Here’s a question no one would have asked 10 years ago: where can one purchase a national newspaper in Decatur?

I’ve subscribed to weekend home delivery of the New York Times for the past year or so, but the whole arrangement is beginning to feel like a chore that I pay over $40 a month to take on.  Especially on days when I don’t have time to sit down with that $6 Sunday monster, it just screams “waste of money!” from its place on the coffee table.

I yearn for a much less demanding relationship with my hard-copy.   To simply pick up a bundle of ink at the corner market on days when I have both the time and energy.  But of coarse, Decatur doesn’t really have a corner market.  So, beyond Starbucks, I’m not really sure where else you can pick up a New York Times or a Wall Street Journal or a USA Today.  (Can you even still get all of those at Starbucks?)

Are there other options of which I’m just blindly unaware?

On the AJC’s last official day in its Marietta Street office in downtown Atlanta, the New York Times gives it a little ink-love.

When The Atlanta Journal-Constitution moves into its new home next week, its employees will have access to free parking, more natural light and a wide variety of “retail, service and dining options” at Perimeter Mall, according to a memorandum from the newspaper’s publisher, Michael Joseph.

What The Atlanta Journal-Constitution will not have is a home in Atlanta.

A move out of Atlanta by the city’s only major newspaper raises an interesting larger question about the present media landscape: In a 21st century world of virtually free and easy communication, how important is office location?

Photo courtesy of Fresh Loaf

Editorial

There’s been a lot of talk of late, both here and in much larger discussion circles, about how the erosion of urban centers has permanently changed entire industries.  The sacrifice of the corner market at the alter of supermarkets is a frequently cited example.  Simultaneously, there’s also been a sickening amount of narcissistic talk about the demise of hometown newspapers.

Yet rarely do these two concurrent discussions overlap.

To my knowledge, urban planners and journalists don’t spend much time tracing the connections between the city one builds and the city the other covers.  Yet it’s no secret that a city’s layout can have important implications on its methods of communication, so it stands to reason that newspapers may also have been affected by their urban environments.

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Props to my dad for forwarding me a link to a Colin McEnroe column that led me to this Nieman Journalism Lab article inspired by John Hodgeman’s attempts to sell a book by B-movie actor Bruce Campbell (did you follow all that?)…

Newspapers are by definition devoted to the mass audience. In their current form, they can’t exploit the Bruce Campbell [passionate audience] niche – they’re ABC sitcom [mass audience] all the way. They’re okay at building a big audience, but horrible at earning devotion.

Ever read a blog that has a terrific community around it, where the comments are always smart, the readers are obviously engaged, and it looks like the best the Internet can be? Compare that [to] the mix of clowns and boors you see haunting the comments sections of most newspaper websites.

Could the online “devoted audience” someday become the Holy Grail of internet sustainability?  If advertisers ever wake up to the posssibilities, I’d say “yes!”

News that CL has laid off seven non-editorial people in its Atlanta office, along with bigger cuts (including editorial) at the newly acquired Chicago Reader and Washington City Daily, will get definitely get the attention of the Atlanta blogsphere.

It begs the question of whether these alt-publishers, just like the big-boys over at the AJC, can stay solvent in an ever-changing .com world.  My personal take is that most print media will end up moving to the web, but its going to be a rocky road for a while, as advertisers slowly move their ad dollars from TV/radio/print to the web.

As for us one-man blogger operations, we don’t necessarily need the ad dollars (unless its a full-time job), just more free time (which I guess would come with more cash).  Regardless, I don’t see myself laying myself off any time soon.

Read Creative Loafing’s “official” take here.  Sounds like DriftGrift is on this story too.  Oh, and some paper called the New York Times also covered the story.