AJC News

As a longtime reader (40 years!) of the AJC, I am terribly disappointed in the quality and depth of the paper since transitioning from print to digital. I had high hopes that the purely digital edition would be both more timely and robust. Instead, I have noted that the preponderance of coverage is short and shallow, more like the USA Today model. This is extremely disappointing after becoming accustomed to in depth articles which were the paper’s hallmark. After being subjected to a myriad number of reasons from the AJC as to why it made sense to abandon print, the paper has lost its way and become another typical vehicle for those with a short attention span, similar to the commercial network’s nightly news programs. I now am forced to pivot to the NY Times for adequate news coverage along with the PBS News Hour. It’s a sad to see our local paper become a shadow of what it was.

Ever since I subscribed to the AJC, I’ve felt so much more involved with my local community and state community at large. I am more informed with what’s happening on the local level, state level, and beyond. It also makes the news feel more personal, reading stories that happened in my city or in a city nearby. I’d also highly recommend their podcast Politically Georgia which they offer for free on streaming services. I listen to that podcast everyday on the way to work, and I feel more informed and involved because of it.

Like others have said, it’s impossible to scroll down on the main feed to read more stories because the app will automatically jump back to the top of the page every 5-6 seconds. It makes it impossible to use and I’ve stopped reading the AJC as a result. Since there’s no search function there’s no other way to find articles. It is also impossible to access the sports section in the app, because none of the choices in the top menu bar are for sports. That is really annoying because AJC publishes a ton of good articles about the Braves and I’m unable to even access them through the app. Articles in the app are also limited to those published in the last few days. If I miss a notification about an article I want to read and click on it several days later, it will tell me the article is no longer available. You’d find the same thing if you were able to successfully scroll down all the way to the bottom of each news category. I’ve never seen this happen for any other news app, or at least not with such a limited time frame of articles included. Finally, most apps now have a dark mode, but this one doesn’t. That feature would be greatly appreciated. I know there is also the ePaper app and I have also used that in the past, but that app is also filled with its own problems (some of which are the same) and isn’t really a replacement on iPhones, particularly my iPhone 13 mini.