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The AJC Quits Print

Published: August 29, 2025 1 minute 5 comments

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, a part of Cox Enterprises, will no longer issue a print edition after this year.

From The Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Thursday said it plans to end its printed edition at the end of this year, accelerating its digital transformation amid a rapidly evolving media landscape.

“We will begin the new year as a fully digital organization, committed, as always, to being the most essential and engaging news source for the people of Atlanta, Georgia and the South,” [President and Publisher Andrew] Morse wrote in a letter to subscribers sent Thursday morning.

From The AJC publisher:

Relying on printing presses and delivery trucks to distribute the news simply isn’t the best way for the AJC to serve you anymore. In addition, this decision has a positive impact on the environment – saving water and trees, eliminating the use of polybags and CO2, and diverting waste from the landfill – which is in line with Cox’s commitment to sustainability. 

One thing that will not change is our unwavering commitment to essential, factual reporting.

As others see it…

Tom Jones at Poynter:

One of America’s best-known newspapers, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, made a stunning announcement on Thursday: it will stop publishing its print edition at the end of 2025 and start 2026 as a digital-only product.

Maybe this day has been coming, but it still shocked many in the newspaper industry. The AJC;s print newspaper goes back to 1868.

Morse told The New York Times’ Katie Robertson, “The fact is, printing newspapers and putting them in trucks and driving them around and delivering them on people’s front stoops has not been the most effective way to distribute the news in a very long time.”

The AJC isn’t alone, of course. New Jersey’s Star-Ledger stopped printing earlier this year. Other news organizations have also stopped printing daily, including the Poynter-owner Tampa Bay Times — which in 2020 reduced its print publishing to twice weekly: Wednesdays and Sundays.

The Atlanta Constitution, 1868
The Atlanta Journal, 1883

From Sophie Culpepper at NiemanLab:

Print newspapers, already vestigial in an era when news consumption overwhelmingly occurs online, have been slow to disappear entirely in part because many continue to turn a profit. (Just six years ago, in 2019, The Boston Globe was the first local newspaper whose digital subscribers surpassed print.) The Journal-Constitution’s print product remains profitable on its own and has about 40,000 subscribers, publisher and president Andrew Morse told the Times’ Katie Robertson. That’s down from 94,000 in 2020, and a zenith of around 630,000 in 2004.

In 2023, we reported on the Journal-Constitution’s ambitious push to reach 500,000 digital subscribers by 2026. The Times reports now that “the paper is not on a pace to hit that goal.” It has 75,000 digital-only subscribers, up from about 55,000 at the end of 2023, and 115,000 total paid subscribers.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution was one of the largest of the Cox Enterprises two dozen daily newspapers serving many important American cities. Atlanta is their home base.

So where does this leave editorial cartoonist Mike Luckovich and the rest of the staff? In a limbo for now?

From that NiemanLab report:

About 30 staff members, half of them part-time, will lose their jobs due to the change.

Elsewhere in the newspaper comic strip cartoonists will lose (print pays much better than digital).

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution daily comics page carries (as of July 30, 2025) Mutts, Pearls Before Swine, Luann, Brewster Rockit, Garfield, Zits, Lio, Blondie, WuMo, Curtis, Crankshaft, Baby Blues, Rhymes With Orange, Breaking Cat News, Overboard, Beetle Bailey, Judge Parker, One Big Happy, The Family Circus, Peanuts, and Mike du Jour. With Doonesbury, Prickly City, and Jumble appearing on a separate page.

The Sunday Funnies lineup (as of July 27, 2025) is Zits, One Big Happy, B.C., Mutts, Baby Blues, Breaking Cat News, Blondie, Over the Hedge, JumpStart, Rose is Rose, Mike du Jour, Luann, Herb & Jamaal, Beetle Bailey, Nancy, Pickles, Get Fuzzy, Lio, Judge Parker, Overboard, Curtis, Pearls Before Swine, Rhymes With Orange, Brewster Rockit, Prickly City, Scary Gary, Doonesbury, Garfield, Wumo, The Lockhorns, Classic Peanuts, Crankshaft, The Family Circus, and Foxtrot.

note: As far as I can determine the Cox Enterprises newspapers do NOT publish unified comics sections, each publisher and/or editor chooses what comics they wish without interference from headquarters.

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Comments 5

  1. I think it’s fair (but not helpful) to point out that print newspapers are not an inherently weak media. Printed comics and printed books have found ways to keep their markets relevant and are doing pretty well. The problem with newspapers is who owns them; the people running the mega corporations don’t believe in their own product. They’ve done just about everything they could to destroy their own papers. I think cartoonists all know what they’ve done.

    I still believe in newspapers.

    1. life was simpler when there was just one news source, one edition per day. (tv news was the usesless for me “shootings, sports and weather” from a city more than a hour’s drive away)
      the problem for me was i read it at night while laying it out so when reading it the next morning it was old news. with the internet everybody can read it as its being “laid out.” not by me, of course, my job got automated and outsourced when gannett went “online first.”
      print is capital intensive, online much less so. i’m amazed that the greed is good gangs that own media corps these days who’d rather have their capital (stolen from our labor, but i digress) in more profitable places haven’t all gone “online only” yet

  2. Every time a newspapers goes under, or just digital, an angel looses its wings. Sad.

    The Atlanta Journal and Constitution always remind me of the time I was reading both of them in the Atlanta airport and the FBI or whomever they were, approached me and asked me to remove whatever it was that I had in my boot. It was my fat wallet, sort of like George Costanza’s wallet. I had it in the boot so as not to have to sit on it in the long plane ride. Long story short, it was all a mistake, but every time I hear the name Atlanta Journal Constitution, it reminds me of that.

    I blogged about it once here: https://tomversation.com/2025/04/18/my-unforgettable-cowboy-boot-experience-at-the-airport/

  3. Where could people in Atlanta get their daily newspaper fix in print? Maybe from other Georgia cities that still have a newspaper?

  4. Sad day. The AJC not printing a paper is truly sad.

    But, I hope they expand their comics when going all digital. Like Advance did. If they cut back, that will be a dumb decision.

    And, you are correct, the other Cox papers in Ohio, like the Dayton Daily News have their own comics selections.

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