Posts Tagged Content

Henry Grady statue in downtown Atlanta

Because big city newspapers have history behind them, they also generally have real estate of high value. That’s particularly true for the papers that have been around a while.

Many sit on valuable downtown property. Some have classic historic buildings. Some have modern-era concrete and glass boxes, many looking dingy because the pressure washer budget item was the first and easiest thing to cut.

Over the past year many newspaper buildings have gone on the market. Most notable is the architectural gem that serves as The New York Times building. It’s spectacular inside and out, though a bit unnerving when you’re walking through the interior, and the energy-efficient blinds open and close on their own, reacting to heat or sunlight or a small man behind the curtain pulling the strings.

Last time I was there, when that happened in a stairwell with no one else around, I felt a bit like Dave in the movie 2001, and expected to hear HAL ask of me: “Just what do you think you’re doing, Dave?”

In the street level glass-enclosed atrium, the silvery birch trees, surrounded by moss, are relaxing and stunning. But you just have to wonder, like we wonder about the newspaper industry every day, can they survive, and what will they look like five years from now if they do?

The Times sold a portion of its building earlier this year, and leased it back, trying to help cover loss of ad revenue.

So it came as no surprise last week when another big city newspaper, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, announced (after the Atlanta Business Chronicle first reported it) that it is considering moving out of its downtown location, and out of the city limits. A decision will be announced  in a  few weeks.

The move makes sense. It’s a superb location, and when the real estate market rebounds, could bring a nice price and be a prime location for a hotel or other large facility, close to Centennial Park, Phillips Arena, CNN and Five Points.

And while the move makes sense, you just have to hate it, because it’s one more signal of the changing landscape.

The building itself, an early 70s creation, is no historic treasure. But The Atlanta Journal (founded 1883) and The Atlanta Constitution (founded 1868), once separate newspapers, once under separate ownership, do have a long history in downtown Atlanta.

I spent 22 years in that building. The first six at The Atlanta Journal, located then on the sixth floor of the 72 Marietta St. building. The Atlanta Constitution was on the 8th floor. In six years there (first time around before I left to buy and run my own small weekly), I never sat foot on the Con’s 8th floor, though I did sneak into their computer system (allegedly a firing offense) a few times. Competition was  fierce, and you didn’t dare step onto the competitor’s floor.

Journal folks always took pride in knowing that as afternoon papers elsewhere died in the 70s and 80s, The Journal lived on. In fact, it took Elvis ’s death on the Con cycle to finally let the morning paper ease ahead of the afternoon paper in circulation.

The Journal owned the classic slogan: Covers Dixie Like the Dew, and those of us working there were fiercely proud and lived to cover Dixie like the dew. The reporters and editors on the Constitution, I am sure, felt they were the best, but they were saddled with not only a fanatical crew at The Journal but a weak masthead slogan (”The South’s Standard Newspaper,” if I recall correctly. Can’t find it on the Web because likely no one wants  to remember it.)

There were many fond memories. Herb, my boss, legal pad in hand, walking over at 6:55 a.m., 35 minutes before deadline for the second edition of the day. We had six editions daily, truly amazing. Herb’s greeting: “Bud, we got three dead in Telfair County. Need 6 graphs for the Early. That’s all I know. Get on it, Bud.”  ”Bud” wasn’t my name then; that’s what Herb called all the guys. All the young ladies were “Gal,” until one day one young lady told him differently. Thirty-five minutes to find the sheriff,  get him to talk to you, or find a deputy if he’s not around, hoping somebody would answer the radio call (remember, no cell phones then). Write it, get it edited, and sent off to the copy desk. We always did it, for the readers, and for The Journal.

Other times you could feel the power of a newspaper, like on Thanksgving Eve, when the paper was bursting at the seams with ads and editorial. On my second stint there, in the 90s, when I was in newsroom management, I’d go to the pressroom to wait for the all-critical press start of the biggest paper of the year. We felt like every second counted, though in reality it was “only” every minute that counted. If it didn’t start on time, and if it was editorial’s fault, I’d answer why. So I liked to be present. I’d stand squarely in a spot I determined was exactly in the middle between those four massive TKS presses. I planted my feet on the steel planking (second floor level, presses still rising several floors to the high roof), waiting for all four presses to crank up and be in sync. Every press unit was in use, the only day of the year that happened.   There was a steady thrumming, a building of both pressure and sound, the steel planking trembling under my feet, then the papers rushing out through the folders, hooking up to the Ferag system, circling around the roof, headed to the mailroom upstairs. That’s one meaning of power of the press.

Then there was the Olympics. Am amazing period of collaboration and teamwork. I wonder sometimes how today’s paper would pull off covering an in-town Olympics, probably the same way people wonder if we’ll be able to fly to the moon again as easily as we seemed to do forty years ago.

It was one end, and beginning of another march to another ending, in November 2001 when The Journal was closed. The slogan on the last day: “Covered Dixie Like The Dew.”

Fond memories, but that was then, and now is now.

So I will respectfully disagree with my  AJC friends (some current employees, some former employees) on Facebook mourning the likely move. (Feelings are mixed, it seems.)

Though I hate it, a move is so economically logical, it’s a must-do.

And anywhere a paper can apply economic logic, a commodity seemingly in short supply in recent years, do so.

It’s a shame it came to this.

But remember,  the soul of a paper is not built around brick and mortar, presses or digital, whether the building is downtown or located in Jasper, Georgia.

The soul comes from its people, its writers, its heritage, what the paper stands for, how it includes the community. It doesn’t come from jingles or marketing slogans.  If readers don’t like the paper and truly connect with those who run it, it will become very easy to find a nice cozy location elsewhere.

Those who helped make The Journal and The Constitution what they were a few years back would likely be aghast. I can visualize Celestine Sibley’s response to a move, and can hear Lewis Grizzard grousing over it.

And Margaret Mitchell and Ralph McGill likely wouldn’t be pleased.

And of course, Henry Grady, the editor of The Constitution and spokesman for the New South in the years after the Civil War, would have hated to depart the heart of the city.

But they all would likely say, do it. Save some money. Save the paper. But first, make sure you save your readers, make them want  to read you. Don’t talk down to them. Respect them, and give them a  good paper.

If the paper does move out of downtown, that means that Henry Grady’s statue, a few paces from the newspaper, will be all alone.

And what of the little-known tradition of the Constitution editor firing the paper’s little black cannon at the base of Grady’s statue, on election night whenever a Democrat is elected President?

That, too, gone with the wind.

Bill Robinson - writer extraordinaire, the man who dubbed Richard Petty “The King,” the man who once rolled a flat tire into the office to save his job - died last month in Alabama.

What does that have to do with this blog’s normal topic,  digital news and trends? Nothing and everything. More on that later.

I, and a bunch of other now-departed  reporters and editors, spent some time with Bill (I called him Robbie then, but he also went by Billy Bob or Bill) at The Atlanta Journal (it really did “Cover Dixie Like the Dew,” like it said on the masthead) a good many years ago.

Robbie was a true gentleman, but also a true character in an era when there was no shortage of characters in newsrooms. This was a time when it was normal for your city editor to scream across the room, “John, come up here and tell me why we ought to run this piece of xxxx.” It was rough and tumble, take a lickin’ and keep on tickin’. Robbie, and the rest of us, kept on tickin’.

Sometimes he was late for work. One day his boss laid down the law: next time you’re late you’re fired. No doubt it’d be a quick and merciless firing; the HR folks back then didn’t even know where the newsroom was, much less get involved in its inner workings. One day soon, Bill doesn’t show up at his start time; the clock ticks on. The elevator door opens and Robbie comes out, rolling a flat tire: “I swear guys I had a flat tire. Here it is.” He made it for another day.

So back to the question: what does the death of a true wordsmith have to do with the industry today, the digital environment we’re in?

Robbie probably never heard of audience bifurcation, and he would have thought a “personal brand” was something only Texans had.

I doubt he ever gave a PowerPoint presentation about what he was going to do; he just did it. I doubt he ever worked a room in the insincere way of so many digi-jorno wanna-bes, halfway talking while glancing around for someone more important to latch onto. He was as sincere as they come.

What Robbie brought to the table was a reminder that content is still what it’s all about, that words can make a difference, that they can paint a picture, they can make you cry, or rejoice.

In a nice obit in the last newspaper where he worked, the Opelika-Auburn News, colleagues from years past talked about his sincerity, his genuineness, his appreciation for good reporting.

One of the writers recalled one of Robbie’s famous leads from his NASCAR reporting days, when he wrote that a car won by “running flat out, belly to the ground, chasing a hurrying sundown.”

Read that lead and tell me words don’t matter. Read that lead and tell me content isn’t important.

Thanks, Robbie, for reminding us.