Thursday, November 6, 2008
News AJC to shut down old press
Posted by Scott Henry @ScottTheHenry on Thu, Nov 6, 2008 at 1:05 PM
One of the conundrums of the AJC reorganization was the company's announcement last year that it would spend $30 million to upgrade its newspaper printing operations in Gwinnett. That's a lot of wampum to pour into what we've been told over and over again is fast becoming outdated information-delivery technology.
The most immediate effect of the decision to expand and enhance the Gwinnett plant is the planned mothballing of the paper's old press downtown. Last week, company officials told employees that about 100 press-related jobs at Marietta Street would disappear by the end of the year.
Officially, they count as layoffs, but AJC spokeswoman Mary Dugenske tells me that many of the senior unionized workers will land in other positions in the building or within the (shrinking) family of Cox newspapers.
As for the four old presses downstairs, the plan is to salvage them for parts as needed, rather than to try to sell them off. That makes sense when one considers that each one is three stories tall and half a football field in length.
"This building was built around the press," Dugenske says. "It's sort of a ship-in-the-bottle situation."
And the $30 million press rehab in Gwinnett? Dugenske points to the fact that the AJC printed an extra 150,000 copies of Wednesday's election wrap-up issue – and has sold out at many news stands across the city.
"We continue to believe there is an audience for our print product," she says.
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