Synopsis
In the midst of a publishing revolution, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, one of America's most storied institutions of journalism, is experimenting with new tools to tell stories in preparation for the end of print in the digital.
An official selection of the Academy Award qualifying Atlanta Film Festival and Winner of Best Documentary Short at the 2016 Maverick Movie Awards, Digital Edition is directed by James Kicklighter and produced by Elizabeth Kaiser.
- Director · Producer
- James Kicklighter
- Producers
- James Kicklighter, Elizabeth Kaiser
- Cinematographer
- Kyle Maddux-Lawrence
- Editor
- James Kicklighter
- Composer
- Nicolas Repetto
Videos
Press
“Technology is always moving, and as such, so creators should be. We have to meet audiences on whatever platform and screen they choose. If we only select traditional media pathways, then we will die along with them.”
“James Kicklighter (Digital Edition) discusses starting his career at Georgia Southern University, traveling to India, and directing videos for the Hillary Clinton campaign! ”
“I’ve seen projects from Mr. Kicklighter before, and expected nothing less than a well rounded, polished experience. What I didn’t expect was a topic featuring a much broader scope than the title suggests…a fine short film covering a lot of different aspects from the industry. Digital Edition would look right at home on your favorite television channel.”
“Filled with a surprising amount of content for a 28-minute film along with nicely done graphics that balance out the interviews, Digital Edition is an entertaining and informative short doc that will likely resonate most with those who consider themselves to be information geeks and journalistic connoisseurs.”
“It really is easy to see that Digital Edition ticks all the boxes when it comes to how a short documentary should look and make you feel. James Kicklighter and his crew know their craft and with Digital Edition, they have created a documentary that I really enjoyed watching.”
Gallery
Director's Notes
In 2016, I got an email from Bert Roughton, Jr. He was the Senior Managing Editor of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Southern newspaper of record, and the institution my family had read at the breakfast table for as long as I’d been alive. The AJC was 148 years old. The internet was barely 25. And Bert wanted to know if I’d come document what was happening inside the building.
What was happening, depending on who you asked, was either an existential crisis or the most exciting reinvention in the paper’s history. I went in agnostic. I came out convinced it was both.
Digital Edition is a 26-minute portrait of one of America’s most storied journalism institutions trying to figure out how to survive the end of print. We embedded with reporters, editors, podcast producers, and digital strategists, including Bert, then-editor-in-chief Kevin Riley, columnist Jennifer Brett, and political reporter Greg Bluestein. We filmed them experimenting with Snapchat, with podcasts modeled after Serial, with reporter blogs, with whatever new tool seemed like it might let them keep doing the work. The phrase that kept coming up was adapt or die. I tried to make a film that took both halves of that phrase seriously.
What struck me, and what still strikes me about that footage now, is how unshowily brave most of the people in the building were. They weren’t being paid to be on the cutting edge. They were being paid to do journalism, and they were having to relearn the entire delivery mechanism on the fly because the alternative was to watch a 148-year-old institution collapse on their watch. The veteran reporters were the ones I found myself moved by most. They had every right to be cynical, and they weren’t. They were learning Twitter at 60 because the work mattered.
In August of 2025, the AJC announced that it would end its printed edition at the end of the year. The last paper rolled off the presses on December 31, 2025. The film I made in 2016 turned out, almost without my meaning it to, to be a record of the final chapter of one of the great American daily newspapers in print. I’m not glad about that. But I’m glad we caught it.
This film is for everyone who ever fed quarters into a newspaper box, and for everyone who’s never going to. It’s about an institution. It’s about a profession. And underneath both of those, it’s about the question I keep returning to in my work: what do we owe the people whose job is to tell us the truth?
— James Kicklighter