JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — After a season of furloughs, the Florida Times-Union is losing at least four staff positions through voluntary buyouts.
According to newspaper sources, four familiar names will be leaving, including longtime Editorial Page Editor Mike Clark, Enterprise Reporter Andrew Pantazi, award-winning Photographer Will Dickey and Reporter Sandy Strickland -- who has been reporting in the city for more than 50 years.
Their departures are part of company-wide buyouts by corporate parent Gannett. The company, which owns USA Today and more than 250 daily papers, is the largest newspaper owner in the country. Gannett offered the latest round of voluntary buyouts in October. According to the Poynter Institute, 500 were accepted.
Like a lot of papers, the TU has steadily lost staff over the past decade – to the recession, a declining subscription base, dwindling ad revenue and a rapidly changing media landscape. Since being acquired by GateHouse media in October 2017, the newsroom has lost 40 employees, and been able to hire just one – Education Reporter Emily Bloch. (GateHouse was acquired by Gannett last year.)
The newsroom is now down to just 24 positions, including a part-time staffer and Editor Mary Kelli Palka, compared to a staff of 85 when Palka took over in 2016. And those remaining staff members were forced to take a 25% pay cut since the start of the pandemic as part of mandatory furloughs.
The loss of Clark is significant; he’s been the voice of the paper’s editorial page for decades, guiding both political endorsements and advocacy of downtown development. Strickland carries immense institutional and city knowledge, showcased both in her “Call Box” column and in deeply sourced and historically rich obituaries. Will Dickey’s memorable portraits and photographs of courtroom drama are leavened by moments of serendipity in the natural environment. His departure leaves the metro daily with just a single photographer. And Pantazi, the paper’s lead data journalist, most recently covered the improper political alliances of the chair of the Duval County Canvassing Board, which led to the resignation of the board chair, a county judge.
The paper’s landmark reporting effort of the past year – the failed sale of the city utility JEA – sparked mass resignations and firings, and led to state and federal investigations, in addition to saving the city millions that would otherwise have subsidized a corrupt cash-incentive scheme. But while the series boosted digital subscriptions and made abundantly clear the importance of the city’s daily paper in the life of the city, it was not enough to protect the TU from the industry’s unrelenting decline.
"I've been here a little over seven years, and in that time the newsroom has contracted more than 70%," says TU Metro Columnist Nate Monroe. But he says corporate ownership of local publications creates a disconnect in the true value of newspapers.
"Between the pandemic and the last several years of social unrest and economic anxiety, journalism is more important that it's ever been," he says. "It's also less profitable than it's ever been ... and if that’s all you care about then all you are going to do is continue to cut newspapers."
Since 2004, the U.S. has lost more than 2,000 newspapers, leaving some large cities like New Orleans and Pittsburgh without a daily paper. Whether that is Jacksonville’s fate is unclear, but one thing is certain: the recent cuts will only make the work of producing a quality daily more difficult than ever.
"I think there will continue to be a Times-Union for the foreseeable future, but the devil is in the details," Monroe says. "I also expect the TU will look a lot different than it does today. I don’t know what that means. But I do expect it to be smaller and smaller and smaller. And I expect it to be more and more challenging to cover one of the largest cities in the U.S."
