The Atlanta Journal-Constitution celebrates 150 years

ATLANTA — The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is celebrating its 150th anniversary this weekend.

The news icon published its first paper this day in 1868.

Make sure to pick up the AJC's special anniversary edition of its newspaper on Sunday. 

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is the result of the merger between The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution in 2001.

The paper has won numerous prestigious awards over the decades, including Pulitzer Prizes.

The Journal-Constitution is among the top 20 newspapers in circulation nationwide and is the most influential newspaper voice in Georgia.

The Atlanta Constitution was founded when Carey Wentworth Styles and two partners, James H. Anderson and W. A. Hemphill bought the Atlanta Daily Opinion newspaper and renamed it The Atlanta Constitution, beginning publication on June 16, 1868.

A charter subscription to this early paper cost $10 a year, $1 a month. Atlanta was still under martial law during the Reconstruction era. The founders advocated the return of a constitutional government as had existed before the Civil War, thus the name. Styles sold out to Hemphill and his future father-in-law Anderson six months later. Not long after that Anderson turned his share over to Hemphill who was then the controlling stockholder until 1876.

In 1909, The Constitution hires its first photographer, Francis E. Price. His first photo, of some cars on a cross-country trip, appears on December 12.

In 2001, the last Atlanta Journal is published on November 2. The paper becomes the Atlanta Journal-Constitution seven days a week the next day.

Cox Media Group