Cox Courting Political Elite while AJC Editor calls for Public Investment.
In an invitation to subscribers to attend a live taping of its Politically Georgia podcast, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution included current Dekalb County CEO Michael Thurmond on its roster of political contributors.
The others are all former elected officials, including former Republican Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, former Democratic Congressional Representative Carolyn Bourdeaux, and former Republican state representative Meagan Hanson.
Originally, the event listed former Democratic Fulton County Commissioner John Eaves, who had been an AJC contributor.
An email to Dekalb County’s spokesman asking if Thurmond is now or is set to be an AJC paid contributor was not returned. Multiple emails to the AJC asking the same and the status of Eaves were also not returned. However, the event page now separates Thurmond from the others.
While Thurmond is not on the ballot this Nov. and his term of office ends this year, he’s still an elected official who has sided with AJC editorial board, and its owner Cox Enterprises, on issues like “Cop City.”
Adding regular partisan paid contributors is part of AJC publisher Andrew Morse’s effort to add a “diversity of voices” to its opinion pages.
But, like the paid pundits that dominate CNN, where Morse previously served as a senior executive, such efforts encourage a “revolving door” phenomenon where government officials move into media positions blurring the lines between the two.
And at the local level it can heighten a sense of a #gapol political and media elite that promotes and protects those in the club.
COXPAC Contributions
Campaign finance disclosures by Cox Enterprises’ COXPAC show donations given to candidates and committees in both parties with the largest being to the Senate and Congressional Campaign Committees.
Georgia candidates receiving COXPAC contributions this cycle include most incumbents.
An October filing showed stepped up contributions including to Georgia incumbents and a pre-election filing this month added Trump-backed candidate Brian Jack running for the open third district seat.
“‘There has to be, among the public and among elected officials, a recognition of how vital local news is to thriving communities’ and ‘public investment’ in protecting it.”
In an article for New York Magazine’s “Power Issue” titled “Can the Media Survive,” AJC editor-in-chief Leroy Chapman, Jr. was included in the mix of “57 of the most powerful people in media” to answer questions, and gossip, about the state of journalism.
The piece includes both on and off the record statements with only one directly attributed to Chapman. It comes in a discussion on the fate of local news amid hedge fund ownership and fickle billionaire owners.
“The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, though, is owned by Cox Enterprises, a family-owned company that gave the paper a multiyear building plan. ‘There’s a difference between managing decline and investing in transformation,’ says Leroy Chapman Jr. But, by and large, ‘the business model for local news is broken. It really is,’ he adds. ‘There has to be, among the public and among elected officials, a recognition of how vital local news is to thriving communities’ and ‘public investment’ in protecting it. ‘We need some help to have a business model that lets us recoup fairly what we should, based upon what we produce, and that will provide the sort of thing our democracy needs, which is objective fact.’”
Georgia’s state-level government remains dominated by Republicans who have spent the last several decades attacking the media as too liberal and elitist. No doubt some, who grew up in the Cox-dominated local media ecosystem, are now leery of the conservative and MAGA alternatives that have sprung up including in Georgia.
The Steve Bannon model of media includes pressure and intimidation of anyone deemed a RINO or insufficienlty MAGA. Then there’s the misinformation and viral rumors that impede not only election campaigns but disaster warnings and hurricane recovery.
Plenty of Georgia Democrats are friendly to Cox outlets as well, often at the expense of building better relationships with constituents or potential voters who’ve drifted away from legacy media or grew up without them as daily habits.
For local journalism in general, and the AJC specifically, to move to a public service model complete with “public investment” it would need to act more like a truly public institution, with checks and balances, transparency and accountability.
That the AJC keeps hiring elected officials as paid contributors and has yet to hire a public editor or ombudsman speaks volumes.
New York Magazine itself was undermined by a journalism ethics scandal as it announced political reporter Olivia Nuzzi was finally let go soon after the gossipy, “Power Issue” came out.
If the media wants democracy to survive it can’t keep promoting aristocracy.
