Nonprofit newsroom Atlanta Civic Circle announced Monday it is shutting down, citing difficulties securing consistent funding amid a difficult operating environment for news media.
For more than five years, ACC has covered housing affordability, labor rights and local government, focused on what it describes as solutions-oriented reporting in the region. A key part of the organization was that any of its content would be free for any outlet to republish, with attribution, to their readers.
In a farewell letter published to its website Monday evening, the organization said its guiding principle has been that “metro Atlanta deserves journalism that genuinely engages and is informed by residents.”
The disruption of the internet, artificial intelligence and changing media habits is affecting nonprofit and for-profit outlets, including newspapers, digital upstarts, radio stations and television, with many outlets shedding jobs.
ACC is not the only nonprofit newsroom in Atlanta to shut its doors within the past month. Public health news operation Healthbeat announced it was ending its coverage in Atlanta after two years, with its publisher, Civic News Co., writing in a news release it could not afford to continue.
in an email Tuesday to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, ACC executive director Saba Long said the organization looked for ways to diversify its revenue. This led to the 2023 creation of Atlanta POV, a civic engagement initiative that surveyed metro Atlanta residents on specific issues and provided the insights to civic and government leaders.
“Innovative ideas take time and resources to fully bring to life,” Long said in the email. “But media and civic organizations aren’t afforded the runway the private sector takes for granted.”
In its letter, ACC described the media ecosystem in Atlanta as “fragile,” with newsrooms across the city on “precarious financial footing.” It noted its departure means fewer eyes on institutions affecting people’s lives and no reporter dedicated to affordable housing in Atlanta.
In the world of nonprofit news, it’s a challenge to land consistent sources of funding. Although large donor money is available, it doesn’t always trickle down to small organizations attempting to finance a full-fledged news team.
Keith Pepper, owner and publisher of hyperlocal for-profit news organization Rough Draft Atlanta, said the nonprofit model for journalism has gotten tougher in today’s economic and political climate with “multiple nonprofit newsrooms competing for the same reader attention and the same donor dollars.”
Besides the two biggest operations in public media groups WABE and GPB, Pepper noted other Atlanta-based nonprofit news operations each trying to carve out niches, such as Canopy Atlanta, 285 South, Atlanta Community Press Collective, Capitol Beat, Georgia Recorder, Atlanta Voice and Capital B.
Credit: Saba Long
Credit: Saba Long
ACC was a small operation, with three reporters, a rotating intern and editor. It recently struck a partnership with Canopy Atlanta with support from the Partnership for Southern Equity nonprofit to launch Cost of Living, a reporting series that examined the price residents pay to live in metro Atlanta.
In its letter, ACC said it was working to archive its site, and will share further details as they become available. Its civic engagement and policy initiative POV will be transferred to data tool Neighborhood Nexus, which is sponsored by the Community Foundation of Greater Atlanta.
Maria Saporta, a former Atlanta Journal-Constitution business columnist who has run her own for-profit journalistic operation SaportaReport since 2009, helped start Atlanta Civic Circle with Bill Bolling, founder of the Atlanta Community Food Bank. It initially began as a venture under SaportaReport.
Credit: KRYS
Credit: KRYS
“We thought the future was nonprofit journalism,” Saporta said, noting she thought Atlanta Civic Circle would complement her publication by doing “deep dive journalism on major challenges facing the city.”
She left Atlanta Civic Circle in 2022 but declined to say why. Though she is no longer part of the group, she said the news still left her “heartbroken.”
Atlanta Civic Circle on its website listed its donors as the Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership, Robert W. Woodruff Foundation, Andrew W. Nelson Foundation, the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta and others.
As a 501(c) 3 nonprofit group, Atlanta Civic Circle was supposed to file an annual 990 with the federal government outlining its finances. The most recent 990 available online goes back to 2021 when it generated $280,000 in revenue.
Pepper praised Atlanta Civic Circle’s work “covering topics that rarely drive clicks but matter to people’s daily lives.”
At the same time, he is noticing “a lot of news fatigue and avoidance and people aren’t willing to pay for hard news, no matter how important it is in their lives.”
Long said she’d like to see funders come together to endow a housing beat at one or more outlets in metro Atlanta. She also wants to see Georgia’s media outlets collaborate on a statewide look at housing ahead of the 2027-2028 legislative session. A coordinated reporting effort would give lawmakers, advocates and voters “the kind of shared evidence base this issue deserves.”
“Legacy is a strange word for something so recent, but if ACC leaves anything behind, I hope it’s a clearer sense of what’s possible and what’s at stake,” Long said.
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