Constitution Amended: Constitution Amended

Until it came time to move, the Atlanta Constitution never realized how much junk it had around the house. There was a steamboat wheel in a tobacco-stained corner, a stuffed mallard duck suspended uncertainly over the city desk, a sign that said: DON’T STARE AT THE EDITOR—YOU MAY BE CRAZY YOURSELF SOME DAY.

Last week, the Constitution moved, lock, stock & stuffed duck from its cluttered, turreted brick building to a new, $1,500,000, streamlined, aluminum-trimmed plant. The new building was, roughly, Georgia-shaped. To prepare the staff for the shock of a clean newsroom with wastebaskets and ash trays, a quiet memo was issued: “We are going to have the desks dusted every night.”

Paper with a Purpose. Bouncy Editor Ralph (Waldo) Emerson McGill, a onetime sportwriter, had expanded the neglected sports section and hiked wages, and there was talk of changes to come. The Constitution needed them.

In the days of Editor Henry W. Grady, in the ’80s, the paper had been a Southern New York Times, crusading to build a “new South.” As recently as 1931, it won a Pulitzer Prize for exposing municipal corruption. But Owner Clark Ho well Sr. had been less concerned with crusades than with airing his conservative opinions, and the paper had gone on the skids.

Eight years ago, the Constitution muffed a chance to buy both the rival Journal and Hearst’s Georgian and thus dominate the Atlanta area. Instead, James M. Cox grabbed them. By killing the Georgian and adding its circulation to the Journal’s, Cox made it a bigger (circ.231,000)—and more aggressive—daily than the Constitution (now 180,000).

Reporter with a Hope. In his efforts to catch up, Editor McGill has worked hard to make a reputation as a “fighting Southern liberal” in the Ku Klux Klan’s home town. In 1942, he was a big help in keeping Gene Talmadge out of the Governor’s mansion and getting Ellis Arnall in.

McGill’s editorial page is often inconsistent and spotty, but it is the most widely read in Atlanta. His own folksy column outdraws every other feature in the paper. A better reporter than executive, McGill likes to travel (he has been overseas four times in five years) and cover big stories himself, whether a Gone With the Wind premiere or the Nürnberg trials. He now gets pretty much of a free hand from Publisher Clark Howell Jr., and has real hope of building up the Constitution’s prestige to match its plant.