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Reporting last Thursday on The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s decision to discontinue its print edition at the end of the year, I had posed some questions by email to president and publisher Andrew Morse. The column posted before he had time to reply, but he did reply.

Here is a lightly edited version of our exchange, which went a few steps further than Thursday’s press release and daily reports.

Rick Edmonds: Why have so few other metros taken this action yet? Any thoughts on whether the pace of getting out of print altogether will pick up? The answer I hear is that Sunday print is still profitable, and print commands a much higher rate with audiences and advertisers. How will you manage that, and what’s the time frame until the lines cross?

Andrew Morse: We made this decision from a position of strength. We’ve invested heavily in our journalism, but also our product experience, analytics and marketing capabilities — which are essential for running a digital business. As a result, we’ve seen substantial growth in digital subscribers and revenue. Now we want to go faster.

This decision will allow the organization to fully focus on the work that will help us do that. This wasn’t a move to cut costs or manage decline.

I can’t speak to why other papers haven’t taken this step, but I hope we can build a model they might follow.

Edmonds: Will the e-edition continue? Do you expect and accept that some print loyalists just won’t follow you over to digital? (Digital e-editions have been an element, partly successful, in our Tampa Bay Times’ transition to two days a week.)

Morse: We will have a product that will resemble our ePaper for subscribers who enjoy a familiar newspaper layout. We think that will be a value to some long-time print subscribers. We do hope our print loyalists will follow us, but we know a subset of them won’t.

Our focus is on long-term digital subscriber growth. To do that requires a different strategy. With respect to the Tampa Bay Times and other great organizations that have reduced print frequency, I believe those decisions are geared towards short-term profit-and-loss rather than long term growth.

Edmonds: Here’s a reason for having some print: I was just hearing again this week from your counterpart at another metro that “the goal of the print product is to serve as a branding vehicle,” even as digital is fast becoming the primary way people get the news. I take that to mean that for all its virtues, digital seems ephemeral by comparison. Anything to that in your view?

Morse: I don’t read that quote the same way. I read it as saying that this publisher notes that digital subscribers are more engaged and that (unfortunately) print has just become a marketing vehicle for the digital product. I do agree with that sentiment.

Our digital subscribers are far more engaged in our product, and I don’t think digital is ephemeral at all if you are producing the right content and building the right products.

I do believe print can have marketing value, but I believe that value is outweighed by the bandwidth and focus created by aligning the entire organization and all of your resources on the journalism and the capabilities to deliver that journalism to audiences most effectively.

Edmonds: By the way, I second your thought that disrupting yourself is hard to do, but sometimes the smart strategy. And some of the above sounds like the excuses the industry was making 25 years ago for dawdling to respond to online classifieds.

Morse: Thanks for the kind words. I agree with your note here entirely. And … there is no time to dawdle anymore. The pace of disruption is accelerating. Dawdling now means that some organizations will not survive this period.

By Rick Edmonds

An AJC columnist’s farewell to print

Patricia Murphy, the Journal-Constitution’s senior political columnist, weighed in Sunday with a particularly graceful piece on the coming change to digital-only (behind a paywall). She seemed to agree with publisher Andrew Morse that dropping print and getting on faster with the digital transition was the right call. She didn’t shy away, though, from noting the regret and nostalgia that come with seeing print go away for good.

She frames that part of her column by recalling growing up in a household where her mother was “cut-cut-cutting” everything from family news to obituaries. Still does. And her dad folded the morning paper into quarters every day and plopped it on the breakfast table. Her mom’s clippings, Murphy wrote, amounted to “an immense family archive of our lives, each scrap of newsprint who we were and that we were here.”

“When I think about the incredibly emotional response I’ve gotten from readers to the news the AJC will stop the print edition of the newspaper at the end of this year,” she continued, “I think it’s that sense of importance that people see slipping away, too, both newspapers’ importance and maybe even their own.”

Much of her work through the years, Murphy wrote, was for digital publications. (Mom printed those out, too.) Her Atlanta gig thus was not just a return to her hometown, but, for a bit longer, a return to appearing in both the old format and the format of the future.

A headline summarizing the piece read, “Dear Mom, one more column for the scrapbook. Stopping the AJC’s print edition is the end of an era, but not the end of the news.”

By Rick Edmonds

A missing explanatory comma in NPR’s Emmett Till story left readers without key historical facts

(Screenshot/X)

I love NPR with my whole heart. But right now, all I can do is shake my head.

On Thursday, NPR reported that 70 years after 14-year-old Emmett Till was kidnapped, tortured, shot and dumped in a river while visiting relatives in Mississippi, the murder weapon will be on display at the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum.

By the weekend, a firestorm erupted on social media. A tweet promoting the story that said Till “was killed by white men because he whistled at a white woman.”

That’s not true. The “whistle” claim was perpetuated for decades before his accuser, Carolyn Bryant Donham, admitted to a historian in 2017 that she lied. She died shortly after.

But you wouldn’t know that from the NPR story. (Disclosure: The NPR Public Editor team is housed at Poynter.)

At first, I wondered if something was lost in translation on social media. As an audience editor, I know how tricky it can be to capture nuance in a handful of characters. But the article itself also flattened the history, leaving readers without the crucial context that would have blunted the backlash.

The story quotes Till’s cousin and the last living eyewitness, Wheeler Parker Jr., who says Till “gave her the wolf whistle.”

“‘As they left,’ he says, ‘Till tried to be a jokester, not understanding how dangerous that could be in the Jim Crow South’,” the story reads.  “‘Pretty soon, Mrs. Bryant comes out of the store. And Emmett, being like he was — love to make you laugh — he gave her the wolf whistle.’”

And then the piece moves on.

This is precisely where NPR’s Code Switch team might have urged an explanatory comma — a phrase they coined to describe the contextual framing that helps audiences understand race, history and culture. That comma was missing here. At a time when misinformation spreads like wildfire, reiterating the truth matters. Without it, someone learning about Till for the first time might leave the story believing the whistle actually happened.

So while the internet isn’t always right, I think it got it right this time.

We’re in a precarious moment. Legacy news organizations are fighting for survival while audiences demand sharper, fuller storytelling. NPR owed its readers — and Emmett Till’s legacy — that missing comma.

By TyLisa C. Johnson

Department of Homeland Security proposes limits for visas for foreign journalists

The Department of Homeland Security proposed a new rule limiting the amount of time foreign journalists working in the United States on a media visa can stay in the country.

The visa, known as an I visa, allows journalists working for foreign media companies to travel to and report on events in the U.S. They are generally valid for the duration of the journalist’s work assignment in the country.

Under the new rule, journalists would only be permitted to stay in the country for up to 240 days. At the end of that period, they can then extend their visa for up to 240 more days but no longer than the length of their assignment. Journalists from China would be limited to a 90-day period.

In proposing the rule, President Donald Trump’s administration aims to require foreign journalists to routinely undergo DHS assessments to stay in the U.S. for a longer period of time.

We’re tracking federal actions that affect journalists in our Press Freedom Watch. See what officials are doing, when, and how it could impact press freedom.

By Angela Fu

Media tidbits and links for your review

• The Wall Street Journal’s Isabella Simonetti with a piece that may summon a knowing grin for anyone who has ever visited ESPN’s campus in Bristol, Connecticut: “ESPN Employees’ Favorite Sport: Lamenting Their Home Base.” Simonetti writes, “Employees have lamented living in the central Connecticut city practically since ESPN was founded in 1979. Decades later, Bristol is often still a punch line. Keith Olbermann, a former anchor, jokingly named it the most ‘God-forsaken place’ on the East Coast during an appearance with former ESPN colleague Craig Kilborn, the first host of ‘The Daily Show.’ Even Bill Rasmussen, ESPN’s founder, described its roots sardonically: ‘They took a dump, put fresh grass over it, and called it prime real estate.’”
• This is notable. David Hammer, an investigative reporter at WWL-TV in New Orleans, formerly of The Times-Picayune and The Associated Press, responded to former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin’s claims that the media were in “cahoots” with federal prosecutors, leading to his arrest and conviction after Hurricane Katrina. Hammer’s video, posted to social media, combines traditional fact-checking with the kinds of flourishes you see from TikTok influencers.
• The social media rumor mill was ablaze over the weekend with (false) claims that President Donald Trump was dead. Fox News’ Peter Doocy asked Trump about it on Tuesday. And though no credible news outlet reported the rumors, Trump took the opportunity to bash the media. “Well, it’s fake news. It’s just so — it’s so fake. That’s why the media has so little credibility,” he said. Here’s video from The Recount.
• Speaking of, here’s PolitiFact’s Maria Briceño with “President Donald Trump’s Labor Day weekend was quiet, but his schedule was not ‘suspended’.”
• The Washington Post’s Rachel Tashjian reports that Anna Wintour’s successor has been named at Vogue. Chloe Malle, the editor of Vogue.com, is now the head of editorial content for Vogue’s American flagship publication. Tashjian writes that Malle “started her career writing for the New York Observer and joined Vogue in 2011 as social editor, overseeing best-dressed lists and party coverage.” She left the magazine in 2016 and returned as the editor of the website in 2023. She also hosts Vogue’s podcast “The Run-Through.”
• Tuesday brought more news about the cast of the 51st season of “Saturday Night Live,” including the announcement that the popular, prerecorded “Please Don’t Destroy” segments will apparently end as one member of the trio departs. For more, here’s Deadline’s Peter White.
• Ben Smith, the founder of Semafor and former New York Times media columnist, is launching a new column that focuses on Washington. Status and Oliver Darcy have the details.
• The Washington Post’s Jeremy Barr with, “Stephen A. Smith is ready to talk politics: ‘I will spare no one’”
• Social scientist Jonathan Haidt is joining Bari Weiss’ The Free Press as a contributor, Weiss writes.
• The Hollywood Reporter’s Alex Weprin writes, “Walmart Wants to Challenge Amazon as a Streaming Aggregator, Adds Peacock as Video Partner.”
• TV ratings fanatics despair: Variety’s Brian Steinberg reports, “Nielsen Will Need More Time to Disclose Full Audience Ratings in Streaming Era.”
• Poynter media business analyst Rick Edmonds writes, “Inescapable technology changes and a migrating audience have local broadcast news in trouble.”
• Columbia Journalism Review’s Dhrumil Mehta and C.J. Robinson with “The White House Is Its Own Media Outlet.”
• The ICT staff writes, “OBITUARY: Actor Graham Greene dies after long illness.” For more, here’s The New York Times’ Alex Williams and Francesca Regalado with “Graham Greene, Oscar-Nominated Actor for ‘Dances With Wolves,’ Dies at 73.”

Today’s newsletter was written by Rick Edmonds, Angela Fu, TyLisa C. Johnson and Ren LaForme.

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