Atlanta was not yet a city of two major newspapers who politely contradicted each other. That came later. During Franks trial, competing newspapers were omnipresent, each pressed to produce those multiple editions daily so that the news of which there was only so much got bled dry and was reduced to opinion, scandalmongering and, sometimes, wholesale lies. They serviced the ravenous appetite of the people of Atlanta and beyond, throughout the state, throughout the country and, eventually, throughout Europe.

When it came to Franks trial, a cacophony of loud voices argued the case in print, with the intention of making a reputation or whipping up sales. Some were eager to take down a New York Jewish factory manager in the service of ending child labor. Some were socialists. Others were garden-variety Jew haters. The result? Antisemitic hysteria, death by lynching and savage treatment of Franks corpse.

During the trial, the Atlanta Journal performed as Franks chief defender, while the Atlanta Constitution straddled the fence or performed as friend to the prosecution. They, too, were not above large-type headlines and illustrations, photographs from the morgue, light-fingered reporters, purloined evidence. Sworn enemies might be too harsh a term, but the two newspapers didnt like each other. That they could come together 35 years later in a historic joint operating agreement maintaining two newsrooms to keep ideological antagonists apart and the Constitutions morning edition the Journals afternoon intact was something of a miracle. Fifty years after that, the walls of Jericho fell and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution merged into a single pressroom and one harmonious voice.

Media in 2024 is as wild as anything Frank knew but on a grander, more expansive scale. To feed it, we have presidential candidates and first sons subject to multiple trials that vamp the publics attention, and foreign wars used to inflame the impressionable. The internet has created innumerable news portals so that one can pick and choose support for ones preconceived notions as easily as dropping a nickel in the palm of a late-edition hawker in 1913. Again, the molding of public opinion is in the grasp of too many reckless and often powerful hands.

As we teeter on the brink of despair that the two ends of our discourse left and right shall ever meet again, we need to believe that the kind of hopefulness, of civility, the kind of commitment to years of trust-building that created The Atlanta Journal-Constitution 75 years ago is not impossible to achieve again.

To regard her history inspires hope that all over the country antagonistic opinion makers recognize the blowtorch methods of the distant and recent pasts are clearly not going to work. So much has burned down already.

That The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has survived nearly a centurys worth of conflict and compromise is proof of its strength. As always, the creation of consensus while entertaining conflicting views is a mighty achievement.

Bravo.

Mary Glickman is author of six historical novels focused on antisemitism and racism in the Deep South. Her latest book, Aint No Grave, focused on the Leo Frank tragedy, was published July 9.

Excerpt from:

What we can learn from Leo Franks 1915 lynching - The Atlanta Journal Constitution