Did tea partiers really call John Lewis the n-word?
John Lewis being arrested during the 1960s. Now a congressmen, Lewis was known for putting himself in the line of fire as a practitioner of non-violent civil disobedience.
I tweeted yesterday about the epithets spewed upon Democratic congressmen, including Atlanta’s John Lewis, by tea party protesters on Capitol Hill yesterday.
Two of my conservative Facebook friends raised the valid question of sourcing: Who actually saw the verbal attacks and attempted intimidation of members of Congress?
Fair enough. Here are some of the claims and some of the evidence behind them:
• Rep. Andre Carson and Rep. John Lewis both said yesterday that while they walked from the Capitol, they heard members of the mob yell the n-word at them — as in “kill the bill, [n-word]!” According to McClatchy, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, who was behind them says, said he heard that as well. So do staffers. The folks who put the following video up claim you can hear the n-word. I couldn’t say for sure, but something close to that word can be heard a couple of times around 11 or 12 seconds in — right after, ahem, the camera passes over the guy with the Confederate bandanna. Read more
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
CL endorses Kasim Reed
Creative Loafing's Thomas Wheatley attempts to look coy while covering a recent mayoral forum.
With the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s decision to abdicate its role as a community leader, my old paper’s endorsements in the city elections may turn out to be this year’s most influential — outside, of course, of backing from such special interests as the police union.
So Kasim Reed (mayor), Clair Muller (City Council President), Adam Brackman (Post 1 at-large) and Aaron Watson (Post 2 at-large) ought to be quite happy to have won the endorsements this week of Creative Loafing.
I’m not certain these are precisely the candidates I’ll end up voting for, but each of them remains among my personal finalists. They are very credible choices. And I thought each of CL’s endorsement essays 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’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.
NYT on AJC, Tucker (& me)
Quoted this morning in the New York Times, Atlanta Journal-Constitution Editor Julia Wallace takes a not-so-subtle swipe at the AJC’s editorial voice under longtime Editorial Page Editor Cynthia Tucker.
“We have moved to a different kind of editorial that’s much more about community issues and less about, ‘let me opine on national issues,’ ” she said.
That “let me opine on national issues” jab mis-characterizes, by implication, the paper’s voice under Tucker, whom Wallace is transferring to Washington to be a columnist.
One can disagree whether regional papers should or shouldn’t weigh in on the war in Iraq or presidential endorsements. But the AJC editorial board that Wallace plans to deconstruct in May has distinguished itself by staking out positions on local issues, whether they were controversies involving the King family, or the state’s failure to deal with transportation problems, or local political contests. Or the Legislature’s irresponsible approach to the state’s finances. Or the ethical lapses of elected officials in either party.
Going back to the days of Ralph McGill (whose legacy, as the Times correctly notes, has been carried out by Tucker), there was nothing like an AJC editorial to stake out a position that placed pressure on the local powers that be, at least to raise the level of debate in the state and often to get politicians to temper extreme positions.
But a consistently credible institutional voice on a variety of issues takes experience, connections, time and institutional support. It’s difficult to imagine one person who’s lived here for a year and has little editorial-writing experience being able to play that role.
Tucker has spoken enthusiastically of her transfer to Washington, where everyone seems to think her talents will only become more recognized at the national level. In the NYT article, however, does offer a contrast between her philosophy and Wallace. Writer Richard Perez-Pena paraphrases Wallace as saying that she expects the editorial board to avoid “hot-button ideological issues.” Later on, Tucker is quoted as saying “editorial pages ought to draw controversy.”
The article quotes me, in all my brilliance a splendor, but — drats — doesn’t name this blog.
Cynthia Tucker most of the editorial board will be replaced in May, a move that could create a different — and perhaps less liberal — voice for one of the country’s leading regional papers.
“I think they’re trying not to offend,” said Kenneth Edelstein, a blogger and former editor of Creative Loafing, an Atlanta alternative weekly. “It’s definitely a move to the right, and it’s a real change for a paper that was the most important progressive voice in the South for a long time.”
Bookman off AJC editorial board
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s editorial board shakeup turns out to be more significant than what I reported Tuesday.
Last week, I said the late great Ralph McGill was stirring in his grave. Turns out, he gotta be spinning.
That’s because — contrary to my earlier post — Deputy Editorial Page Editor Jay Bookman no longer will sit on the board. In other words, neither of the two most important liberal voices in the state for the last two decades — Bookman and his boss, Editorial Page Editor Cynthia Tucker — will write editorials for the AJC anymore, nor will they have a say in the paper’s editorial positions.
Instead, according to several sources familiar with the move, the board will consist of the paper’s brass — Publisher Doug Franklin, Editor Julia Wallace and Senior Managing Editor James Mallory — along with a single editorial writer, the new “Editorial Editor” Andre Jackson.
Placing Franklin on the board raises some questions in it own right. It inevitably seems a conflict of interest for a newspaper to give a seat on the board to the publisher, who necessarily has business dealings with advertisers and other companies that may become subjects of editorials. While some other newspapers — particularly small ones — engage in that practice, the AJC is large enough to avoid such an awkward situation.
More significantly, losing the expertise and insight that Tucker and Bookman brought to the board is a big blow to the Atlanta community. They’ll still be writing columns and blogging. But the AJC’s editorial page has long been among the few strengths at a paper that, like most other dailies, is seeing it’s resources rapidly diminish.
Jackson has been in Atlanta all of a year. He’s primarily a business writer and editor, who spent only a few months in 2008 on the AJC board. Wallace and Mallory have their hands full running the newsroom, so it appears that Jackson will be the only editorial writer.
Don’t be surprised if there are only one or two editorials each week in the AJC from now on. And no matter how brilliant Jackson is, it would take him years to develop the sources and background on Atlanta’s people and issues that Tucker and Bookman acquired.
This is a big deal for Georgia, because the AJC and the old Atlanta Constitution have played such a critical role as prods for progress. No one personified that better than McGill, who won a Pulitzer Prize in the 1950s for his courageous opinion pieces on civil rights. But Tucker, who won her own Pulitzer in 2007, and Bookman have carried on that tradition. Both will blog and continue to write columns — Tucker from Washington now, Bookman in Atlanta.
The Journal-Constitution brass has been somewhat discrete about this part of the editorial page shakeup. The move was made in the midst of a huge newsroom staff reduction. And Wallace’s article on the changes emphasized Tucker’s move to D.C., but didn’t describe the more changes in the structure of the board.
“Veteran editor Andre Jackson will become the editorial editor, convening the editorial board and writing the institutional editorials,” Wallace wrote, without revealing the board’s makeup.
After I wrote (mistakenly) that Bookman would continue on the board, various people familiar with the paper informed me that the board would be trimmed down to include only Jackson and the brass.
An AJC spokesman contacted me as well, asking if I needed any information. I replied that it’d be great to find out the makeup of the new board. It’s been two days and he hasn’t written back.
Ralph McGill stirs
An upcoming shakeup of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s editorial board represents the latest and most dramatic shift in the political positioning of the South’s leading newspaper. How monumental a shift it is, and how deeply it might affect the political dynamics of Georgia, is difficult to say right now.
Ralph McGill may not be rolling in his grave, but he surely is a bit uncomfortable.
The changes competed yesterday with the unannounced, but leaked, news that 74 full-time AJC newsroom employees accepted the paper’s latest downsizing buyouts. In the long run, however, the revamping of the op-ed staff — which is only a small portion of the newsroom — may prove as big a loss.
Newspaper editorialists typically bemoan their lack of influence with self-deprecating humor. But passionate, courageous editorial voices can do much to place the forces of ignorance and hatred on the defensive, and to set the tone for debates about a community’s — and in the AJC’s case, a state’s — direction. Their strength lies in their courage to tell the truth as they see it.
For all its tempering over the last few years, the AJC has performed that role admirably under Editorial Page Editor Cynthia Tucker’s leadership. She and her staff consistently produce editorials and columns that spread light rather than fear, that hold public officials accountable, and that challenge Georgians to reject demagoguery and ignorance.
Tucker, in particular, gained a reputation for shining a light on sacred cows — including Mayor Bill Campbell’s corruption and the often scandalous dysfunction within Martin Luther King Jr.’s family. She gave the lie to conservative whining that she’s some sort of knee-jerk partisan.
Primarily, however, Tucker has been a powerful beacon for progress, carrying on the tradition of the old Atlanta Constitution’s Ralph McGill. McGill was vilified in the ’50s and ’60s by the segregationists who controlled Georgia politics, in the same way that Tucker has been vilified by today’s reactionaries. Like McGill, Tucker won a Pulitzer Prize for telling the truth when the truth was unpopular.
The shakeup announced yesterday seems designed to take things in a very different direction. Tucker is moving to the Cox Newspaper’s Washington bureau, where she’ll blog and write two columns a week for the AJC. A fellow named Andre Jackson will take a trimmed-down version of her job as “editorial editor” and columnist. (Current commentary editor Ken Foskett becomes “opinion editor,” meaning that he’ll select “a good balance” of syndicated columns, in addition to the local columns he already edits.)
Jackson is probably a smart guy and a fine journalist. Unlike Tucker (or for that matter Deputy Editorial Page Editor Jay Bookman) however, Jackson’s neither an accomplished opinion writer nor someone with a lot of background in Atlanta and Georgia. He joined the AJC last year as an editorial writer after previously serving as business editor at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Here’s what he said about himself in a May 2008 column by then-Public Editor Angela Tuck shortly after he came to Atlanta:
I consider myself an independent politically, meaning I assess my politics based on past performance and logic, not party lines. That said, I’d classify myself as center-right on fiscal and economic issues and a centrist to slightly center-left on many, but not all, social matters.
In an August staff shakeup, Jackson moved on to become senior editor for business, federal and state news. That so soon after his arrival in Atlanta that it’s difficult to say how his self-described moderation plays out on Georgia’s conservative political spectrum.
It’s safe to say, however, that for the first time in generations, the state’s leading editorial page finally will have abandoned its mission as a progressive voice in favor of a carefully constructed mirage of “balance” — designed not to tell the truth, whether it’s unpopular or not, as much as to mollify conservative readers.
Tucker and Bookman will blog and write two columns each a week from the liberal side of the ledger, AJC Editor Julia Wallace announced. Conservative local columns will be produced once a week by Associate Editorial Page Editor Jim Wooten (even though he’s retiring from the staff) and former right-wing congressman (and libertarian) Bob Barr, and twice a week by Kyle Wingfield, who recently won a contest to be named the paper’s new conservative voice. Jackson, the self-described economic and fiscal conservative, also will write a column.
The more profound shift may appear in editorials, which carry extra weight as the institutional voice of the paper. Previously, Tucker was in charge of the editorial voice overall, while Bookman edited most of the editorials that he didn’t write. They may have been the strongest pair of editorialists at any regional paper in the country: Tucker’s won a bevy of honors in addition to her Pulitzer; Bookman’s won at least 13 major journalism awards for his columns and editorials. (Disclosure: Jay’s a friend of mine, but I haven’t spoken with him on or off the record for this story.)
(UPDATE clarifies that Bookman no longer on AJC editorial board.)
Now, Tucker is leaving the board, as is liberal editorial writer Maureen Downey, who will move to writing about education. A lot of conservatives may say: “Great! It sounds a lot more balanced to have a centrist editorial editor than to have two liberals in charge of the whole thing.” That’s obviously what the Marietta Street brass is wishing for. I doubt it will work, however.
One very basic problem will be the loss of sheer knowledge and understanding about Georgia. Tucker and Bookman each have spent at least 20 years of reporting in Georgia. They know most of the state’s influential players and are well-acquainted the narratives of various policy debates. So they’re equipped to peel away layers of bunk in an effort to get at the truth.
More significantly, imagine Jackson, Bookman and Wingfield — who will now serve together on the editorial board — trying to arrive at a consensus on any contentious issue. They’re likely to spend a lot of their time just arguing with no end in sight, before they decide to avoid some subjects entirely or to produce pro-con style essays that offer readers a patronizing posture of “balance” rather than principled, courageous insight. I’m not saying things will always turn out that way, but on the truly difficult issues, it will be hard for readers to figure out what the paper stands for.
Tucker’s departure culminates years of efforts by the paper to mollify conservative, suburban readers. Those efforts have included throwing more resources into coverign Gwinnett County than it did into Atlanta; undercutting the editorials themselves with often fatuous “Equal Time” columns; and giving desperate play to Wooten’s predictable, angry regurgitations of Rush Limbaugh talking points.
The irony is that the entire enterprise hasn’t worked. In their candid moments, high-ranking AJCers acknowledge that all the money poured into Gwinnett coverage didn’t increase reader penetration there. And just take a look at reader comments on various blogs to see how contemptuous conservative activists and politicians remain of the paper.
That could be because efforts at balance come across as what they are — a bit patronizing. But it’s also because the practice of journalism is an essentially liberal exercise in the classical sense of the word: It places faith in the ability of people to form their opinions based on facts and reasoning rather than on preconceptions and prejudice. Meanwhile, the South’s brand of conservatism — the brand that has taken over much of the Republican Party — is essentially reactionary: Any narrative, no matter how factual, that challenges a set worldview is seen as a threat from outsiders to be battled, no matter how high the cost.
If that’s the case, no amount of “balance” will satisfy those who complain so bitterly that the AJC’s editorial page is too liberal or that Tucker — who has never been anything but civil — is somehow “polarizing.” But Tucker’s departure will make it more difficult for the AJC to hold onto to its seat at the center of the community — at the very time that newspapers are finding it more difficult to remain relevant.
Cynthia Tucker is a star. Her column is likely to become more popular nationally. In Washington, she’ll be sought out as that rare talking head whose words are carefully chosen, insightful and challenging. But Washington’s gain may prove to be our loss — in a state and a region that desperately needs a counterbalance its rightward revolution.
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