Humbug Square - AJC to city: 'Drop Dead'!

I was raised in a political family. My great-aunt, Fannie Bettis, ran Mayor William Hartsfield's law office and managed some of his campaigns. Her father, Duke Bettis, was mayor of College Park. My grandmother, Nora Black, got a patronage job in the highway department from the Talmadge machine. In our family, politics was a contact sport — we got out and punched the ballot.

When I became old enough to vote, I looked to the editorial page of the Atlanta Constitution for guidance in races in which I hadn't made up my mind.

I did that purely out of respect for the paper's long run of courageous, intelligent and progressive journalists: Ralph McGill, Eugene Patterson and, today, Cynthia Tucker and Jay Bookman. I became more liberal than my conservative Democratic parents early on, and I believe the Constitution editorial page helped shape my conscience and made me a more thoughtful person.

At times, particularly when constitutional amendments or a bunch of candidates were on the ballot, I took the trouble to clip the Constitution's endorsements and carry the slip of paper into the voting booth with me. I did that even when I worked for the old Atlanta Journal, before the papers merged. The Journal's editorial page was conservative.

Last month, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution made a stunning announcement: The paper's editorial board would not endorse candidates in Atlanta's elections.

Instead, it would make endorsements only in the first municipal election of the new suburban city of Whitesburg.

Oops, I mean Sandy Springs! Silly me! I got confused by all the white faces staring out of the AJC's half-page endorsement package on Oct. 31 with the headline "Voters must help Sandy Springs run."

The paper included a little box that said, "Because of the significance of the first-ever elections in the new city, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution editorial board's endorsement in municipal elections this year will be limited to Sandy Springs."

What, did Cox Newspapers run out of newsprint? They can't endorse Atlanta candidates on some other day?

"This is the newspaper of record for Atlanta and the state of Georgia," says Billy Linville, spokesman for Mayor Shirley Franklin's re-election campaign. "Can you imagine the New York Times not weighing in on who would become mayor of New York?"

Cynthia Tucker, the editorial page editor of the AJC, says the New York analogy doesn't hold because New York City had a competitive mayor's race this year and Atlanta didn't.

"Shirley Franklin has managed to scare off any credible opponent, so there was no need of making an endorsement in that race," Tucker says. "And it was 90 percent likely we would have endorsed her, anyway. We would have bothered with a formal endorsement if she had had an even near-credible challenger. She doesn't."

Likewise, City Council President Lisa Borders, elected one year ago, didn't have a heavy-duty challenger.

"I thought she would attract credible opposition — she hasn't," Tucker says. "So in the two major city-wide races, both incumbents will sail back into office with virtually no opposition. There is really no need of endorsements in those races."

In addition, Tucker says, the paper considered its whole coverage area. "Given the fact that I think we count our readership area as 22 counties now, we really had to take a long look at our policy on municipal races."

She says mine wasn't the only call she received about the AJC not endorsing in Atlanta's races.

"This doesn't mean we've pulled out of the city. Four years from now, when there is a wide-open race, we will be there. And that will give us the incentive to take a look at City Council races," Tucker said. "This is still the state capital and a very important place, but this is just not a very important mayoral election."

But Bobby Kahn, chairman of the Democratic Party of Georgia, points out that endorsements aren't a big deal for the top-of-the-ballot races. Where they really have an impact is in the races that get less publicity.

"The higher up on the ballot, the less the endorsement means," Kahn says. "In the higher-profile races, voters get their information from a lot of sources — paid media, press coverage, etc. For down-ballot races, they can make a difference because often the endorsement is the only mention of the race."

And here's the thing: I was looking forward to seeing who the AJC endorsed in District 2, where I live. There is no incumbent in the race. CL endorsed Kwanza Hall, but we said both he and Al Caproni are "superbly qualified."

I wanted to know who Tucker and Bookman and the rest endorsed — and why. Perhaps they would have endorsed Hall. But what if they had endorsed Caproni, or Benjamin Fierman? What if the paper's endorsement had swung a tight election and — because we don't know what will happen in the future — changed the fate of the whole city?

To say that couldn't happen is to say that one person's vote doesn't count.

Personally, I've felt for several years that the whole AJC operation has become a sycophant to the suburbs for marketing reasons. Here they are, endorsing candidates in metro Atlanta's newest city while ignoring candidates in Inman Park, Atlanta's original suburb.

Journalism is in turmoil across America. Daily readership is plummeting. The AJC is trying to capture suburban readers and shirking its duty to its longtime base. The New York Times is trying to explain how it could let Judith Miller function as a confidential propaganda outlet for the Bush administration's dishonest drive to the Iraq War. The giant Knight Ridder chain is suddenly looking at the possibility of a buyout.

Here at CL, we had a couple of days of soul-searching last week when we brought in a team from the Committee of Concerned Journalists. Gregory Favre, former executive editor of the Sacramento Bee, and Butch Ward, former managing editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, challenged us to make decisions on complicated news scenarios, and made us examine our biases and ethics.

We revisited our controversial cover of DeKalb CEO Vernon Jones (July 7), in which we illustrated a giant Jones stomping past skyscrapers with a helicopter hovering around him. We agreed we should have explained our photo illustration more clearly — Jones' face was pasted on a stock picture of a man in a suit — and shouldn't have used the helicopter, which gave the cover a "King Kong" look.

Ward, who's the father of our own staff writer Coley Ward, pointed out that he counted the word "fuck" 13 times in a recent Moodswing column by Hollis Gillespie and thought the profanity was "gratuitous."

We tried to point out that Hollis is, well, Hollis, and that she has an authentic voice that resonates with our readers. Ward noted Hollis doesn't say that word in her NPR commentaries.

We discussed our concerns about CL's dysfunctional Web page and our fears that business pressures will cause us to back off controversial political coverage, such as bashing President Bush — which John Sugg and I both enjoy immensely.

CL owner Ben Eason addressed the issue and said he finds the left-right political schism tiresome and wants us to come up with new ways of finding solutions that help make Atlanta a better city.

At the very least, though, we endorsed candidates in the city elections. It's a dirty job, but somebody's got to do it.

Senior Editor Doug Monroe is a native Atlantan who worked at the AJC for 13 years. You can reach him at doug.monroe@creativeloafing.com.