Hello, your friendly moderator here.
Going forward, any Atlanta News article that is paywalled will be in /c/nonfree_atlanta_news
I've received quite a few kind and unfortunately some angry/nasty comments about articles from the (paywalled) Atlanta Journal Constitution (AJC) whose headlines are auto-published via bot to /c/AtlantaNews. I hope separating out AJC articles from "free" articles into separate communities will conclude this issue going forward.
As FYI, this Lemmy instance and theATL.social Mastodon instance are funded by subscribers, in a manner similar to how public radio works. If you enjoy the /c/AtlantaNews community, I would encourage you to consider a subscription via OpenCollective.
Second, for people in Atlanta, the AJC is the newspaper of record for the City. They have a paywall because that is how they make money. I don't know what else to say about that fact - it is what it is. Nearly all newspapers in the United States operate an a subscription model.
Finally, there are currently some very intense world events occuring. As a reminder, for any posts to yall.theATL.social, any comments promoting or advocating violence wlil result in an immediate ban from this server. Toxic and trolling behavior will result in post deletion for minor incidents and an immediate ban for severe incidents. All moderator actions will be logged in the modlog for your review.