Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The

▪ American newspaper

      morning daily newspaper published in Atlanta, Ga., and based largely on the former Atlanta Constitution following its merger with the Atlanta Journal in 2001. The Constitution had been counted among the great newspapers of the United States, and it came to be regarded as the “voice of the New South,” thanks to a succession of outstanding editors: Henry W. Grady, Clark Howell, and Ralph McGill.

      The Constitution was founded in 1868, when Carey Wentworth Styles, James H. Anderson, and W.A. Hemphill purchased the Atlanta Daily Opinion and renamed it. Its emergence early in the Reconstruction era, and the general balance of its coverage, soon defined the Constitution as a leader among Southern papers. In the late 1870s and the 1880s, the Constitution became famous for the editorials of Henry W. Grady (Grady, Henry Woodfin) and for the breadth of its coverage. In the same period, the Constitution developed an outstanding staff of correspondents. The paper was liberal in its editorial policies from the time of Grady, although it did, under the editorship of Clark Howell, support American intervention in Cuba before the Spanish-American War of 1898. Howell was the son of Evan P. Howell, president and editor in chief from 1876 to 1897, and was in turn succeeded by his son, Clark Howell, Jr., in 1938. In the early 20th century the senior Clark Howell won wide political influence, and Joel Chandler Harris of the Constitution gained national fame as a political columnist. Ralph McGill (McGill, Ralph) became executive editor in 1938 and editor in 1942. Under McGill the Constitution fought McCarthyism in the early 1950s and racism in the next two decades.

      In 1950 the paper was purchased by James Middleton Cox (Cox, James M), who already owned the evening Atlanta Journal (founded in 1883) and other papers. The Constitution continued its nonsensational coverage of local, national, and international news and its informed editorial comment. For many years a merged paper, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, was published on weekends until the two papers were fully merged in 2001.

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