The AJC’s Last Fold

Today, December 31, marks the end of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s 157-year run as a printed newspaper. Tomorrow, its digital-only era begins. It is the largest newspaper in the country to make that transition.

Growing up, I was always the kid who didn’t have to be told to go get the newspaper. Quite the opposite…I raced to the end of the driveway to be the first to retrieve it and pull it from that clear, plastic bag that protected it, most of the time, from the elements. In fact, it was usually a struggle for my parents to get it away from me.

I read it cover to cover—news, editorials, comics…often sprawled on the living-room floor.

In high school, I wrote and cartooned for my schools’ papers. Even before I arrived at the University of Georgia, The Red & Black had asked me to continue cartooning for them. My tenure at the paper didn’t last long, two quarters, but not many political science majors can claim they created political cartoons for their college newspaper.

The skills I learned laying out news pages and creating content have continued to stay with me, as has my passion for the news and newspapers.

I hope that newsprint never disappears entirely.

There is something uniquely democratic about a printed newspaper. It arrives unannounced at your doorstep. It forces you to confront stories you did not seek out. You may open it for the Braves or Dawgs score, or the crossword, but you inevitably encounter city council decisions, school board fights, foreign conflicts, and obituaries…reminders of a community larger than yourself. A physical paper does not algorithmically curate your worldview. It simply lays it out and asks you to engage.

And you never know what you’re going to stumble upon as you flip through the pages.

That is not an argument against digital journalism. Quite the opposite. The AJC’s reporters, editors, photographers, and investigative teams remain essential, regardless of the medium that carries their work. Digital platforms allow faster updates, broader reach, deeper archives, and interactive storytelling that print never could. For many readers, especially younger ones, digital is not a downgrade but the only format they’ve ever known.

Still, something changes when the press stops rolling.

Print newspapers were once a shared civic rhythm. You could see them folded under arms at coffee shops, stacked in libraries, spread across kitchen tables. Headlines were literally front-and-center in public life. A major story did not just trend; it sat there in ink, unavoidable, for an entire day. That permanence carried weight. It signaled that some things mattered enough to be fixed on paper, not endlessly refreshed and replaced.

The danger of a purely digital public square is not misinformation alone, it is fragmentation.

When every reader encounters a different version of the news, tailored to habits and preferences, the idea of a common civic conversation weakens. A newspaper, in its printed form, was one of the last mass experiences that cut across class, age, and ideology.

The AJC has been there through Reconstruction, the Great Depression, world wars, the civil rights movement, and Atlanta’s transformation into a global city. Its pages recorded not only history’s triumphs but its arguments, often messy, often uncomfortable, sometimes infuriating depending on one’s point of view, but necessary. Ending the print edition does not erase that legacy, but it does close a chapter in how that history was physically shared.

This moment should not be read as a failure of journalism, but as a challenge to readers. If we value serious reporting, investigative work, and local accountability, we must support it, whether it arrives folded on a driveway or loaded on a phone. Freedom does not require newsprint, but it does require an informed citizenry willing to read beyond headlines and clicks.

I will miss the feel of the daily paper in my hands (though I will continue to get the weekend edition of the Marietta Daily Journal delivered), the feel and smell of ink, the ritual of turning pages. I will miss knowing that, on a given morning, tens of thousands of Georgians were quite literally on the same page.

The presses may be stopping, but the responsibility does not. The future of journalism now depends less on how it is printed and more on whether we still bother to read it.

Before the end of the folded era…AJC reporter Greg Bluestein presents me with one of the printed copies of the AJC headlining UGA’s perfect season and back-to-back National Championships.

Now that the AJC is officially a blog, they can get their official “Blogger” swag here!