Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the future of journalism

Two unrelated news items from the past week underline some of the fundamental changes in journalism, particularly in its delivery and distribution — a reorg at the AJC and a survey on what people think blogs are doing to journalism.

First, my newspaper, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution announced last week the cutting of 80 jobs, including a pullback in circulation out of South Carolina, Alabama and Florida.

An interesting quote from the internal memo: “Online, we will show that we know Atlanta best, providing superlative news and information and becoming the preferred medium for connecting local communities. In print, we will really listen to our core readers and create a newspaper that offers distinct and valuable content.”

Knowing Atlanta best and serving “core” readers = hyperlocal news and information. It makes sense. We live in Northwest Georgia and much of the AJC in print is irrelevant to us. Online, that irrelevant content is less present. We can pick and choose.

The qualitative effects of reorganizing into four main divisions to me aren’t clear. We will wait and see its effects in the products themselves, which means around June this year. It is interesting that the reorg gives each managing editor, Mike Lupo and Hank Klibanoff, his own domain, and that it effectively bifurcates AJC into two content areas — news and information, and enterprise — and two distribution channels — digital and print.

I am especially interested in digital, now a stand-alone division on equal footing with everything else. This division will seek to grow “interactivity and social networking.” MySpace and FaceBook, LinkedIn and even sites like Slashdot have all shown us the popularity of and interest in socially networking online, using a communications infrastructure that is built for networking. The questions for newspapers remain how to monetize this social networking and marry it somehow to news and information.

The other news item helps explain the first. A survey conducted by iFOCUS indicates that increasing numbers of Americans are favorably viewing the contributions of bloggers. Nearly three-fourths of respondents believe citizen journalism will “a vital role” in journalism.

It’s important to note that it was an online survey, which means both a self-selecting population and an Internet-savvy one. But I know from the college students I teach that print is increasingly irrelevant as a distribution channel, both newspaper and magazine, and that online is taken for granted as the source for news and information.

A breathless quote from iFOCUS: “We are now seeing mainstream acceptance of what we call the Power of Us - the value, credibility, and vital expression of citizen and collaborative media,” said Dale Peskin, a managing director of iFOCOS. “We’ve arrived at a tipping point. A new definition of democratic media is emerging in our society.”

Calm down, Dale. Why the need to hype what’s happening — “tipping points” and “new definitions”? (Because iFOCUS puts on conferences that celebrate “we” media (weeeeeee!). But it is happening, a shift — no a migration — online and away from dead trees. It in part explains the 80 jobs cut at the AJC, the 68 cut from the newsroom at the Philadelphia Inquirer last month and the bizarre case of a small California TV station axing its 13 employees and instead airing only video submitted by viewers.