The Atlanta Journal-Constitution eliminated a slate of top executive jobs on Wednesday, shocking staffers after president and publisher Paul Curran announced a major leadership restructuring, Status is reporting.
The cuts include the newspaper’s chief financial officer, chief marketing officer, chief operating officer, head of content development and head of people.
The announcement landed less than three months after Curran took over the Cox Enterprises-owned newsroom.
The leadership purge follows earlier cost-cutting. In February, the AJC laid off about 50 employees — roughly 15 percent of its workforce — with about half of those jobs coming from the newsroom. Cox has said it remains committed to the paper’s journalism, while steering the company toward a leaner digital business.
The AJC is Atlanta’s flagship news organization and the largest U.S. metro paper to abandon print. Curran’s first major personnel move signals that the next phase of that transformation will be driven as much by management consolidation as by new products or reporting. Staffers learned of the executive cuts in an internal announcement that left several of the paper’s highest-ranking non-newsroom roles gone in a single day.