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.

• Cleaver also said he was spat upon. Capitol police reportedly detained someone for spitting, but Cleaver said he wasn’t going to press charges and police let the person go.

• A fourth member of the Congressional Black Caucus, Jame Clyburn of S.C., said, “I heard people saying things that I have not heard since March 15, 1960 when I was marching to try and get off the back of the bus.”

• CNN’s Dana Bash said her producer heard the f-word yelled at Barney Frank. Other media organizations reported hearing that, as well tea partiers taunting Frank by using a lisp. Frank says he also heard them call him “homo.” Democratic aides and a writer for Huffington Post corroborated Frank, Talking Points Memo and CNN. (Trivia question: Do you remember what the Republican former House majority leader once referred to Frank as “Barney Fag”? Hint: His lobbying group now bankrolls the tea parties.)

• That same Talking Points Memo reporter says he saw Henry Waxman called “crook” and “liar” firsthand.

• At least one protester’s sign appeared to threaten political assassination. It said: “Warning: ‘If [newly elected Sen. Scott] Brown can’t stop it, Browning can” — with a photo of Browning revolver. It also warned: “Fire line. Do not cross.” Another sign showed President Obama dressed in an SS uniform and others showed him with Hitler mustaches. There are no indications that organizers attempted to tone down the signs or rhetoric during the protests, in fact Republican members of Congress praised the protesters and urged them on.

This was after a few quick searches. So, Mike and Dale, what do you guys think?

And all this begs for another question: When you add in the Obama-as-witch-doctor portraits (complete with bone in nose) at this summer’s tea parties, the n-word sign at at least one tea party protest, the calls by some for Obama to be killed, the Hitler references, the continuing claim that a plan that doesn’t even include a government option is part of a march to socialism, at what point to do conservatives, and for that matter, mainstream Republicans disavow the tactics of the Republicans in Congress? At what point, do you acknowledge that they’re taking the conservative movement down a road that you just really don’t wanna go … or do you want to go down that road?

SIDENOTE: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution didn’t consider the alleged slurring of its hometown congressman and civil rights hero all that newsworthy. The AJC buried an abbreviated wire story on the last page of the Nation section, which barely mentioned Lewis. That story’s linked online from the homepage with the tease: “Debate gets ugly.” Yep. “Debate.” That’s what you call it when people call you “faggot” or worse. A debate. Two totally morally equivalent sides. That’s the AJC. Fair and balanced.

Related posts:

1. Leo Frank film in Cobb “The People v. Leo Frank" — a TV documentary on...
2. How Tea Party rumors gain traction Ostensibly, the Tea Party meeting I attended Tuesday night in...
3. Shirley Franklin in running for EPA region chief? UPDATE: EPA press aide: Franklin not up for Region IV...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

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!

What Galloway doesn’t mention shows how far political discussion in Georgia has fallen: Grocery taxes are a class of tax that falls heavily on average Georgians and most lightly on the wealthy. That’s because middle class and poor people spend a big chunk of their money on necessities, especially groceries, while wealthier people spend a lot on goods and eating out (which already are taxed) and on services (which aren’t taxed).

If you’re a middle-class family of four spending $8,000 on groceries, reinstating the food tax will cost you $360 a year. If you’re stockbroker who makes $160,000 a year and eats out every lunch and dinner, the food tax might set you back $20.

Gov. Zell Miller, of all people, made precisely those sorts of points in the early 1990s when he pushed the Legislature to eliminate the grocery tax. It was the largest tax cut in Georgia history and, most likely, the biggest reduction ever in the tax burden on Georgia’s working families.

But the harm to average folks that would come with reinstating such a progressive tax cut didn’t even warrant a peep in Galloway’s column. The possibilities, as he presents them, are only between Republicans who will cut government services and Republicans who want to make groceries more expensive.

Other tax hikes could reduce the upcoming shortfall in Georgia’s budget without forcing working people to count pennies at the supermarket. The Georgia Budget and Policy Institute has a whole slew of suggestions along those lines. Among them:

• Temporarily tack a 1 percent income tax hike on couples that make more than $400,000 a year and individuals that make more than $200,000. That would put $200 million toward closing the budget shortfall.

• Stop allowing tax filers who itemize on their federal returns to include their state income taxes as itemized deductions on their state returns. It amounts to sort of double-dip deduction for people who tend to be at the upper end of the scale. The take: $450 million.

• Temporarily increase by just half-a-percent the sales tax rate on everything currently taxed: $600 million.

• Expand sales taxes to a certain (mainly luxury) services: $185 million.

Galloway did mention in passing another idea mentioned by the institute: Raising the excise tax on cigarettes by a dollar a pack. That would plug $300 million to $400 million in the budget hole. It’s the tax hike receiving the most serious consideration in the legislature — other than, apparently, making it more expensive to by groceries.

Related posts:

1. From stimulus to tax cuts Leave it to Georgia politicians to turn stimulus money into...
2. Georgia’s big spenders The Legislature's "stimulus" package could cost taxpayers $265,000 for each...
3. Atlanta Unfiltered: MARTA sales tax down til 2017 More bad financial news about MARTA this week by way...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

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.

I’ve picked up three print editions of the AJC this week, and I have yet to find an actual news article on the Copenhagen conference. Granted that’s not a complete survey; but it is enough to offer good sense of the coverage. In case the AJC print edition is your main source for what’s going on in the world, this is what is going in Copenhagen. Whether you agree with the approach or not, more than 100 nations are negotiating what may turn out to be — no hyperbole here (honest) — the most significant treaty in the world’s history.

I’m talking about negotiations that could will heavily influence the future of energy technology, the financial relationships between rich and poor nations, the fate of entire industries, and the prospects for perhaps 200 million refugees.

Yes, next week is when some 110 heads of state, including President Obama, are expected to descend upon the Danish capital. Surely (surely?) the AJC will run something about that. But so far, the climate talks have warranted coverage on every news network, and either wire or staff-written front-page stories in every major newspaper that I could get my hands on.

The conference spurred the EPA finally to issue its finding that greenhouse gases are pollutants (which did warrant an article in the AJC print edition); got two groups of senators to announce bipartisan climate change bills; exposed startling divides between rich and poor nations; and revealed the broad outlines of the deal likely to be reached between nations.

In addition, the conference prompted the release of numerous major studies by international scientific organizations on massive displacement of people because of climate change (24 million already), temperatures (the current decade was declared by the world’s leading meteorological organization to be the warmest on record), and the effects of climate change (the science indicates overwhelmingly it’s looking worse than previously predicted).

Meanwhile, there’s this ridiculous Climategate fiasco, which has become another in an endless supply of shibboleths put forward by people whose root argument is that the world’s scientists — including every, single scientific body that has even a remote connection to the issue — is engaged in a elaborate hoax so that they can get more research grants. Seriously. That’s the “skeptics’” argument.

There is a pattern to these shibboleths. The fossil-fuel-funded, dogma-driven denial industry starts off by making a wild, unanticipated claim that it finally has “proof” that we need not take action to address climate change. The world is cooling (nope). Polar bears are thriving (nope). When that’s shown to be utterly false, the denialists move onto the next false claim. The world was warmer in the Middle Ages than it is now (nope). And so on — until: “Climategate” exposes the global conspiracy (nope).

In case you did miss it, here’s what happened in “Climategate”: Someone apparently tied to the denial industry stole 13 years of emails from a climate research center in England, and posted a fraction of them on a server in Russia, using computers apparently in Turkey and Saudi Arabia. In some of the e-mails — most of which were private conversation — leading scientists engaged in impolite conversation, academic infighting and even an attempt to shield apparently proprietary data from public view. Some of what they wrote was embarrassing. Some amounted to poor behavior. None added up to evidence of a conspiracy.

But claims of a “scandal” flamed up on deniers’ blogs (which were the first to link to the stolen e-mails), then moved to right-wing talk radio and Fox News, and pretty quickly was picked up, and overblown, by the easily manipulated mainstream media. Pretty soon, “Climategate” became a rallying cry for fervent denialists, including the farthest right wing of the Republican Party.

As the lack of substance behind Climategate became clearer, that easily manipulated mainstream media has pretty much moved on to extensive coverage of the obvious story: Copenhagen. Except for talk radio — and the AJC, which today again didn’t even run a Copenhagen brief in the print edition I picked. Instead, it ran a relatively sleepy but obviously nothing-new-here rehash of “Climategate.” (That story mentions Copenhagen, but only in the context of “Climategate.”)

What really irked me was the space given the story on page A4 of the tight little edition that I happened to pick up, and the headline: “Stolen e-mails boost skeptics of climate change.” Really? Still? If that was the case four weeks ago, why is it even being treated as “news” now?

Combined with the passe (and I’d argue no longer accurate) headline, subhead #1 (“GOP lawmakers off to Copenhagen to question findings”) and subhead #2 (“Gore says messages are out of context”) paint a clear picture: Republicans are on the offensive trying to get to the bottom of this, and Gore’s on the defensive — in denial. The only problem is: That does not reflect reality.

The reality is that the world is moving on to more significant stories — like the actual science and the unprecedented diplomatic effort — and that so-called “Climategate” is merely another in a long line of attempt to distract us.

Unlike the readers to whom the AJC is kowtowing, I’m no conspiracy theorist. But clearly the AJC has an agenda.

My friend Bert Roughton, the AJC’s metro managing editor, denied this to me in an e-mail:

No. These decisions are made by editors who determine the content of their sections. They are under no guidance from above other than to provide balance in coverage for a market that is, to put it lightly, politically diverse. I’m not sure if I agree with your assertion about the volume of the coverage, given the limited space we have for world and national coverage. It seemed to me a reasonable allocation of very limited space.

But in a way, what Bert wrote, is a confirmation: To the extent that editors have been told to “provide balance in coverage for a market” that’s diverse means that decisions are being made to satisfy that market — whoever it is deemed to be composed of — rather than to be guided by journalistic judgment and integrity. I’m not saying that journalists shouldn’t be balanced in their judgment and open to points of view that might challenge their own. But taken to its extreme, “balance” — say between the Ku Klux Klan and a child who integrated a school, or a violent criminal and his victim — can reflect an absurd lack of judgment.

I don’t really have to argue the point at such an abstract level, though. Simply by what ends up in print — and where it’s placed and what headline it gets — the AJC shows every day that editorial decisions are being based on politics and marketing rather than by journalistic judgment and integrity. (Caveat: It’s a bit more difficult to tell what’s going on in the fluid world of the Internet edition.)

The decline of the AJC is most obvious with the destruction of the paper’s former strength: Its moderately liberal editorial page. Why else was Pulitzer Prize winner Cynthia Tucker shipped off to Washington? Why were knowledgeable editorial writers replaced by a neophyte in the community whose marching orders are to produce milquetoast? Why now do conservative columnists outnumber liberal and even moderate columnists (despite a promise to the contrary)? Why else is the barely literate Neil Boortz now the most prominently featured columnist in the paper?

There are fine folks at the AJC. Some are my friends. Many are fine journalists (Roughton among them).

But this newspaper has made some very questionable decisions of late. I’ll stop at that understatement.

NOTE: This humble screed has been updated since publication to add links, subtract typos, and make a few passages more clear. – Ken

Related posts:

1. Top 5 tall tales by climate change deniers in 2009 t was a banner year for myth making about climate...
2. The top 9 non-climate-change eco-stories of 2009 My wife, my editor, my family, my dog — they...
3. Copenhagen climate summit updates All this week and next, I’ll be sifting through articles...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

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 was well thought through. They’re worth a read, if only to engage in an intelligent discussion on each of the contests. From 12:30 to 1:30 today, in fact, Thomas Wheatley and Scott Henry are hosting an online discussion of the endorsements, which should be fun.

My biggest question is: Which candidate will do the most to make a Atlanta a walkable, transit friendly city and to address other environmental issues? Before Nov. 3, I hope to cover some of those issues at my new website, My Green ATL.

The pity is that CL no longer has the resources to dig into the district level races for City Council and the School Board, while the one news media organization that does has those resources, the AJC, has made the strange decision not to endorse at all. Those district level contests are where voters often need the most information and perspective because most people don’t have time to research so deeply.

Keep an eye on Atlanta Unsheltered for comprehensive information on endorsements. Maybe, we can piece something together from web resources that’ll substitute for the AJC’s decision not to provide that service for the community.

Also, keep an eye on Atlanta Unsheltered for roundups of endorsement

Related posts:

1. Business group ranks Borders & Reed highly Lisa Borders scored 95 and Kasim Reed 93  in the...
2. From CL: Carpooling — yo, word! Courtesy of the adorable Thomas Wheatley at Creative Loafing, a...
3. Council’s Anne Fauver won’t run for re-election Set to face the opponent she beat by only five...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

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?

Related posts:

1. AJC likens feds’ flood response to Katrina Here’s an AJC headline that borders on tasteless. It at...
2. Let’s balance the budget by raising taxes on working people! Here’s another story to remind us how far the political/media...
3. See Isakson on health care this week [caption id="attachment_1724" align="alignleft" width="244" caption="U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson (left) with...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

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.

Related posts:

1. 74 take AJC buyout The South's largest newspaper is cutting its newsroom staff in...
2. AJC Wallace’s memo on Tucker Atlanta Journal-Constitution Editor Julia Wallace sent a memo to the...
3. NYT on AJC, Tucker (& me) Quoted this morning in the New York Times, Atlanta Journal-Constitution...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

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.

Related posts:

1. AJC’s redesign blues No. Not that kind of blues. The paper now features...
2. Jim Walls’ hopeful project A former AJC editor aims to fill the gap in...
3. Not easy on Eason Creative Loafing Inc. CEO Ben Eason had a rough day...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

“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.”

Related posts:

1. AJC Wallace’s memo on Tucker Atlanta Journal-Constitution Editor Julia Wallace sent a memo to the...
2. Bookman off AJC editorial board The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's shakeup turns out to be more significant...
3. Ralph McGill stirs The AJC finally abandons its mission as a progressive voice...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

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.

Related posts:

1. NYT on AJC, Tucker (& me) Quoted this morning in the New York Times, Atlanta Journal-Constitution...
2. AJC Wallace’s memo on Tucker Atlanta Journal-Constitution Editor Julia Wallace sent a memo to the...
3. Ralph McGill stirs The AJC finally abandons its mission as a progressive voice...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

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.

Related posts:

1. Bookman off AJC editorial board The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's shakeup turns out to be more significant...
2. NYT on AJC, Tucker (& me) Quoted this morning in the New York Times, Atlanta Journal-Constitution...
3. AJC Wallace’s memo on Tucker Atlanta Journal-Constitution Editor Julia Wallace sent a memo to the...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.