Local news is in crisis. This paper has a $150 million plan

Dashed hopes and slashed jobs define the local news industry in far too many corners of the country.

In Atlanta, Andrew Morse, the president and publisher of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, has splashy plans to revive the ailing newspaper. And he’s been given a $150 million runway over the next several years to figure it out.

“I did not come here to manage decline,” says Morse, a former CNN executive who joined the newspaper in January 2023. “We understand that the ad marketplace has been hollowed out by Google and Facebook. We know that news deserts have emerged throughout much of the country.

“Instead of reading story after story about the futility of this,” Morse asks, “why don’t we grasp onto notions of, ‘How do we build for the future?'”

From a journalistic standpoint — heck, from an actuarial standpoint — the local newspaper industry is in dire straits.

The companies are largely concentrated in the hands of a few corporate titans, many controlled by investment funds. Owners often seek to prop up immediate profits while shrinking their newspapers’ staff in what’s considered by critics to be a money-making death spiral.

More than 2.5 newspapers, on average, closed each week over the year ending in October, according to Northwestern University’s Medill State of Local News Report.

President-elect Donald Trump’s win earlier this month led to even more hand-wringing among journalists about the importance Americans place on news based on the traditional principles of objectivity, accountability and the facts. Trump eschewed interviews with many mainstream news outlets, choosing instead sympathetic podcasters. And many voters simply gained information about the candidates and the race elsewhere.

The Journal-Constitution’s own recent past features retrenchment and cost-cutting. In recent decades, it retreated from covering Georgia beyond the Atlanta suburbs. It stopped circulating in farther reaches of the state.

Its parent company, Cox Enterprises, shed most of its other newspapers, but not the Journal-Constitution. Cox Enterprises CEO Alex C. Taylor, a great-grandson of the company’s founder, says the newspaper plays a critical role in Atlanta — one of providing reliable news and information.

“We believe that journalism and facts are an essential component of our community, particularly now,” Taylor writes in a statement to NPR. And he says that the company embraces Morse’s vision for a sustainable business.

The plan

Morse has undertaken a literal rebuilding: When I visited in the spring, we spoke outside the midtown Atlanta site where Morse is having a state-of-the-art newsroom built from scratch for reporting, podcasting, streaming video shows, live events and more. He’s moving the paper back into the heart of the city from the northern suburbs. The office is set to open on Monday.

“Our mission is to be the most essential and engaging source of news for the people of Atlanta, Georgia, in the South,” Morse says.

On his first day, back in January 2023, Morse drew concentric geographic circles for readers’ interests. Politics came first.

“Georgia’s the center of the political universe,” he says.

Before the election, both Trump and Vice President Harris were frequent visitors to the purple state, which ultimately went for Trump. But he also faces a multicount indictment here for conspiring to overturn Georgia’s 2020 presidential vote, which was narrowly won by President Biden.

The paper’s coverage of the race and the legal case has been widely cited in the national press.

“If we cover Georgia politics exceptionally well, we’ll pick up subscribers in Atlanta, Georgia, the South and beyond,” Morse says.

After politics, sports and Black culture

Morse next drew circles around regional sports, food, culture and Black life. The paper’s coverage of that last category falls under the heading “UATL,” for “Unapologetically Atlanta.” Morse green-lit a six-figure budget for a documentary on the rise of hip-hop there called “The South Got Something To Say.” It featured interviews with Andre 3000, Suge Knight and Snoop Dogg, among others.

He met frequently with Atlanta Hawks CEO Steve Koonin to learn how he reconnected the basketball team to an alienated Atlanta fan base, especially African Americans.

This fall, the paper started the UATL as a stand-alone product, inviting readers to become members. More than 5,000 people signed up as members in the first few weeks. The approach echoes the New York Times’ strategy of creating separate apps for games and cooking.

As the number two at CNN, Morse followed a similar strategy, also inspired by the Times, in building the streaming service CNN+, knitting a journalistic core with programs serving as book clubs, parenting guides and coffee klatches.

That playbook lasted just a month; it fell victim to a change in both the ownership and CEO at CNN. Morse left shortly after.

A hands-on approach at a time of crisis

Morse operates with a personal touch. Staffers say he shows up routinely at company softball games and civic events. He has met all 400 employees in small groups and dinners and written front-page editorials, including one promising longtime subscribers that the paper is not dispensing with the daily print edition — not for the foreseeable future.

Indeed, Morse has doubled down on print, for the moment. To advertise the Journal-Constitution’s coverage and its revived ambitions, it’s offered for free at stores in the Georgia cities of Athens, Macon and Savannah — all places where the local papers have declined in staffing, circulation and breadth of coverage.

The Athens Banner-Herald and the Savannah Morning News are owned by newspaper giant Gannett. The Macon Telegraph is owned by McClatchy, which is held by a hedge fund. The newsrooms of all three have been cut back severely. Like many local newspapers, they no longer publish seven days a week.

The AJC took its podcast Politically Georgia, which also airs as a show on the public radio station WABE, on the road as well, to appeal to listeners and potential subscribers.

Back in Atlanta, Morse regularly leads daily news sessions in tandem with Editor-in-Chief Leroy Chapman Jr., a 13-year veteran at the paper whom Morse elevated to the job last year. It’s a TV news move: Morse’s longtime boss at CNN, the former President Jeff Zucker, was famous for steering coverage at the network.

At most newspapers, by contrast, the publisher’s direct involvement in coordinating news coverage would be problematic — even a crisis — with the potential to blur lines between business and journalistic imperatives.

Chapman tells NPR that the real crisis — the threat of financial collapse in local newspapering — is already here. And he argues that Morse is helping the Journal-Constitution pull through it.

“The responsibility at the top for transformational change is a commitment,” says Chapman. “It can’t necessarily be effectively done by emails and by things you write.”

“Change and the commitment to change really does come from hands-on [involvement], day to day, moment to moment,” he adds.

Morse rejects potential concerns about his involvement, including concerns about coverage of the Cox family’s other corporate holdings. He says he shields the newsroom from corporate or political pressures.

“Everybody wants to try to play an angle. They try to exert their influence,” Morse says. “If not for our editorial integrity, we don’t have a business model. As long as everyone understands that, there’s no problem.”

So will it succeed?

“We’ve set a vision to be able to transform the AJC from this storied 155-year-old organization into a modern media company,” Morse says.

In a hopeful sign, the newspaper is doing something rare among its kind: It’s adding staffers. By the end of this year, the Journal-Constitution will have added nearly 100 more people than when Morse started, an increase of about a quarter. (That takes into account a handful of layoffs and buyouts this year.)

These days, a spokesperson says, the paper has a bit north of 100,000 paying print and digital subscribers, a modest increase from recently disclosed levels. The spokesperson also says the Journal-Constitution has enjoyed consistent growth this year. Morse is shooting for 500,000 subscriptions — that is, almost five times as many as it has right now.

For this story, I surveyed six industry executives with experience in local news about Morse’s plans. I anticipated at least some skepticism.

Five said they thought Morse stood a pretty good chance of pulling this off.

All six said they were rooting for him.