There can be some overwrought analogies and metaphors for what is happening with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The paper whose longtime motto is “Covers Dixie Like the Dew” is not a paper anymore, in the sense that is being printed on paper. The AJC, home to Furman Bisher and Lewis Grizzard, where writers such as Chris Mortensen’s byline appeared before he became a fixture on ESPN, will no longer be a printed newspaper. All three of them – along with so many other people who called the AJC their employer – are no longer with us. Neither is the printed version of that venerable news organization.

The AJC isn’t merely cutting the number of days it hits the streets. Not to just a couple of days a week. Not to once a week.

To not at all. Many papers – ours included – don’t come out as often as they once did. The Chattanooga paper, once seven days a week, is now once a week. They still have a digital edition every day, and their parent company went so far as to provide subscribers with an iPad so they could read the online edition every day. I haven’t asked how that’s worked out.

So many effects, from those a result of the digital age to those as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, have roiled newspapers. Many papers reduced the number of days of a printed newspaper during the pandemic. We did that where I was as the pandemic closed doors and kept homes and businesses battened down for the most part. Our economy, our way of life, have recovered – mostly – from the pandemic. Newspapers? Not so much. And now one of the South’s landmark papers, one of the nation’s best papers, is giving up print. It’s been a while since you could get an AJC here in Hinesville. Once the AJC started pulling back on its distribution, it got to the point where they weren’t even selling them in Macon anymore. I was working in North Carolina when I got a byline in the AJC. I was covering North Carolina basketball. How that team not only got into the NCAA Tournament but got to the Final Four that year is still a mystery. But I had written a story on Tar Heels freshman phenom Joe Forte – yeah, that’s how long ago it was – and the AJC got it and ran it. The paper I worked for and the AJC were both under the Cox umbrella at the time, so I could go into the system and read the entire AJC before it went to press that night. Which was kinda cool.

I didn’t know Forte had been a middle schooler in Smyrna before heading off to prep school. But the AJC sports desk did. That’s why they picked up the story.

Another aside – when I worked in Marietta, my boss was from Smyrna. He got itchy under the collar anytime someone said they were from Vinings. “You’re not from Vinings. You’re from Smyrna,” he would declare. “You callin’ the Vinings cops? No! There aren’t any! They’d be Smyrna police!” He was quite proud of his roots in The Jonquil City.

Later, I was living in Marietta and between jobs.

I had left my post at the paper there but had not yet started again at the Courier. A friend of mine at the AJC threw some work my way. I did high school basketball preview capsules. Got them done and got them sent in. Can’t remember if my name was attached, but I didn’t care about that. I cared about the check. I needed to pay rent. Let’s just say the AJC came through in a big way that month for me.

Over the years, I got to know and be friends with a number of the AJC’s old sports crew. I used to sit next to the late Ernie Reese in the Georgia Southern football press box. Ernie was as fine a person as I’ve ever known.

It was in the middle of Adrian Peterson’s freshman season at Southern where he made a move on the football field that had fans leaping from their seats. Ernie and I just looked at each other and shrugged our shoulders.

“What does it say when that kid makes a move that ought to be an ESPN highlight tonight and you and I look at each other and think, we’ve seen better from him already – and this is only the middle of his freshman season?” I said to Ernie. Ernie smiled and nodded his head. I miss him.

I sat next to the late and legendary Furman Bisher a couple of times – once at dinner and once in a Masters press room during a Jack Nicklaus pre-tournament press conference. I went head-to- head with the late Jack Wilkinson – a tremendous guy and a great writer – and his trivia team on a weekly basis at Manuel’s Tavern. Drue Miller, who was here at the Courier in the ’90s, worked at the AJC for more than 20 years too.

Newspapers will continue. How they approach that future is something we ask ourselves a lot, almost on a daily basis. I can affirm that we as a newspaper intend to be here for a good long while. It’s why I came back.

While cable TV news is more commentary than news, and relying on social media is worth the paper it’s printed on, newspapers have tried to continue to be responsible and trustworthy. The key word is tried.

But a standard bearer such as the AJC giving up print is more than a sign of the times. It’s a loss, plain and simple, but you can’t find on it on the agate of their sports page. You’ll feel it with empty hands that have no pages to turn, no editorial to boil your blood, no crossword to vex you with a clue about a Celebes ox.

As someone who read the AJC as often as he could from the time I was a much younger man, it isn’t tragic, but it is sad.