When the ball drops in Times Square to mark the new year, the Atlanta-Journal Constitution will have rolled off the presses for the last time in 157 years.

The owners, Cox Enterprises, are converting to a fully digital news operation on New Year’s Day 2026.

If you’re a news consumer in greater Birmingham, you’ve seen this movie before. The Birmingham News and its two sister Advance Media papers in Huntsville and Mobile went fully digital in 2023, after being the first major metropolitan newspapers in the United States to reduce print frequency from daily to three days a week in 2012. They all now operate under the AL.com nameplate.

Advance has been criticized on many levels for the manner in which it handled the print reduction and elimination, with most of the criticism focusing on drastic reductions in its newsgathering staff that left holes in coverage of routine news. Those, among other missteps, led to even bigger big drops in reader circulation figures, which in turn hastened the demise of print.

We won’t relitigate Advance Media’s actions. Instead, let’s look at what AJC owner Cox can learn from what its neighbors did and didn’t do well.

In the weeks before the switchover, the AJC has printed numerous articles by its staff and management, as well as a look back to well-known work from past star columnists, such as legendary sports columnist Furman Bisher and popular Southern-fried humor columnist Lewis Grizzard. My friend Doug Black, a Georgia resident and longtime reader of the paper, sent me many articles that the AJC published in the lead-up to Jan. 1. Doug was somewhat dismissive of what he called “a wealth of navel-gazing” on the part of Cox management. But the articles did lead to insight into Cox’s plans for the new ajc.com — and any opportunity to read more Grizzard, the man who taught us the difference between “naked” and “nekkid,” is fine by me.

Going cold turkey: Unlike the Alabama papers and their sibling, The Times-Picayune of New Orleans, Cox opted to pass up the step-down reductions from daily to tri-weekly, and instead, it is halting print all at once. It’s unclear whether Advance’s reduced print schedule did anything to stop the flow of red ink; Advance is privately held by the founding Newhouse family, which means it doesn’t have to publicly release financial data, so there are no reliable numbers available for analysis. The same applies to Cox. But if the AJC were losing money left and right, as with many newspapers, then the quick move to digital would stop the losses more quickly and leave funds for the improvements management has announced.

Increased commitment to journalism: Here’s a big surprise that made me do a double take. The only job losses due to the switch to digital at the AJC will be obvious ones such as pressmen and page designers. And according to 2023 reporting from Harvard University’s Neiman Foundation for Journalism, AJC President and Publisher Andrew Morse has made very bold plans for increasing the digital paid subscriptions from 80,000 in 2023 to 500,000 in the near future. By comparison, the paper’s highest print circulation was reported in 1993, with 720,000 Sunday edition readers; the most recent daily print circulation numbers are around 31,000.

Morse also told Neiman that expansions in the newsroom and news products were part of his big plans, with a headcount increase of about 100 in the newsroom alone. That’s a hike of about 25%, and much of that increase is already in place. In addition, the AJC has reversed pullbacks of its primary coverage area, which had shrunk to the counties surrounding Atlanta proper, and has restored reporters stationed in Savannah, Athens and Macon.

Finally, the AJC moved its base of operations away from suburban Sandy Springs and back to Midtown, getting back to the city’s core.

By contrast, Advance did pretty much the exact opposite to the Alabama newspapers from top to bottom, cutting about half of its remaining newsgathering staff in one single day.

Of concern: Corporations are prone to hyperbole and making promises they can’t or don’t keep. For instance, when Morse and his lieutenants held town halls with AJC staffers in recent months, he sidestepped making commitments that no newsroom layoffs would be made. And in a 2023 letter addressed to readers, Morse wrote, “We have decided to continue to print and deliver the paper in metro Atlanta for the foreseeable future. I can’t promise you we will do this forever…”

Oops. The foreseeable future just ended.

But to his credit, Morse has at the very least changed the conversation from a legacy news operation that’s just trying to survive to one that is striving to thrive. That’s a complete turnabout from almost every newspaper still left in the U.S., with the possible exception of The New York Times. Moreover, Morse has the buy-in — both literally and figuratively — of the Cox family and its various companies. That includes the nation’s third-largest cable company, thanks to Cox Communications’ recent merger with Charter. That same family also recently repurchased three newspapers it previously sold to a private-equity firm, almost solely because those papers were being forced by the new owners to reduce print editions from daily to three days a week, and the Cox clan simply wouldn’t allow that.

In other words, they give a flip. Plus, they have the money to make things happen — they’re the richest family in all of Georgia.

As for the Newhouse family, which owns Advance and numerous other companies — well, maybe they could still learn from Cox.

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Robert Carter is a former reporter and editor who has worked for The Birmingham News, the now-closed North Jefferson News in Gardendale and The Hoover Gazette. Robert’s reporting has also been featured on BirminghamWatch. He now lives in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

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