An article by Wallace also announced “Cynthia Tucker moves on to a new stage,” although it didn’t include such details as the composition of the paper’s new editorial board.

On the same day, a separate Monday announcement by Wallace, which listed of 74 staff members who took buyouts, was leaked to Atlanta Unfiltered’s Jim Walls. Somewhere around that time, Wallace and the AJC brass presented the staff with a reorganization staff, which I’m still hoping to get a hold of.

Meanwhile, here’s Wallace’s Monday memo:

To all,

I am delighted to announce that Cynthia Tucker will be moving to Washington as the AJC’s new Washington-based political columnist. Cynthia has been a strong and vital voice in this community for more than 20 years. Now, she will take those powerful skills to Washington to write for our opinion pages about national politics and what it means to us here in Atlanta.

We began discussing this move in the fall, believing that Washington was going to change and a new voice writing about those changes would be interesting to our readers. The need for this move increased this year, as it became clear that more and more decisions made in Washington have significant impact on us. We believe our readers will benefit from Cynthia’s insights into that scene.

As you can imagine, replacing Cynthia as the editorial page editor is not easy. As we looked at how the pages have changed in the past year, we think the best solution is to divide the job into two.

Andre Jackson will become editorial editor. He will be responsible for writing the weekly Sunday editorial and bringing in related response pieces from outside, such as “Another Voice.” As we do now on occasion, he will write daily editorials. The editorials will focus heavily on making this community a better place – pointing out problems, looking at solutions and encouraging our readers to act. The AJC’s editorial board members will be Andre, me, James Mallory and publisher Doug Franklin.

Ken Foskett, currently our commentary editor, will become opinions editor. He will be responsible for editing and selecting the national and local opinion we run on the pages – working to make sure it’s a good balance on issues and political viewpoints. The regulars on these pages will be Cynthia, Jay Bookman and Kyle Wingfield.  They will write two to three times a week. Jim Wooten and Bob Barr will write once a week.
Luckovich’s cartoons will continue to appear five times a week. This editor will supplement our own strong voices with nationally syndicated columnists and cartoonists, letters and op-ed contributions.

We also will be creating a board of contributors – about a dozen or more local people who write for us every few weeks or so. In the search for a conservative columnist, we discovered some strong voices and want them – and others with differing views – to appear more regularly on our pages.

Please join me in congratulating Cynthia on this exciting new assignment.

Julia

Julia Wallace
Editor
Atlanta Journal-Constitution and ajc.com

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