Feelings on Atlanta media... (Tucker, Lawrenceville: how much, home, university)

[mg83]

For a metro are as large as Atlanta, how does everyone feel about the quantity and quality level of the media here? Personally, I think it's pretty bad. From print media to radio... it's just not good.

I find numerous fact-errors in the AJC. In fact, I'd say it's a weekly occurrence, especially in their sports section (a glaring one I remember is a sportswriter calling Cal's head football coach "Jim" Tedford instead of his real name, Jeff Tedford). In nearly two years of living here, I actually thought the AJC did a fairly good job covering the horrible events that happened to Meredith Emerson... then they choose to run a front pager yesterday that was clearly designed to serve what I call a "macabre curiosity". Really disappointing.

Not only that, nearly every day the story on their home page involves some material aspect. "Look at this beautiful home in Buckhead!!" "Will Usher REALLY go through with his marriage!?" This is like a child's newspaper.

What is wrong with the local media here? Please do not bring up CNN. They're an international media outlet that just so happens to be 'based' here, and their focus is not Atlanta metro.

I can think of many similar metro areas with much better media... maybe I'm the only one who notices this. This is my field, so it interests me to hear what other people think...

[JPD]

Here's one example of the AJC putting a factual inaccuracy in the headline (second line of headline is incorrect and is contradicted by the article). I see these types of mistakes all the time in the AJC. I see similar mistakes in the terrible "Sunday Paper", as well. I have a degree in print journalism (which I'm proud NOT to be using) so these things really irk me.

Elderly Tucker man had struggled with burglar
Fight had moved into bedroom before shooting

By CHANDLER BROWN
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Published on: 03/21/08

It was about 11:30 p.m. one night this week when 81-year-old Robert Jenkins heard someone break down the door of his Tucker home.

Jenkins, a retired state transportation worker, grabbed is .38-caliber pistol from a bedroom closet and confronted a lone intruder in the kitchen.


"When he saw me, he said, 'Give me that gun,'" Jenkins recalled Friday. "Then he lunged at me, so I shot him."

The first bullet hit the man in the chest, Jenkins said, "but he kept lunging for me and beating me" in the head and chest.

"So I shot him again," Jenkins said. That bullet hit the intruder in the neck.

"I just wondered how much longer he was going to live because I saw blood flowing out across the floor," Jenkins said by phone from the hospital. "It seemed like an hour, but I guess it was 45 seconds, and he was dead."

Peggy Jenkins, 71, was in the couple's bedroom dialing 911.

"I heard two shots," she said. "I knew someone was dead."

That someone was 25-year-old Jynard Marshall, an Atlanta man who broke into the elderly couple's home near Lawrenceville Highway on Tuesday night. Marshall previously had served prison time on a robbery and drug conviction in Fulton County.

DeKalb County police said the shooting was justified and they did not plan to charge Robert Jenkins, who accidentally fired a shot through his hand and hit his head during the struggle.

He was treated and released from Grady Memorial Hospital on Wednesday, but was being treated at Emory University Hospital on Friday for dehydration and mild bleeding on the brain. He expects to be released today.

If it happened again, "I'd do the exact same thing," Robert Jenkins said. "But I hope I don't have to."

[newschool]

At first I thought Channel 2 News was a joke. Now I just find it sad and embarrassing.

The AJC obviously employs people who could not get hired anywhere else in the country.

[atlantamoi]

I work at CNN and am involved with news production FWIW. I'm actually not all that put off by the locals. I guess it's because I've worked in smaller markets and cringe just thinking about it. For music, radio does suck here, but I'd be picky in any market. However, I'm perfectly happy with the AM talk alternatives in this city.

Atlanta does fine by me.

[Georgia]

It has been known for awhile that the Atlanta Urinal and Constipation aka Journal and Constitution is a far left, biased, yellow jouralism rag.
Falls right in line with the Boston Globe, Baltimore Sun, and the LA Times to name a few.

I have found that with Atlanta along with many other metro outlets, it is best to follow the news through your local county newspaper. It is no different here than when I lived in Jersey. I chose the Burlington County Times over the dreaded Phildelphia Inquirer.

[SEAandATL]

I've never had any problems with AJC personally. It does keep me informed with whats going on back in my hometown. You want to see a really bad newspaper, check out the San Diego Union Tribune (uniontrib.com). They post some of the most random, pointless, and boring articles. All the articles allow people to post blogs, which really shows the mentality of San Diegans. Most of the blogging ends up turning into a political dispute, regardless of what the article is about (for example, an article about the weather gets someone to lash out a statement against Al Gore and global warming).

[RainyRainyDay]

I find the AJC to be a reasonably factual local newspaper. It's weak on international coverage, but that's typical of American newspapers, and it's getting weaker on national coverage because of cutbacks due to the challenges faced by all newspapers in this internet era.

To my mind, the AJC bends over backwards in trying to accommodate readers such as Georgia, who prefer right-wing fantasies to actual truth. You can still periodically read about how we had to invade Iraq because Saddam had WMDs and was cozy with Bin Laden, on the AJC letters page. When I complained to the AJC about this kind of stuff, they said they print a representative sample of letters received, whether or not they are factually accurate.

I don't know why they bother. There's no appeasing the right wing kooks.

[Brooke Wood]

Originally Posted by SEAandATL

I've never had any problems with AJC personally. It does keep me informed with whats going on back in my hometown. You want to see a really bad newspaper, check out the San Diego Union Tribune (uniontrib.com). They post some of the most random, pointless, and boring articles. All the articles allow people to post blogs, which really shows the mentality of San Diegans. Most of the blogging ends up turning into a political dispute, regardless of what the article is about (for example, an article about the weather gets someone to lash out a statement against Al Gore and global warming).

The AJC does this as well. Go to the AJC website and click on any article that has Comments or Discuss and you'll be shocked at some of the bloggers. They (AJC) do nothing to stop it - racist comments (regardless of the subject matter) on both sides and by the end of the day it is nothing but a "free for all".

As for the local media, I find it no different anywhere else in the country. The media, in most cases, has gotten ridiculous.

[plessthanpointohfive]

Dude, how did you get to be a moderator with all that trite crap coming out of your mouth? I believe your use of cliches is your achilles heel.

[mg83]

Ok I'm pretty shocked that a thread in the Atlanta forum would either turn political and/or racial...

I'm not even touching on a political bias either way, moreso the constant factual errors that really no respectful print journalist would make. If you're a sports journalist and you're making fact errors like completely calling someone the wrong NAME (we're not even talking about misspelling of a correct name), well, then the paper you work for loses much credibility.

On any given day, I could stroll over to AJC.com and feel like I'm reading one of those celebrity blogs like Perezhilton, OR like I'm reading some monthly newsletter for a sorority.

There's still some fairly decent media outlets around the country, and for Atlanta's size and scope, you'd think there would 1. be more variety (even a city like Tampa has more than one newspaper), 2. a hiring of journalists who do their research.

Don't even get me started about Atlanta radio... that's why I have satellite. Though I guess most bigger cities have really BAD radio, give or take a city like Seattle.