"Whatever comes next for this title, it will not be the same. I hope it will be good."
Founded on Edgewood Avenue, August 1978.
On the morning of August 14, 1978, a former Atlanta Constitution city-desk reporter named Richard E. Spoon walked into a small office at 145 Edgewood Avenue SE, put a deposit down on a leased Compugraphic 7500 phototypesetter, and began telling the people he had just hired what the paper was going to be.
It was a weekly broadsheet, then, called The Atlanta Pulse. The first issue — twelve pages, three columns of city-hall reporting, a long piece on a Carter-era housing-bond fight, and an unsigned editorial that has since become a kind of founding document of this masthead — went out to roughly four thousand readers.
Eight years later, in 1986, Spoon merged the weekly with a new long-form monthly he had been quietly developing in the back of the same office. He called the combined title Pulse Chronicles, a name meant to honor the two registers he believed a serious newspaper had to operate in at once: the urgency of the day, and the patience of the era.
By 1993 the magazine's circulation had reached 214,000. There were bureaus in Washington and New York. The masthead had grown to thirty-one. The reporting that came out of those years — on the 1996 Olympics, on the post-Katrina rebuilding of the Mississippi Gulf Coast, on a Houston trading desk called Enron — was twice recognized by the National Magazine Awards.
The years that followed were harder. Ad revenue collapsed across regional media. By 2014, when Spoon stepped back as publisher, the staff had been cut from thirty-one to nine. The magazine went quarterly in 2019 and operated in hibernation through the early 2020s.
In 2017 the paper was acquired by Peachtree Editorial Holdings, a small group of former Cox Media and CNN editors who wanted to preserve the masthead and the archive. Richard Spoon stayed on the board, with his family retaining a minority interest. He died in early 2025 after a long illness.
Later that year, the Spoon family and Peachtree sold the title, the operating company, and the print archive to a new ownership group with a single mandate: take the paper fully digital, rebuild the newsroom, and bring the 1978–2023 vault online. The Spoon family kept the founding editorial seat on the board and the naming rights to the Richard E. Spoon Reporting Grant. The relaunch is what you are reading now.
A timeline of the paper
- 1978–1986The Weekly PulseFounded August 14, 1978 by Richard E. Spoon, a former Atlanta Constitution city-desk reporter who mortgaged his Inman Park bungalow to start an independent press. Original masthead: a 12-person staff at 145 Edgewood Avenue SE. The weekly broadsheet — then called The Atlanta Pulse — covered city hall, the Carter-era South, civil rights, and a young cable network called CNN that had just opened down the street. Circulation grew from 4,000 to 38,000 over eight years.
- 1986–1994Going monthly long-formSpoon merged the weekly with a new long-form monthly, Chronicles, and renamed the combined title Pulse Chronicles. The masthead expanded to 31, with bureaus in Washington, D.C. and New York. Peak print circulation reached 214,000 in 1993.
- 1994–2008The magazine yearsNational distribution through Ingram. Two National Magazine Award nominations (1997 in Reporting, 2002 in Essays and Criticism). Long-form features on Enron's Southern utility contracts, the 1996 Olympics aftermath, and the post-Katrina rebuilding of the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
- 2008–2016The contractionAs classified and display advertising collapsed across regional media, the magazine cut staff from 31 to 9 and dropped print frequency from monthly to quarterly. Spoon stepped back from day-to-day publishing in 2014 but remained on the masthead as Editor Emeritus.
- 2017Preservation acquisitionAcquired by Peachtree Editorial Holdings LLC, a small group of former Cox Media and CNN editors who wanted to preserve the masthead and the archive. Richard E. Spoon remained on the board, with his family retaining a minority interest in the title.
- 2019–2024HibernationOperated as a quarterly print-only title with a skeleton editorial crew. Forty years of reporting sat in filing cabinets in a Castleberry Hill warehouse, awaiting digitization.
- 2025The Spoon family saleRichard E. Spoon died earlier in 2025 after a long illness. His family, together with Peachtree Editorial Holdings, sold the masthead, the archive, and the operating company to a new ownership group with a mandate to take the paper fully digital, rebuild the newsroom, and bring the 1978–2023 vault online. The Spoon family retained the founding editorial seat on the board and the naming rights to the Richard E. Spoon Reporting Grant.
- 2025–2026The digitization projectThe print archive was inventoried, scanned, OCR'd, and indexed by an outside vendor under the supervision of the new editorial team. Wave one of the digitized vault — a curated set of landmark pieces — is online; the full ~1,800-piece scan is being released in waves through 2027.
- 2026The digital relaunchPulse Chronicles returns as a daily digital newspaper and magazine under new ownership. A reconstituted editorial team operating from the same Atlanta address, with the masthead lineage that started on Edgewood Avenue in 1978.
Richard E. Spoon
Richard Spoon was born in Macon, Georgia, and grew up between there and his grandmother's house in Albany. He took his first newspaper job at sixteen, setting type for the Macon Telegraph. By twenty-three he was on the city desk of the Atlanta Constitution. He left in 1978 to start the paper you are reading.
He was, by every account from those who worked with him, a difficult editor and an unfailingly generous one. He believed reporters should be paid more than they were, that interns should be paid period, and that a good piece of journalism was worth holding the issue for. He remained on the board of this paper until his death in early 2025. His family's decision to entrust the masthead to new ownership later that year is the reason this paper still exists. We owe him, and them, everything.
The digitization project
When Peachtree acquired the title in 2017, the archive — forty-one volumes of bound print, plus the loose negatives and contact sheets of three staff photographers — was sitting in filing cabinets in a Castleberry Hill warehouse. It is still there. The cabinets are now climate-controlled.
Beginning in 2024, issues published between 1978 and 2023 are being scanned, run through OCR, fact-checked against the original, and indexed by section, byline, and date. The full catalogue runs to roughly 1,800 pieces; a curated first wave is online now in the vault, with later waves and the photo archive scheduled through 2027. We track what is verified, what is still being rebuilt, and how to check us on the transparency page.
We will not be revising or correcting the digitized pieces. They are presented as they appeared in print, with the language and the conventions of the years they were published. Where errors of fact have been identified, we add a note. Where the reporting has been overtaken by subsequent events, we let the reader notice on their own.
Today's Masthead
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