The end of an era at the AJC?

If you want to know about the seismic shakeup at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, don't bother reading that paper.

In a business section obfuscation Friday, what you glean is that Julia Wallace, who has been the paper's No. 3 editorial boss for 17 months, is now top dog. And, the AJC's editor since 1989, Ron Martin, is retiring but will still do some Cox corporate gigs.

What you won't learn is that the No. 2 editor, John Walter, was unceremoniously given the ol' heave-ho. Walter — a brilliant but, according to journalists at the daily, erratic editor ("mad scientist," "a little kooky" were a few of the descriptions) — isn't even mentioned in the AJC article, and he rated only an afterthought in an internal memo posted by Publisher Roger Kintzel.

More important than even the demise of Walter is the series of whiplash course changes and lackluster newsroom leadership that have alienated readers and frustrated journalists at the Cox flagship.

That's news not fit to print at the AJC, of course. The usual reason for the press honchos not reporting on themselves is their self-serving claim that no one cares. Despite the obvious mendacity (the media gets frenzied over similar events in other industries), that excuse is rooted in panicky fear of accountability. Why shouldn't readers demand openness of an institution that claims a right to scrutinize all others? And, why shouldn't we be allowed to judge the performance of publishers, when, after all, they assert their right to critique others?

Nowhere in the AJC's coverage will you find a hint at any real reasons behind Martin's retirement. Certainly, no skeptics are allowed to wonder why he and his philosophy were ever allowed to park at the paper. To understand what happened, readers must be privy to what the AJC won't print.

At the most basic level, the numbers tell the story. Three weeks ago, the AJC heartily patted itself on the back for having had a slight circulation increase — the result of, more than anything else, America paying a tad more attention to the news after 9-11. That readership blip soon will fade in the face of the next "Survivor" series on the tube — especially when what potential readers are offered is the numbing tepidness of papers such as the AJC.

The AJC spun the chop-and-change announcement as little more than ho-hum routine. Assuming the Cox bosses have IQs that creep into triple digits, the real reason is rooted in the company confronting, albeit belatedly, failure.

During Martin's tenure, daily circulation plunged 22 percent. Sunday subscriptions headed south by 8 percent in the last half of Marin's reign.

Put another way, a few people — well over a million — have moved to Atlanta during the period when the AJC not only couldn't pick up a few newcomers but drove away old-timers by the tens of thousands.

When asked if the circulation disaster had prompted Martin and Walter's demise, Publisher Kintzel laughed and noted that Martin was 65. Kintzel said: "There is no conspiracy."

Journalists love stories, probably because that's how they earn a living. There's a famous one about the New York Times. A young reporter applying for a job in the early 1900s noted that the newsroom was full of scribes doing very little — playing cards, kibitzing, smoking. He asked why and was told that on the day the Titanic sank, the paper's owner couldn't find a reporter to cover the tragedy. "The next time a ship sinks," a veteran editor said drolly, "we won't have that problem."

Here's another tale. When, in 1997, the city of Miami went broke, a once-great newspaper, The Miami Herald, no longer had a reporter dogging City Hall. The paper, where philosophies such as those held by Martin had come to rule, learned about the city's meltdown from TV reports.

Here's the lesson in those stories for Atlanta. The press lords in America have proclaimed that you can have either great journalism by being, shall we say, smart (e.g., the Times) — or you can lower your sights and build readership and profits (e.g., Cox maximum boss James Kennedy's vision for the AJC).

Unfortunately for publishers who opt for the latter course — as has happened in Miami and Atlanta — their sell-out papers are not only reviled, ridiculed and rejected by thinking readers, but the masses supposedly attracted to fluffy no-calorie journalism never materialize.

Then there is this caveat. Cox, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, could afford to give Georgians watery pabulum because real competition was non-existent. That's why, even while battalions of readers were defecting, the AJC could use its monopoly to strong-arm car dealers into buying hundreds of pages of ads each week. Moreover, since it was a paper that obsequiously pandered to local corporate heavyweights such as Coca-Cola (can you stomach another puff piece on Vanilla Coke?) and specialized in team coverage of shopping center openings, the newspaper had little worry that advertisers would get uppity and realize fewer and fewer people were seeing their messages.

Then there was the advent of the Internet as a major news — if not, to date, advertising — vehicle, and all bets are off for the old "read us or else" philosophy of publishers.

In 1986, Cox hired Bill Kovach, Washington editor for the New York Times to lead the AJC, with a mission to build the world's next great newspaper. Two years later, after Kovach was forced to swallow draconian budget cuts, he resigned. Kovach had his faults — he drove away or humiliated the AJC's Georgia veterans, such as peach pundit Bill Shipp. But, there could be no doubt that Kovach believed great journalism enriched the lives of readers — and that newspapers' job wasn't merely to deliver large numbers of subscribers to advertisers.

Kennedy has sniffed that Kovach cared more about how national journalism gurus viewed the AJC than whether Atlantans embraced the paper. "I am proud of the paper," Kennedy told the Times in an article about the Cox empire last month. "I don't care what people in New York or Chicago think about it."

But, of course, by that standard — gauged by the plummeting circulation trend — Kennedy's vision for its Atlanta paper is a miserable flop.

In 1989, Cox hired Martin, who had headed USA Today, which had been decried for dumbing down and trivializing news. Moreover, USA Today is owned by Gannett, a name that is likely to produce spasms of retching among serious journalists. Gannett's hallmarks are cheapness and an aversion to hard news, which is more difficult and expensive to report than TV-caliber drivel.

The bellwether of a newspaper's greatness is not the front page. Enough wars, national scandals and disasters will fill that up. Rather, it's the enterprise shown on the "metro" or "local" page that shows a paper's mettle.

Martin's tenure was marked by the decimation of the metro page and staff. "For 12 years, we haven't had a metro editor worth the title," one AJC reporter told me. Another reporter: Metro editors and deputies "were timid. They waited for signals from Martin and Walker, and then they tended to overreact. There has been no leadership."

Things began to change a year-and-a-half ago when Wallace arrived. By almost all accounts, she has led with intelligence and a dedication to a better news product.

Still, Wallace managed to irritate the staff. She held "Better AJC" meetings — derided by wags as "Bitter AJC" gatherings — to solicit staff input.

"But, instead of just getting rid of the really bad editors, she made everyone mad by forcing all of us to reapply for every job," said a senior reporter. "That made all of us angry. She said she was listening to us, but most of the reporters think that was a sham. She did what she had intended to do from the start."

Wallace also signals a retreat by Cox. Martin was 100 percent USA Today and Kovach was 100 percent New York Times — 180-degree opposites but clearly both men were heavyweights in journalism able to attract the best (or worst, depending on perspective) lieutenants from around the nation. Wallace, by comparison, is a relative unknown with little journalistic gravity.

The AJC is no longer the Southern Olympus, where giants such as Ralph McGill and demigods such as Furman Bisher, Lewis Grizzard and Gene Patterson created greatness. Indeed, the AJC is merely a low-scoring regional also-ran in any ranking of journalistic quality.

And, that may provide a golden opportunity for Wallace. Any improvement will be noticed and applauded.

News Editor Steve Fennessy contributed to this report. Cox owns 25 percent of the stock in CL's parent company. ??