AJC metro, features section to be restructured

For six months, Atlanta Journal-Constitution staffers have wondered how their new managing editor — Julia Wallace, who arrived in January from the Arizona Republic — would transform the paper that covers Dixie like the dew.

The wait is over.

On Monday, July 16, the staff will get details about a restructuring in the metro and features sections that will eliminate certain positions. Those writers with a beat being eliminated will be asked to apply for new positions, which will be listed in the AJC offices Monday, according to an e-mail Wallace sent out Friday, July 6.

The e-mail acknowledged that the changes are “discombobulating,” but said they’re the result of “strategic discussions about where we want our newspaper headed and how to get there.”

Some editor positions also will be eliminated, and the editors will have to apply for new reporting or editing positions, according to Wallace. She said it was too soon to get into specifics.

“We’ll reduce the number and layers of editors,” she says. “This really is an effort to have more collaboration and less walls between departments; to make it easier to get good stories in the paper and not worry about turf.”

Wallace says she doesn’t know how many people will be affected by the changes, and that everyone will have a position when the restructuring is finished in mid-August.

Some departments won’t be affected as deeply, according to the memo. In sports and business, the memo said, “Minimal changes could move the departments where they needed to go.”

Says one reporter: “The restructuring looks to be a good thing. It will shake up the things that need to be rattled.”??