The same industry—transportation—that made Atlanta the business capital of the South also made it a regional media center. Along with bullets and beans, those early trains brought news from distant parts, news for which there was an eager and ever-growing audience.
Prior to the city being razed during the Civil War, four regular newspapers were joined by three Tennessee papers whose staffs took refuge in Atlanta and continued publishing. During Reconstruction, Atlanta struggled hard to get on its feet, and Northern newspaper reporters wired dispatches back home, making it clear that the bold young city was doing much more than sulking and nursing its wounds. Here’s how one newspaper writer described our furiously rebuilding city to his readers in the North:
“From all this ruin and devastation a new city is springing up with marvelous rapidity. Men rush about the streets with but little regard for comfort or pleasure, and yet find the days all too short and too few for the work at hand. Atlanta seems to be the center from which this new life radiates; it is the great Exchange, where you will find everybody if you only wait and watch.”
Media coverage like this helped Atlanta build its reputation as a Southern city focused on the future, not the past. This image was reinforced by national and international media reports from the great cotton expositions of 1881, 1887, and 1895.
To some degree, postwar Atlanta had the media to thank for setting the city on a course toward modernism. The visionary young newspaperman Henry Grady used his editorship of the Atlanta Constitution as the pulpit from which he preached the doctrine of a “New South” building its economy on industry, not just agriculture.
In 1922, the Atlanta Journal launched the South’s first commercial radio station, WSB-AM. (The call letters were later claimed to stand for “Welcome South, Brother.”) The 100-watt station’s studio was on the newspaper building’s fifth floor; its antenna was on the roof. Auto tycoon Henry Ford and movie star Rudolph Valentino were among early visitors to the tiny station. In 1948 WSB-TV, the first television station in the South, went on the air.
As technology improved, so did Atlanta’s presence on the national and international media scenes. Now programming that originates here is beamed 24 hours a day to every part of our nation and all over the world.
Atlantans and visitors to the city can take advantage of a dizzying range of media possibilities, including the morning daily newspaper, 13 television stations broadcast over the air (including 4 with extensive daily local news coverage), plus dozens of radio stations and scores of magazines, weekly and monthly newspapers, and small newsletters.
Atlanta can be a boomtown for those interested in becoming part of the media: Writers can get a jump start on their careers by offering their skills to any number of free press outlets; on-air talents can hone their skills on public access stations; and screen performers will find numerous opportunities to do ad agency work. In fact, the economic impact of the film and video industry in Georgia is substantial. Since the Georgia Office of Film and Videotape was created in 1973, more than 360 theatrical and made-for-TV movies have been filmed in our state. Of these, more than 180 were filmed, entirely or in part, on location around Atlanta. Drumline, Sharky’s Machine, Freejack, Basket Case III, The Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All, and Road Trip were among them. Scream II used Atlanta and its environs as a backdrop; Denzel Washington and a cast that included hundreds of local extras filmed Remember the Titans in and around town.
Two of the best-known made-in-Atlanta movies are Spike Lee’s School Daze, which was filmed on the campus of Atlanta University Center, and the 1989 Oscar-winner for best picture, Driving Miss Daisy, which includes scenes of Druid Hills, Little Five Points, The Temple on Peachtree Street, and other recognizable locations.
Tyler Perry built a megastudio complex on Atlanta’s southside in 2008, capitalizing on the success of many productions he’d made here. In 2009, the state caught on, passing a series of tax incentives to lure even more production and a virtual Hollywood-Atlanta was born. Soon Ashton Kutcher, Tom Selleck, and Katherine Heigl were spending two months in the city shooting their movie Five Killers.
In Atlanta you’ll never lack for something to read, listen to, or watch. The following is a roundup of the city’s best-known media outlets as well as lots of smaller ones. Whether you’re visiting Atlanta or relocating here, you’ll find our media to be a nonstop resource of information on the city’s life.