Here goes the Friday blog about media.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution may drop daily print. Writing Sept. 6 in Media Nation, Dan Kennedy says the next major news outlet to make the move from print to digital may be The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, according to bloggers Maria Saporta and John Ruch. The AJC might consolidate its print ads into a Sunday edition.

“Anyone who was around 15 or 20 years ago would be surprised at the persistence of print. Back when newspapers started moving to the web, it seemed likely that print editions would soon become part of the past,” Kennedy wrote.

“But as visions of lucrative interactive advertising gave way to the realities of Craigslist, Google and Facebook, print emerged as a way to slow down the decline of the newspaper business. The value of print advertising, though on the wane, held up far better than digital ads. And you could charge a lot for home delivery. Even as digitally focused a newspaper as The Boston Globe continues to earn more than half its revenues from the print edition.”

Find your inner Ikigai

According to Ikigai, to feel happy and fulfilled in your career, it’s important to combine four elements in your work:

  • PASSION – what you love
  • VOCATION – what you’re good at
  • PROFESSION – what people will pay you for
  • MISSION – what you think the world needs

Hey, count me in!

Going, going

National Geographic magazine has laid off six of its top editors in an extraordinary reorganization of its editorial ranks, according to Paul Farhi in The Washington Post.

High-level cuts are unusual for any established magazine, and they are unprecedented for National Geographic, which has enjoyed stable editorial leadership since its founding by the nonprofit National Geographic Society of Washington in 1888, he writes.

The magazine is owned by the Walt Disney Co., acquired as part of Disney’s purchase of 21 Century Fox. The National Geographic Society remains a minority partner. As recently as 2013, it sold about 4 million copies monthly. But as of June 2022, its monthly circulation was about 1.8 million copies, according to the Alliance for Audited Media. Its website attracted about 12.4 million total visits in June, according to estimates from Similarweb.

R.I.P.

Former CNN anchor Bernard Shaw died September 7, 2022, at a Washington, DC, hospital of pneumonia unrelated to Covid-19, Shaw’s family announced. He was 82. Shaw was CNN’s first chief anchor and was with the network when it launched on June 1, 1980. He retired from CNN after more than 20 years on February 28, 2001. It is tough for anyone breaking into the news business. For a young Black man in the 1960s, it was especially tough. While serving as a Marine, he sought advice from Walter Cronkite. He later met Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who reportedly told him, “One day you’ll make it, just do some good,” (from CNN website)

Anne Garrels, an international correspondent for NPR who reported from the front lines of major conflicts around the world, including during the American “shock and awe” bombing of Baghdad in 2003, died on September 7, 2022, at her home in Norfolk, Conn. She was 71. (from NPR website)

Anne Garrels

New York Times reporter Katharine Q. “Kit” Seelye added these stories:

When the war in Ukraine began in February, Garrels, long retired from NPR and in treatment for cancer, proposed covering the conflict. The network declined to send her, so instead she helped found a nonprofit relief organization, assist-ukraine.org, which raised money to send supplies to Ukrainians.

Garrels’ first book, Naked in Baghdad, was published in 2003. The title referred to her habit of working in her room at the Palestine Hotel with no clothes on. Her explanation was that if Iraqi security forces banged on her door, they would give her time to get dressed, and she would be able to hide her illegal satellite phone.

Once she was home, other reporters interviewed her about her ordeal. She told of subsisting on Kit Kat chocolate bars and Marlboro Lights, bathing by gathering water in huge trash cans, and powering her equipment by attaching jumper cables to a car battery, which she lugged up to her hotel room every night.

Who said being a reporter is easy?

Sandra Clark is editor/CEO of Knox TN Today Inc.