Logo until 2021Logo in 2005Logo of The Atlanta Constitution in 2001
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC) is an American daily newspaper based in metropolitan area of Atlanta, Georgia. It is the flagship publication of Cox Enterprises. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is the result of the merger between The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution.[2] The two staffs were combined in 1982. Separate publication of the morning Constitution and the afternoon Journal ended in 2001 in favor of a single morning paper under the Journal-Constitution name.[3]
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has its headquarters in the Atlanta suburb of Dunwoody, Georgia. It was formerly co-owned with television flagship WSB-TV and six radio stations, which are located separately in midtown Atlanta; the newspaper remained part of Cox Enterprises, while WSB became part of an independent Cox Media Group.
In 1868, Carey Wentworth Styles, along with his joint venture partners James Anderson and (future Atlanta mayor) William Hemphill purchased a small newspaper, the Atlanta Daily Opinion which they renamed The Constitution, as it was originally known, was first published on June 16, 1868.[4] Its name changed to The Atlanta Constitution in October 1869.[5] Hemphill became the business manager, a position he retained until 1901.[6] When Styles was unable to liquidate his holdings in an Albany newspaper, he could not pay for his purchase of the Constitution. He was forced to surrender his interest in the paper to Anderson and Hemphill, who each owned one half. In 1870, Anderson sold his one-half interest in the paper to Col. E. Y. Clarke.[7] In active competition with other Atlanta newspapers, Hemphill hired special trains (one engine and car) to deliver newspapers to the Macon marketplace.[8] The newspaper became such a force that by 1871 it had overwhelmed the Daily Intelligencer, the only Atlanta paper to survive the American Civil War. In August 1875, its name was changed to The Atlanta Daily Constitution for two weeks, then to The Constitution again for about a year.[9] In 1876, Captain Evan Howell (a former Intelligencer city editor) purchased the 50 percent interest in the paper from E. Y. Clarke and became its editor-in-chief. That same year, Joel Chandler Harris began writing for the paper. He soon created the character of Uncle Remus, a black storyteller, to recount stories from African-American culture. The Howell family eventually owned full interest in the paper from 1902 until 1950.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman (pictured) wrote these articles about feminism for the Atlanta Constitution, published on December 10, 1916.
In October 1876, the newspaper was renamed The Daily Constitution before settling on the name The Atlanta Constitution in September 1881.[10] During the 1880s, editor Henry W. Grady was a spokesman for the "New South", encouraging industrial development as well as the founding of Georgia Tech in Atlanta. Evan Howell's family would come to own The Atlanta Constitution from 1902 to 1950.[6]
The Constitution established one of the first radio broadcasting stations, WGM, which began operating on March 17, 1922, two days after the debut of the Journal's WSB. However, WGM ceased operations after just over a year. Its equipment was donated to what was then known as Georgia School of Technology, which used it to help launch WBBF (later WGST, now WGKA AM 920) in January 1924.[11]
1948 advertisement for the Constitution's AM radio station WCON
In late 1947, the Constitution established radio station WCON (AM 550).[12] Subsequently, it received approval to operate an FM station, WCON-FM 98.5 mHz, and a TV station, WCON-TV, on channel 2.
But the 1950 merger with the Journal required major adjustments. Contemporary Federal Communications Commission "duopoly" regulations disallowed owning more than one AM, FM, or TV station in a given market, and the Atlanta Journal already owned WSB AM 750 and WSB-FM 104.5, as well as WSB-TV on channel 8. WCON and the original WSB-FM were shut down to comply with the duopoly restrictions.[13] The WCON-TV construction permit was canceled, and WSB-TV was allowed to move from channel 8 to channel 2.[14] To standardize with its sister stations, WCON-FM's call letters were changed to WSB-FM.
Ralph McGill, editor for the Constitution in the 1940s, was one of the few southern newspaper editors to support the American Civil Rights Movement. Other noteworthy editors of The Atlanta Constitution include J. Reginald Murphy. "Reg" Murphy gained notoriety after being kidnapped in 1974. Murphy later moved to the West Coast and served as editor of the San Francisco Examiner.
Celestine Sibley was an award-winning reporter, editor, and beloved columnist for the Constitution from 1941 to 1999 and wrote 25 fiction and nonfiction books about Southern life. After her death, the Georgia House of Representatives named its press gallery in her honor as a mark of affection and respect.
From the 1970s until he died in 1994, Lewis Grizzard was a popular humor columnist for the Constitution. He portrayed Southern "redneck" culture with a mixture of ridicule and respect.
The Atlanta Journal was established in 1883. Founder E. F. Hoge sold the paper to Atlanta lawyer Hoke Smith in 1887. After the Journal supported presidential candidate Grover Cleveland in the 1892 election, Smith was named as Secretary of the Interior by the victorious Cleveland. Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Margaret Mitchell worked for the Journal from 1922 to 1926. Essential for the development of her 1936 Gone with the Wind was the series of profiles of prominent Georgia Civil War generals she wrote for The Atlanta Journal's Sunday magazine, the research for which, scholars believe, led her to her work on the novel. In 1922, the Journal founded one of the first radio broadcasting stations in the South, WSB. The radio station and the newspaper were sold in 1939 to James Middleton Cox, founder of Cox Enterprises. The Journal carried the motto "Covers Dixie like the Dew".
Merger
Cox Enterprises bought the Constitution in June 1950, bringing both newspapers under one ownership and combining sales and administrative offices. Separate newsrooms were kept until 1982. Both newspapers continued to be published for another two decades, with much of the same content except for timely editing. The Journal, an afternoon paper, led the morning Constitution until the 1970s when afternoon papers began to fall out of favor with subscribers. In November 2001, the two papers, once fierce competitors, merged to produce one daily morning paper, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The two papers had published a combined edition on weekends and holidays for years previously.
Before the merger, both papers planned to start TV stations: WSB-TV on channel 8 for the Journal, and WCON-TV on channel 2 for the Constitution. Only WSB got on the air, beginning in 1948 as the first TV station in the Deep South. It moved from channel 8 to WCON's allotment on channel 2 in 1951 to avoid TV interference from the nearby channel 9. (WROM-TV since moved, leaving WGTV on 8, after it was also used by WLWA-TV, now WXIA-TV 11.) This was also necessary to satisfy Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rules preventing the excessive concentration of media ownership, preventing the combined paper from running two stations.[clarification needed]
In 1989, Bill Dedman received the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting for The Color of Money, his exposé on racial discrimination in mortgage lending, or redlining, by Atlanta banks.[15] The newspapers' editor, Bill Kovach, had resigned in November 1988 after the stories on banks and others had ruffled feathers in Atlanta and among corporate leadership, some of whom complained of a "take-no-prisoners" editorial approach.[16]
Julia Wallace was named the first female editor of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 2002. She was named Editor of the Year 2004 by Editor & Publisher magazine.[17]
Mike Luckovich won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning a second time in 2006. He had first received it in 1995 under The Atlanta Constitution banner.
Circulation
The paper used to cover all 159 counties in Georgia and the bordering counties of western North Carolina, where many Atlantans vacation or have second homes. In addition, it had some circulation in other bordering communities, such as Tallahassee, Florida, where the Sunday Atlanta Journal-Constitution was available. Due to the downturn in the newspaper industry and competing media sources, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution contracted distribution dramatically in the late 2000s to serve only the metro area.[18] From Q1 of 2007 to Q1 of 2010, daily circulation plunged over 44%.[19]
Headquarters
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has its headquarters in Perimeter Center, an office district of Dunwoody, Georgia.[20] Previously the AJC headquarters were in Downtown Atlanta near the Five Points district.[21] In August 2009, the AJC occupied less than 30 percent of its downtown building, becoming outdated and costly. Later that year, the AJC consolidated its printing operations by transferring the downtown production center to the Gwinnett County facility. In 2010, the newspaper relocated its headquarters to leased offices in Dunwoody, a northern suburb of Atlanta.[20] In November 2010, the company donated its former downtown headquarters to the city of Atlanta, which plans to convert the building into a fire and police training academy.[21] In February 2024, the newspaper announced it would return its headquarters to midtown Atlanta after nearly 14 years, citing a desire "to be at the beating heart of the city" it is named for. The company signed a lease on 21,000 square feet of newsroom and studio space in the Promenade Central building on Peachtree Street, planning to complete its relocation by the end of the year.[22]
Controversy
In 1996, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution was the first newspaper to report on Centennial Olympic Park bombing hero Richard Jewell being accused of actually being the bomber, citing leaked information from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Even after Jewell was cleared of any accusations by the FBI, the AJC refused to issue an apology and remains the only paper to have not retracted their story by Kathy Scruggs and Ron Martz falsely accusing him of terrorism. The court case regarding this has been dropped after the death of both Richard Jewell and the initial reporter. Jewell died not long after from diabetes due to poor eating habits that escalated after he was accused.[23]
Organization of the newspaper
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has four major sections daily. On Sundays, it has additional sections. The main section usually consists of Georgia, national, international, and business news. The Metro section includes major headlines from the Metro Atlanta area. The Metro section usually reports the weather forecast. The Sports section reports sports-related news. Before social media became popular, the Metro and Sports sections contained "The Vent" features, where readers expressed opinions about current events.[24] The Living section contains articles, recipes, reviews, movie times, and puzzles, including Sudoku, crossword puzzle, and word scramble, plus a full page of color comics daily. Comics are printed in a separate section in Sunday editions.
The Oregonian is a daily newspaper based in Portland, Oregon, United States, owned by Advance Publications. It is the oldest continuously published newspaper on the U.S. West Coast, founded as a weekly by Thomas J. Dryer on December 4, 1850, and published daily since 1861. It is the largest newspaper in Oregon and the second largest in the Pacific Northwest by circulation. It is one of the few newspapers with a statewide focus in the United States. The Sunday edition is published under the title The Sunday Oregonian. The regular edition was published under the title The Morning Oregonian from 1861 until 1937.
WSB-FM is a commercial radio station in Atlanta, Georgia. It carries an adult contemporary radio format and is owned by the Cox Media Group, serving as the group's flagship FM station. WSB-FM is the oldest FM radio station in Atlanta. The studios and offices are on Peachtree Street NE in Atlanta, in the WSB-TV and Radio Group Building.
WALR-FM is a commercial radio station licensed to Palmetto, Georgia and serving Metro Atlanta. It is owned by the Cox Media Group and airs an urban adult contemporary radio format. The studios are co-located with other Cox-owned radio stations and WSB-TV in Midtown Atlanta on West Peachtree Street.
WUBL is a commercial radio station known as 94-9 The Bull. It is owned by iHeartMedia and it plays a country music radio format. The studios and offices are located at the Peachtree Palisades Building in the Brookwood Hills district of Atlanta. It has local DJs in the daytime and at nighttime it carries two syndicated Premiere Networks country music programs, The Bobby Bones Show and After MidNite With Granger Smith. The station's radio transmitter is located just northeast of Atlanta near Druid Hills Road in North Druid Hills, with several other stations.
WSB-TV is a television station in Atlanta, Georgia, United States, affiliated with ABC. It is the flagship television property of locally based Cox Media Group, which has owned the station since its inception, and is sister to radio stations WSB, WSBB-FM (95.5), WSRV, WSB-FM (98.5) and WALR-FM (104.1). The stations share studios at the WSB Television and Radio Group building on West Peachtree Street in Midtown Atlanta; WSB-TV's transmitter is located on the border of the city's Poncey-Highland and Old Fourth Ward neighborhoods.
WXIA-TV is a television station in Atlanta, Georgia, United States, affiliated with NBC. It is owned by Tegna Inc. alongside MyNetworkTV affiliate WATL. The two stations share studios at One Monroe Place on the north end of midtown Atlanta; WXIA-TV's transmitter is located in the city's east section, near Kirkwood. Atlanta is the largest television market where the NBC station is not owned and operated by the network.
WSB is a commercial AM radio station in Atlanta, Georgia. It simulcasts a news/talk radio format with 95.5 WSBB-FM, licensed to Doraville. WSB and WSBB-FM are the flagship stations for Cox Media Group which also owns three other Atlanta radio stations and ABC Television Network affiliate WSB-TV. WSB is among the highest billing stations in the U.S. The studios and offices are in the WSB Television and Radio Group Building on West Peachtree Street in Midtown Atlanta.
The Dayton Daily News (DDN) is a daily newspaper published in Dayton, Ohio. It is owned by Cox Enterprises, Inc., a privately held global conglomerate headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, United States, with approximately 55,000 employees and $21 billion in total revenue. Its major operating subsidiaries are Cox Communications, Cox Automotive, and Ohio Newspapers.
WBZY – branded Z105.7 – is a commercial radio station licensed to Canton, Georgia, broadcasting a Spanish CHR format. Owned by iHeartMedia, WBZY serves the Atlanta metropolitan area. The WBZY studios are located in Atlanta, while the station transmitter resides in the nearby suburb of Marietta. Besides a standard analog transmission, WBZY broadcasts over two HD Radio channels, and is available online via iHeartRadio. WBZY formerly repeated over the 32.25 digital subchannel of Atlanta television station WANN-CD and previously did so on a number of occasions with sister station WBZW, the most recent lasting until November 5, 2021.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is a daily morning broadsheet printed in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where it is the primary newspaper and also the largest newspaper in the state of Wisconsin, where it is widely read. It was purchased by the Gannett Company in 2016.
Steve McCoy is an American radio personality best known for his morning show with Vikki Locke in Atlanta, Georgia for over 18 years on WSTR. The duo was twice nominated for the Marconi Award. McCoy came to Atlanta in 1981 to work at WZGC FM.
Cynthia Tucker, born March 13, 1955, is an American journalist whose weekly column is syndicated by Universal Uclick. She received a Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 2007 for her work at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where she served as editorial page editor. She was also a Pulitzer finalist in 2004 and 2006.
The Virginian-Pilot is the daily newspaper for Hampton Roads, Virginia. Commonly known as The Pilot, it is Virginia's largest daily. It serves the five cities of South Hampton Roads as well as several smaller towns across southeast Virginia and northeast North Carolina. It was a locally owned, family enterprise from its founding in 1865 at the close of the American Civil War until its sale to Tribune Publishing in 2018. Its headquarters is in Newport News, and prior to 2020 was in Norfolk.
The Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication is a constituent college of the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia, United States. Established in 1915, Grady College offers undergraduate degrees in journalism, advertising, public relations, and entertainment and media studies, and master's and doctoral programs of study.
The following is a list of media in Atlanta, Georgia, United States.
Clark Howell was a Pulitzer Prize winning American newspaper man and politician from the state of Georgia. For fifty-three years, he was editorial executive and owner of The Atlanta Constitution.
This article is intended to give an overview of the History of television in Atlanta.
WDUN, known as "North Georgia's Newstalk", is a news/talk formatted AM radio station licensed to the city Gainesville, Georgia, in the Atlanta, Georgia radio market. WDUN is licensed as a Class B AM broadcast facility by the Federal Communications Commission operating with 10,000 watts of power during the daytime using a non-directional antenna signal pattern, and 2,500 watts during nighttime using a directional antenna pattern. The station is currently owned by JWJ Properties, Inc., doing business as Jacobs Media Corporation, which also operates WDUN-FM in Clarkesville, Georgia.
The Hartford Times was a daily afternoon newspaper serving the Hartford, Connecticut, community from 1817 to 1976. It was owned for decades by the Gannett Company which sold the financially struggling paper in 1973 to the owners of the New Haven Register, who failed to turn things around leading to its closure in 1976.
Monica Jones Kaufman Pearson is an American journalist and news anchor. Pearson's career first started in Louisville, Kentucky, as an anchor and reporter for WHAS-TV, while also working as a reporter for the Louisville Times. When Pearson moved to Atlanta, Georgia, in 1975, she became the first female and African-American to anchor the evening news at WSB-TV.
↑ Robin M. Kowalski, Aversive Interpersonal Behaviors, 2013, p. 99 1475793545 Quote: "The Atlanta Constitution, for instance, has a column entitled "The Vent" that contains people's complaints."
Further reading
Merrill, John C. and Harold A. Fisher. The world's great dailies: profiles of fifty newspapers (1980) pp 68–72
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