On their website, JaxTrib.com, the team of Jacksonville, Florida's newest news outlet, posted, "Before it’s too late, we must rethink what news will look like and how it will be delivered in our community. For the Tributary, the future of local journalism is about accountability and accessibility. This nonprofit news hub feeds investigative stories to area partners, filling a gap in coverage of entrenched problems and solutions to strengthen the entire Northeast Florida news ecosystem.”
Founded by two newsroom veterans of Gannett’s Jacksonville (FL) Times-Union, Andrew Pantazi, the founding editor and Deirdre Conner, board chairman, worked for over one year to establish the nonprofit entity and find the necessary funding to establish an investigative news outlet that proudly shares their stories with other area media companies.
Moreover, Pantazi, who, while working for Gannett, helped organize the Times-Union’s newsroom into the NewsGuild-CWA, now boasts in his recruitment ads that the Tributary operates as a “workplace democracy” where the team makes all decisions collectively on hiring, compensation, budgeting, and the actual stories they cover and how they are edited before being published.
In this 146th episode of "E&P Reports," you will meet two integral founders of Jacksonville, Florida's newest nonprofit news start-up, The Tributary. On this broadcast are Andrew Pantazi, the founding editor and Deirdre Conner, board chairman, who will talk about the challenges of building a nonprofit media entity along with their new, innovative model of providing an investigative news outlet that shares content with other local news media.
