The publisher of the 157-year-old Atlanta Journal-Constitution announced yesterday that the newspaper will cease its print edition at the end of this year. Beginning January 1, the newspaper will be distributed in digital form only.

There was an effort to put a positive spin on the change.

Relying on printing presses and delivery trucks to distribute the news simply isn’t the best way for the AJC to serve you anymore. In addition, this decision has a positive impact on the environment – saving water and trees, eliminating the use of polybags and CO2, and diverting waste from the landfill – which is in line with Cox’s commitment to sustainability.

The AJC is owned by Cox Enterprises, now a conglomerate that also owns the news site Axios, two newspapers in Ohio where the company started, as well as a number of other well-known businesses.

The newspaper reported its print circulation peaked at more than 600,000 in the early 2000s, and it now has about 115,000 subscribers, with about 40,000 still receiving the printed paper (down from 94,000 over the past five years).

The New York Times reported that a majority of U.S. newspapers no longer distribute a print edition seven days a week. The Honolulu Advertiser, for example, offers subscribers a choice of whether to have the print edition delivered six days a week, four days a week, or digital only.

Roughly a third of the country’s more than 1,000 remaining daily newspapers still print seven days a week, according to a 2024 report on the state of local news by Northwestern University. Many others have reduced their print frequency to cut costs: The same study found that about 180 newspapers that had once printed daily put out newspapers fewer than three days a week.

The Times also pointed the finger at the unanticipated impact that AI has had on media. With Google and other search sites offering summaries of search findings along with specific links, traffic generated for newspapers by online searches has fallen dramatically.

A headline from Editor & Publisher put AJC’s move into perspective: “The AJC is betting its future on digital alone. That gamble could save millions — or cost the paper its base.”

But the move to digital-only was not a surprise. NPR reported that the AJC has been preparing for the digital transformation for years and at that time claimed a $150 million budget to underwrite the move.