Andrew Morse is stepping down as writer and president of the Atlanta Journal-Structure subsequent month. Morse had aimed to attain 500,000 paying digital subscribers by the top of 2026. He now says the objective is attainable, however will take extra time.
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Paras Griffin/Getty Photographs
Andrew Morse had helped usher ABC, Bloomberg and CNN into the digital age. In January 2023, he turned his sights on Atlanta, with a $150 million plan to reinvent its main each day newspaper.
In taking the reins of The Atlanta Journal-Structure, Morse set an formidable objective: to develop the variety of digital subscribers from 53,000 to a half-million by the top of 2026. He laid out a brand new technique, with new content material and an infusion of latest power. The paper deserted print on the finish of final yr to go all-in on digital innovation. The plan thus far has achieved modest outcomes: 101,000 digital subscribers.
Morse acknowledges falling quick, however says the paper in the end will attain what he calls its “North Star.” Morse will not be there when it occurs. After almost three and a half years, he says it is time for him to step apart.
“We now have been on an excellent journey with the AJC … making an attempt to rework a extremely proud, storied each day newspaper into a contemporary media firm,” Morse tells NPR. “The choice for me is basically bittersweet.”
Morse says household issues drove his alternative: “I have been dwelling in Atlanta for 3 years, however my household lives in New York, so I have been commuting. I wanted to make a troublesome private choice to make a change.”
He will probably be changed by Paul Curran, a senior promoting government with Cox Media, a three way partnership through which the newspaper’s guardian firm retains a big minority stake, the corporate stated. The appointment takes full impact June 29.
A carefully watched experiment
Morse’s effort has been carefully watched as legacy newspapers come below growing monetary stress and bear huge consolidation. The foremost gamers have expanded their holdings; Company homeowners Gannett and Lee Enterprises, and personal fairness funds Alden World Capital and Chatham Asset Administration are amongst people who have relentlessly reduce prices at papers throughout the nation.
Block Communications had introduced it could completely shut down the Pittsburgh Publish-Gazette on Could 3; the paper loved a last-minute reprieve, bought final month to the nonprofit institute that created the web Baltimore Banner. However the native information guild says that the brand new homeowners have reduce 40% of the newsroom, together with the overwhelming majority of those that served as union organizers throughout an prolonged labor dispute.
Cox Enterprises, the Journal-Structure‘s guardian firm, says it stays 100% dedicated to the paper’s mission of offering high-quality journalism for Atlanta and the South.
The corporate is managed by the Cox household, homeowners of the Journal since 1939 and the Structure since 1950. (They have been absolutely merged in 2001.) Cox bought off all their different papers, then purchased again the Dayton Every day Information and two different Ohio papers. Alex Taylor, Cox Enterprises’ CEO and chairman, is the great-grandson of Ohio Gov. James Cox, who based the corporate in 1898.
The Journal-Structure has been dropping cash for years. However earlier than becoming a member of the AJC, because it’s identified, Morse satisfied the Cox household of the paper’s continued potential and the necessity to make investments critical cash to set it on a path to sustainability. The household has the reserves to subsidize their hometown paper: it earned billions from investments in cable tv techniques, broadband web, automotive gross sales, and different ventures.
Morse, who had spent important time in Atlanta throughout his years with CNN, had been the architect of the cable community’s digital technique and the brief-lived CNN+, which was killed off shortly after its launch by new company homeowners. Morse left quickly after.
CNN Chairman and CEO Mark Thompson this yr began a brand new digital platform constructed round insights associated to Morse’s plans for the community’s digital technique.
Below Morse’s management, the Journal-Structure renewed its earlier curiosity in issues past the metro area, establishing a better presence in different Georgia cities the place each day journalism had declined or withered. It distributed its printed copies in these cities to market the return of the AJC.
He has been an ebullient champion of the paper and new kinds for its journalism. The paper has scrapped geographic-based beats for topic protection past native county borders. It has additionally invested in creating newsletters, podcasts and social media posts alongside extra conventional reporting groups. Greater than half of the AJC’s 320 staffers are a part of its newsroom, Morse says. And their efforts have been acknowledged, most not too long ago with its first Peabody award, for social media video protection of ICE efforts in Georgia.
Shereta Williams, the chief vice chairman of progress operations at Cox Enterprises, tells NPR that the AJC had been behind the curve in searching for a digital path. Morse modified all that, she says.
“We have been primarily nonetheless working as a print newspaper when he obtained there,” Williams says.
Andrew Morse, the writer and president of The Atlanta Journal-Structure, stands earlier than a mural promoting the newspaper in 2024.
David Folkenflik/NPR
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David Folkenflik/NPR
“It is the transformation of the group, how we function, and reinvigorating the model,” Williams stated. “The complete group understands what it means to be a digital-first operation. It’s now targeted on ‘How can we develop as quick as doable?’ And we’re doing it throughout divisions.”
She says she does not understand how quickly the paper will attain monetary sustainability. “It will take us one other few years, however we see it close by,” she says. “We’re on a path to progress. It was troublesome to discover a path to progress with print.”
The most important U.S. metropolis with no main printed newspaper
Atlanta is now the biggest metro area within the nation with no main printed newspaper.
Over the course of final yr, the paper deliberate a historic pivot. Then, on January 1, it disbursed with its print version altogether, Atlanta is now the biggest metro area within the nation with no main printed newspaper. (The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., a bigger paper, ceased publication of print editions in February 2025, together with sister papers in Jersey Metropolis and Trenton. Their homeowners, Advance Communications, keep a large mixed newsroom at NJ.com.)
“It was an enormous gamble for Cox,” says business analyst Ken Physician, who has not too long ago arrange digital information startups in Santa Cruz, Calif., and Eugene, Ore. “It factors to the potential for a major failure. And understanding it’s actually vital for them.”
That stated, Physician says he’s not writing off the AJC’s possibilities, and even Morse’s method.
“It could possibly be that it is a good technique, however it will take extra time for it to work.”
On that, at the least, Morse agrees.
“We set a really formidable objective,” Morse says. “It is nonetheless very achievable primarily based on the dimensions of this market and the tempo of our progress. What’s modified is the timing.”
Morse says it took extra effort than anticipated to construct up the management group and analytical instruments to show objectives into methods and techniques into success.
He additionally factors to social media platforms’ turning away from selling information, and the explosive use of AI platforms to search out data. Each have led to sharp drops in referrals to information web sites. The phenomenon is named “Google Zero” — as in, Google is prompting near zero customers to click on hyperlinks to the unique reporting.
“There is a lengthy solution to go,” Morse says. “The decision is not in. However we’ll get there.”
