Let’s balance the budget by raising taxes on working people!
Here’s another story to remind us how far the political/media culture of Georgia has fallen. In Wednesday’s AJC, political columnist Jim Galloway lionizes Republican state Rep. Chuck Sims for bucking his party’s anti-tax fundamentalism.
The most interesting point made by Galloway is how much rural areas rely on government jobs. UGA sociologist Doug Bachtel told him in a fifth of the jobs in Coffee County, where Sims lives, are in the public sector. And the portion is higher in other rural counties. In other words, for all their pull-yourself-by-the-bootstraps, cut-the-pork talk, rural Georgia politicians — and their constituents — feed at the trough more than the typical Atlantan.
So when the going gets tough, Sims — the “conservative” — turns out to be all for big government: He doesn’t want to see all those jobs cut to make up for the state’s $1-billion-plus budget shortfall. What’s his solution? Eliminate the sales tax on groceries! Read more
Is AJC a climate change denial outfit?
The radical transformation of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution from a force for progress and reason in Georgia to a pandering servant of what its editors apparently believe is its right-wing readership hit a new milestone today.
While the rest of the world — even Fox News! — has moved on to the U.N. climate change negotiations in Copenhagen, the AJC has pretty much ignored that historic event. Instead, it remains obsessed with a non-issue: the so-called “Climategate” “scandal,” which even some conservatives are beginning to acknowledge is overblown and inconsequential. Read more
AJC’s Galloway disavows self — sort of
Last week, I noted that AJC political blogger Jim Galloway equated President Obama’s response to our recent flooding in metro Atlanta to President Bush’s response to Hurricane Katrina. As seems to often the case in his Political Insider blog, Galloway took the wild claims of a Republican politician — in this case, candidate for state attorney general Sam Olens — at face value; then, he amplified those claims.
In a Friday followup, Galloway pointed out that other Republicans — namely Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson — actually praised the administration’s response to the flood as “magnificent” and “quick.”
So how did Galloway square all that praise from Georgia’s two Republican senators with his earlier contention that the feds’ response amounted to “Shades of Katrina”?
Easy. He just blamed his source. “There’s no echo,” he wrote of Chambliss and Isakson, “of the frustration expressed by Cobb County Commission Chairman Sam Olens on Thursday, about the days it took to get official federal attention.”
Galloway failed to note, however, that the “Katrina” analogy didn’t come from Olens. It was in Galloway’s own headline. Unless … wow … has the AJCbecome so conservative that Republican politicians are now writing its headlines?
AJC likens feds’ flood response to Katrina
Here’s an AJC headline that borders on tasteless. It at least falls into the category of slanted and sloppy.
Barely a day-and-a-half after Gov. Perdue asked President Obama to declare parts of north Georgia a natural disaster area, one local politician — a guy who happens to be running for statewide office — gripes to Jim Galloway, the paper’s political blogger, that the president’s taking too long.
Galloway’s headline? “Shades of Katrina: A frustrated Sam Olens wonders if Washington knows how badly metro Atlanta is hurting.”
Whoa, now, Jim. Doncha think that’s a tad melodramatic? Read more
AJC on Maglev train proposal for Turner Field
Ariel Hart of the AJC has a good story today about the proposed maglev train line that would connect MARTA with Turner Field, which I wrote about last week.
And by good, I mean, she tells us exactly where we stand — which is very far from having a maglev train line that would connect MARTA with Turner Field. Ahem!
Please check out the link above!
AJC: The city that was never built
Rachel Ramos gives us a great overview of which big condo and retail projects are stalled on Peachtree Street in today’s AJC.
The story provides some interesting factoids, the kind I eat up:
*Atlanta’s hotel occupancy is expected to average 52.7 percent this year, according to PKF-Hospitality, down from a historical average of 64.1 percent, the story says. (I wonder how that will affect the Palomar and other boutique hotels that have recently opened?)
*There is a four-year supply of condos in the intown areas, Midtown, Atlantic Station and Virginia-Highland, according to a first-quarter report published by Coldwell Banker NRT Development Advisors.
It will be interesting to see a followup story in a year or so, showing which developers manage to move forward and which ones completely scrap their projects.
I know some of the projects seem pie-in-the-sky. But if they get built, Atlanta will increase its density, which will have so many positive effects, including maybe less talk about mass transit and more actual building and using of transit.
MARTA will cost $2, but trains won’t stop early
MARTA has not posted a summary of its board meeting today where it voted to raise fares but not halt train service at midnight, so I’m linking to an AJC story that covers all the bases.
There is really no silver lining here whatsoever, but at the public meeting I attended, and in interviews I conducted with riders, service cuts emerged as the one thing passengers could not live with (almost everyone I talked to said they could accept the fare increase). So in the world we live in, where transit is seen as something “other people” use, I guess this is the best outcome for riders.
Now some bus service will be curtailed but trains will continue to run until 1 a.m. This should help airport workers, and others. An employee of the city of Atlanta said at last week’s public meeting that she would miss the train after work if it stopped at midnight.
Still it’s hard to work up much enthusiasm for this decision. I have not heard a single MARTA rider say, “Wow what they should do is cut back on service.” If you’re out there, and you think MARTA is providing too much service, please let’s hear from you.
Recession’s environmental legacy
Here’s an interesting story from the AJC about what happens to the environment when construction projects fall behind.
AJC’s redesign blues
No. Not that kind of blues.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution now features a very blue masthead in a new bold font, along with other radical changes unveiled in its redesign today. The paper itself is narrower, the body copy is printed using a new font, and the redesign incorporates some content innovations.
So far at least, the reaction of readers on a post about the print edition’s changes by Editor Julia Wallace seems pretty harsh. In fairness, it’s not uncommon for readers to respond to design changes negatively, because they were used to the old design.
This is the much-vaunted AJC 2.0 project, which Wallace and her top editors had been working on for a couple of years. At the time, Wallace and the AJC brass had talked with great optimism about 2.0. Unfortunately, it’s being implemented on the heals of staff cutbacks and the gutting of the paper’s editorial board, which are likely to make the redesign feel to most readers and advertisers like a downsizing.
Fresh Loaf’s Scott Henry notes that it typically takes time for readers to get used to a redesign, but takes issue with the paper’s “promise of ‘More optimistic, positive stories” in the Living section.”
I like the idea of guiding readers toward “Pro/Con” opinion columns tied to news stories and to be a bit more transparent about sources. But one person I spoke with today noted the sports listings have become so small that they’re too difficult to read.
AJC circ plummets
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s weekday circulation dropped by a whopping 19.3 percent, the paper reported Saturday.
The un-bylined article, which doesn’t cite its source, apparently is based on a yet-to-be-released Audit Bureau of Circulation report for the six months ending March 31. It says Monday-Saturday circulation was down 19.3 percent from the same six-month period a year earlier, to 264,053, while Sunday circulation was 462,011, or down 7.1 percent.
Like other recent reports in the AJC about declining circulation, this one quotes an AJC exec (this time it’s Bob Eickhoff, a VP of operations) to explain away the nosedive: The paper made a strategic decision to “boost efficiency” early last year by pulling distribution out of 25 counties. It also increased the price for a single copy of the newspaper. Besides, the lousy economy and migration to the Internet is slamming all dailies.
The problem is that the AJC’s executives make the same kind of argument every time circulation reports show that the AJC is among the nation’s leader in circulation dropoffs. Even before the paper’s last round of operational changes, the Atlanta paper had seen one of the steepest drops in circulation among 1oo or so major dailies from 2005 to 2008, according to this fascinating New York Times graphic. And a fall 2008 Audit Bureau of Circulation report showed the paper with the steepest decline in the country among the largest dailies.
It’s clear that all the country’s newspapers are suffering. It’s just as clear, however, that the AJC is having a more difficult time than most in getting readers to pick up the paper.
The AJC brass also argues that online readership growth has more than made up for the reduced print readership:
Hyde Post, vice president, Internet, said ajc.com page views in March were a record 115.5 million, up 9 percent from a year earlier.
Views on mobile devices jumped 250 percent, to 3.5 million. “The next wave of growth appears to be mobile,” Post said.
That’s heartening — but just up to a point. The problem is that online readers often only scan one article or listing; they don’t flip through the whole paper. And, the AJC article fails to mention that online advertising offers so little revenue that the paper would need many multiples of its current readership simply to fund its operations — even when the print bill is factored out.
Our new website!
