for many years). Two, including my current one, stubbornly hold on to as much of the old model for the PRINT product as they can. Their circulations are holding up, relative to the trend in the business. The third closed its press, slashed its news hole and tried to point the reader online for everything (without having a good plan -- heck, any plan -- for monetizing online content). Its circulation has been dropping much like the AJC (I'll qualify that by saying I haven't seen its latest circulation numbers).

Look, it's clear that the old model isn't the future of the business. My point is simply that you better know exactly what your future model is before you completely disassemble the old one. The two "old-school" shops I have worked for are really behind when it comes to their development of new media. However, they are still in a much better position going forward for two reasons:

1. They have not destroyed their brand by gutting the print product. I think some papers, including the AJC, have done so much damage to their brands by slashing the print products, it undermines any future endeavor associated with their tarnished brands. The old-school papers have actually improved their reputations simply by not subtracting as fast. For example, one of the old-school shops I worked for is a 40k that has a bigger news hole than the AJC. Imagine a coffee shop in that town with a visitor from Atlanta. He/she may make a comment to a local that "Your paper has a better sports section than our Atlanta paper." That leaves an impression with the local and, as a result, improves the brand, not by anything extra the local paper did, but by what the paper in the other market is not doing.
2. They have maintained a certain level of institutional knowledge and authority that can serve any new model going forward. The two "old-school" papers I have worked for have had layoffs, but largely to cut fat that existed at most papers pre-crisis. They have not cut so much as to take out the authoritative voices of their products. This is tied with reason No. 1, of course. Tony Barnhart is a standard-bearer for SEC football coverage and, at a smart paper, people with such reputations -- Jerry Tipton's basketball coverage at the Herald-Leader is another example -- are more valuable in a new media world. New media is, by its nature, very accessible and fragmented so trusted names actually become more important. For example, in the old model, SEC fans read their local coverage of the SEC because it was convenient. Then they picked up an AJC to read a Barnhart when they could. Now, they can just read Barnhart any time they want online. So his status as "Mr. College Football" is potentially more important than it used to be. It's absolutely crippling for papers to let these "names" go. It seriously inhibits their ability to build a model for the future.

Having said that, I'm as nervous as anybody else about the future. That my current shop hasn't cut "into the bone" yet leaves the very real possibility (nay, probability) that it's going to happen, only later than it has come at other shops. But the point is still valid that if a new model starts to emerge, my current paper sits in a much better position to take advantage of it than the AJC, simply because the AJC has lost so much of its reputation and so many of its trusted names that it may become impossible to recover.