Atlanta Newspaper Subject Guide

The following information is reproduced from:

"Atlanta Journal-Constitution," New Georgia Encyclopedia. Retrieved June 26, 2009: http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org. Partial contents are reproduced here courtesy of New Georgia Encyclopedia.  For more information, see the NGE article and the AJC website.

Few cities in America have a daily newspaper that has published continuously for more than 100 years. Until recently, Atlanta had two—the Atlanta Constitution, first published on June 16, 1868, and the Atlanta Journal, which debuted on February 24, 1883. The longtime rivals, which had been under common ownership since March 1950, merged on November 5, 2001, and are currently published daily under a joint masthead. The Journal-Constitution is the largest daily newspaper in the Southeast, with an average daily circulation of 640,000.

The Journal and Constitution have won numerous Pulitzer Prizes and have nurtured the careers of many famous journalists, including: Henry W. Grady, whose lobbying efforts set the stage for the South's agricultural and industrial growth following a difficult Reconstruction period; Joel Chandler Harris, whose colorful Uncle Remus tales—African American folk tales written in dialect—first appeared in the Constitution; Margaret Mitchell, the author of the international best-seller Gone With the Wind; Ralph McGill, a passionate voice of reason in the early days of the civil rights movement, whose personal essays—a new journalistic form—ran on the front page of the Constitution.

Although both newspapers have had common ownership since 1950, the ATLANTA CONSTITUTION and ATLANTA JOURNAL did not merge their news operations until 1982, and for the next two decades the two papers continued separate publication, with the following exceptions:

• 1950-1976:  combined edition published on Sundays
• 1976-2001:  combined edition published on Saturdays as well as Sundays

As of November 5, 2001, the two papers finally became one daily under the name ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION.

ONLINE ACCESS: 

PRINT ACCESS:

MICROFILM ACCESS:

How do you search for information in newspapers that are only available in print or microfilm format?  The short answer - it's often not easy!   Your options are usually limited to:

Finding newspaper references in footnotes or bibliographies from other sources,

Ascertaining the probable date(s) when an event or topic would have been covered and browse the newspaper page by page for that time period, OR

Using newspaper subject indexes.  These may be available in print, microform, or online formats, and they provide REFERENCES (NOT full text) with title, date, section, and page number information to articles on a specific subject.  Use this information to locate articles in the chronologically arranged microfilm or print version of the newspaper.  Subject indexes are scant for Atlanta newspapers.  Indexing available for selected portions of the ATLANTA JOURNAL, ATLANTA CONSTITUTION, and ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION are described in the following box.

ATLANTA CONSTITUTION INDEXES:

  Only limited subject access to select content exists for the CONSTITUTION for 1955-1980

ATLANTA JOURNAL INDEXES:

INDEXES COVERING BOTH NEWSPAPERS:

INDEX TO ATLANTA WEEKLY (previously called ATLANTA JOURNAL MAGAZINE and ATLANTA JOURNAL AND CONSTITUTION MAGAZINE)

See the resources listed in the More Information box on the About Atlanta Newspapers page of this guide.