When Julia Wallace heard the news, she had a flashback to 20 years ago.
On Aug. 28, president and publisher of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Andrew Morse made the seismic announcement: As of Jan. 1, 2026, the AJC would become a fully digital operation. It would stop printing a physical newspaper, something it has done since shortly after the Civil War.
“The fact is, many more people engage with our digital platforms and products today than with our print edition, and that shift is only accelerating,” Morse wrote in a letter published in the AJC. “I don’t need to tell you how quickly the media landscape is evolving. For you, and for us, holding onto the paper can bring a sense of comfort in a world of unrelenting change. But we cannot allow that to hold us back.”
Wallace, now the Frank Russell Chair at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University, was the editor-in-chief for the AJC from 2002-2010. Discussions about drastically shifting the outlet’s product focus were taking place as far back as then, she said, so this decision was a long-time coming.
“We could clearly see where young audiences, even 20 years ago and they’re not so young anymore, were back then,” Wallace said. “You’re planning for that future. The case that we did not anticipate, frankly, is that the platforms would become as powerful as they did and take as much revenue as they did on the digital side.”
The AJC, which currently prints seven days a week, will still publish a daily ePaper online, maintaining the print layout. Still, the drastic cut back from a daily print paper to none at all goes a step further than most other publications that have chosen a more phased approach.
The incremental pivot from print to digital has allowed newspapers to continue reaping valuable print advertising revenue while, at the same time, condition readers to using digital platforms.
The risk in the AJC’s cold turkey abandonment of print is losing advertising income during this already strained financial time — print ads are more profitable than digital ones. And, another major concern is alienating print subscribers who prefer holding a physical copy in their hands.
The question many in the industry are asking is: Does this high-stakes gambit go too far, too fast? Or is it a savvy business decision positioning the AJC for its inevitable digital future?
As Medill reported in August, some outlets still see value in their print products. The Tampa Bay Times, for example, scaled down from printing seven days a week to twice weekly in 2020. It’s currently exploring expanding the reach of print weeklies that stretch into the many neighborhoods the paper covers.
But on Feb. 2, The Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J. also ceased print publication entirely. Owned by NJ Advanced Media, it closed its printing facility in Montville, while its journalists are continuing to provide coverage on NJ.com and the digital edition of The Star-Ledger.
Are the AJC and The Star-Ledger on the front end of a movement to completely spike print?
“The trend has been to reduce days of week, and that seems to be effective for a lot of news organizations, so I was a little bit surprised,” said Dean Ridings, CEO of America’s Newspapers, the national trade association that works with about 1,800 newspapers across the United States including the AJC but wasn’t involved in the AJC’s decision making. “But on the other hand, not completely [surprised]. They’re a very innovative company; they always have been.”
Each market is different, Wallace added, noting there isn’t necessarily a blanket answer for organizations deciding between a cold turkey switch and a more gradual strategy.
“You know where audiences are going,” she said. “It’s a question of, if you’re trying to really build that viable future, is [print] worth it? I think they’re tough decisions, and I think they have to be market-by-market decisions.”
‘It’s about the journalism’
The AJC’s decision to end its print distribution means an end to 157 years of the newspaper’s footprint physically spreading across Atlanta, Georgia and the South.
With this change forthcoming, Morse noted that the organization will launch a new AJC mobile app later this year that will house everything from the outlet’s stories to its podcasts and newsletters to video content.
The content might not be shifting significantly, but some readers’ habits will.
“Readership habits are very important, and when you disrupt that readership habit, sometimes it’s hard to rebuild it,” said Ridings. “Being able to move that to a digital sphere can be challenging.
“But again, I’m sure they ran the numbers. At the end of the day, we are businesses. Whether you’re for profit or nonprofit, you can’t operate at a loss, you’ve got to make the model work, and they must have determined that long term, the print just didn’t make sense for them.”
Ridings noted several economic drivers that the industry’s had to contend with that’s made print less and less viable, including the consolidation of printing plants, newsprint prices rising and the previous threat of tariffs, as well as finding carriers to deliver the paper.
By eliminating those obstacles completely, the AJC can turn its full attention to continuing to grow its digital offerings and continuing to report on the many communities in its coverage area.
Morse’s letter notes that the paper plans to spend the fall conducting listening sessions throughout Atlanta and the region more broadly to connect with readers and hear about how they can develop their digital products to meet their desires.
“One thing that will not change is our unwavering commitment to essential, factual reporting,” he wrote. “Our mission has never been more important, and we will continue to invest in distinctive journalism, well-sourced beat reporting, and surprising and delightful storytelling.”
In 2006, Wallace gave a speech at an Emory University journalism event in which she predicted that print would likely be a thing of the past in 20 years. And while publications will almost assuredly continue to use it in some form beyond this 20-year window, the AJC’s decision reverberates because it’s just the latest signal of the industry’s drastically shifting headwinds.
“The reality is that there’s a huge expense in printing and distributing a newspaper, and it’s not where younger audiences are,” Wallace said. “We should never be wedded to print as a product; it’s about the journalism. So that’s where the focus needs to be.”
