For the better part of a century, the morning ritual in Atlanta involved the tactile rustle of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. But by the time Andrew Morse took the helm as publisher and president, that ritual was becoming a relic. Morse didn’t just want to save the paper. he wanted to dismantle its traditional identity to build something that could survive the algorithmic age. Now, three and a half years into a high-stakes, $150 million reinvention, Morse is stepping aside.
The departure is bittersweet, framed by Morse as a personal decision driven by the grueling commute between Atlanta and his family in New York. However, the timing coincides with a critical inflection point for the AJC. Under Morse’s leadership, the publication made the seismic decision to abandon its print edition entirely on January 1, making Atlanta the largest metropolitan region in the United States without a major printed newspaper. It was a gamble of historic proportions, designed to force the audience and the newsroom into a digital-first future.
While the transition has been culturally significant, the numbers tell a more complicated story. Morse entered the role with a “North Star” goal: scaling digital subscribers from 53,000 to a half-million by the end of 2026. As he exits, the paper has reached 101,000. While that represents a nearly 100% increase, it remains far shy of the ambitious target that underpinned the $150 million investment from parent company Cox Enterprises.
The High Cost of Digital Evolution
The AJC’s transformation was not a mere update to a website; it was a structural overhaul of how news is gathered and delivered in the South. Morse, who previously steered digital strategies for ABC, Bloomberg, and CNN, recognized that the legacy model was hemorrhaging value. To combat this, he pushed the newsroom to scrap geographic-based beats in favor of subject-matter expertise that crossed county lines, expanding the paper’s footprint into Georgia cities where local journalism had largely vanished.
This shift wasn’t just about geography, but medium. The AJC invested heavily in newsletters, podcasts, and social-first video reporting. The strategy paid off in terms of prestige; the newsroom recently earned its first Peabody Award for its social media video coverage of ICE operations in Georgia. For Shereta Williams, executive vice president of growth operations at Cox Enterprises, Morse’s tenure was the catalyst that finally pushed the organization past its print-centric inertia.
“We were primarily still operating as a print newspaper when he got there,” Williams told NPR. “The entire organization understands what it means to be a digital-first operation. It is now focused on ‘How do we grow as fast as possible?'”
Despite the cultural shift, the financial path remains steep. The AJC has lost money for years, though it possesses a luxury most American dailies do not: the deep pockets of the Cox family. Unlike papers owned by private equity firms like Alden Global Capital or corporate giants like Gannett—which have relentlessly cut staff to maintain margins—Cox has used its reserves from cable and broadband ventures to subsidize the AJC’s experimentation.
Measuring the “North Star” Progress
| Metric | Starting Point (Jan 2023) | Current Status (2024/25) | 2026 Goal |
|---|---|---|---|
| Digital Subscribers | 53,000 | 101,000 | 500,000 |
| Print Edition | Daily Publication | Discontinued (Jan 1) | Digital Only |
| Investment | N/A | $150 Million | Sustainability |
The “Google Zero” Hurdle
Morse’s struggle to hit the 500,000-subscriber mark isn’t just an internal failure of strategy; it is a symptom of a systemic collapse in how news reaches users. Morse points to a phenomenon known as “Google Zero,” where AI-driven search results and social media platforms summarize reporting within the interface, prompting almost zero users to actually click through to the original news website.
This erosion of referral traffic has created a paradox for digital-first publishers: the more high-quality content they produce, the more likely an AI platform is to scrape and summarize it, effectively cannibalizing the subscription funnel. For an industry analyst like Ken Doctor, the AJC’s pivot was a “large gamble” that could either serve as a blueprint for legacy media or a cautionary tale of significant failure.
Morse remains optimistic, however, insisting that the goal is still attainable, even if the timeline has shifted. He argues that building the necessary analytical tools and leadership teams to execute a pivot of this scale took longer than anticipated, and that the external environment—specifically the rise of generative AI—moved faster than any media executive could have predicted.
A New Guard Takes the Reins
As Morse prepares to exit, the AJC will transition to new leadership under Paul Curran. A senior advertising executive with Cox Media, Curran brings a different pedigree to the role, focusing on the monetization and advertising side of the business. His appointment, which takes full effect on June 29, suggests a potential shift in focus from the “ebullient” expansion phase led by Morse toward a phase of operational sustainability and revenue optimization.
The stakes for Curran are high. He inherits a newsroom of approximately 320 staffers—more than half of whom are journalists—and a brand that has successfully shed its print skin but has yet to find its financial footing in the digital wilderness. The experiment in Atlanta is being watched closely by other legacy papers facing the same existential dread, wondering if a massive infusion of capital can actually buy a path to sustainability in an era of “zero-click” news.
The next critical milestone for the organization will be the formal transition of power on June 29, marking the start of Paul Curran’s tenure and the first real test of whether the $150 million foundation laid by Morse can finally convert a loyal local audience into a sustainable digital subscriber base.
Do you think the death of the print edition is inevitable for local news, or is the “digital-only” gamble too risky? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
