Buyouts take a fresh bite of Jacksonville’s daily paper

Big stories and essential reporting don’t protect the Florida Times-Union from a fresh round of staff cuts.

After a season of furloughs, the Florida Times-Union is losing at least four staff positions through voluntary buyouts...

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 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."

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