After five years in business, the Atlanta Civic Circle is shuttering due to funding challenges. It was one of the city’s few nonprofit civic newsrooms.
On June 1, the nonprofit newsroom announced via an open letter it would permanently cease operations after being “unable to secure the consistent funding needed to sustain our work.”
The organization was founded in 2018 by SaportaReport’s own Maria Saporta and community leader Bill Bolling and has been run by Executive Director Saba Long since 2021. The outlet focused on two of Atlanta’s pressing issues: Democracy and Housing Affordability.
Over the years, ACC became a trusted source on the city’s political landscape. It put out award-winning voter guides and policy initiative “POV (Priorities, Opinions and Values.)” The initiative will be transferred to Neighborhood Nexus, the metro area’s civic data group.
Atlanta Civic Circle’s closure creates a gap; the city no longer has a dedicated affordable housing reporter.
In a thread on X Sean Keenan, the outlet’s housing reporter, sounded the alarm. He started with ACC over seven years ago as its first reporter and has written about some of the city’s biggest issues: TADs, affordable housing metrics, blight taxes, homelessness, housing bills and more.
“Let’s try to imagine an Atlanta where we don’t have people covering these issues,” Keenan said in the thread. “That’s a possibility that’s looking increasingly likely – one that should send shivers down the spine of anyone who cares about housing affordability.”
The open letter from the Atlanta Civic Circle said the loss of reporters like Keenan “leaves our communities with fewer eyes on the institutions that affect their lives.”
Now, the outlet is working to archive its website so the reporting can continue to stay online, and its small but “scrappy” team of reporters will keep working at other outlets.
“A free press is essential to our democracy, and a community that loses its trusted news and information sources loses something it cannot easily get back,” the open letter said. “We hope our closure is a reminder of how much is at stake, and how much local journalism needs and deserves support.”
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