Florida Today Reinventing the News
Publisher Retooling Company for Digital Age
On the large bank of high-definition screens, video feeds stream breaking headlines and updates from around the state, country and world, while their homepage and its traffic analytics dominate the video landscape, which is refreshed constantly to monitor the flow of visitors to the site. Correspondents, photographers and videographers – all in view of the incoming flow of news – produce, edit and refine content to keep the website fresh based on the interests of their visitors.
No, this isn’t the corporate headquarters of Google or MSN.com but the nerve center of FLORIDA TODAY, the publisher of Brevard’s local daily newspaper and a mainstay in the community for over forty years.
In an industry that has been hit hard by new technology, shifting demographics and changing demands, the Gannett Company-owned publisher is retooling its business model for the 21st century. “Our mission is to be the number one news source in the county,” says FLORIDA TODAY president and publisher Mark Mikolajczyk, “regardless of the way people want to receive their news.”
And that’s exactly what Mikolajczyk and his team set out to do. In July 2006, FloridaToday.com shifted from once daily to 24/7 updates, thus beginning a companywide focus on digital media. The newsroom of yesteryear has morphed into a contemporary information center supported by over 100 journalists, many of whom have been trained in the art of digital photography and videography along with their traditional written journalism skills.
In addition to their website, FLORIDA TODAY has partnered with Brevard Community College to provide weekday news reports – “Today in Brevard” airs Monday through Friday at 11:30 a.m., 4:30 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. – and other local programming on WBCC (Bright House channel 5). “We’re expanding and upgrading our in-house broadcast facility to a state-of-the-art hi-def studio,” explained Mikolajczyk. With no true local television affiliate based in Brevard County, FLORIDA TODAY is attempting to provide an unfulfilled need of the community.
In addition to cable television, FLORIDA TODAY has found its video production to have multi-uses streaming from its website, creating a more interesting online experience for its visitors. “By monitoring the activity on our website we can better provide content – stories, images and video – to our online visitors in real time,” said Bob Stover, executive editor.
Facing Down the Newspaper Industry
While FLORIDA TODAY continues diversifying the delivery of news through digital media sources, no one is throwing out the baby with the bath water. The company has made significant capital investments in printing equipment to improve the quality of the newspaper, particularly in its ability to print in color, a vision USA Today and FLORIDA TODAY founder Al Neuharth had as early as the late 1960s. Additionally, Stover is overseeing focus groups on specific editorial sections to get reader feedback for continuing refinement of the newspaper’s content.
But capital investment, along with reductions in workforce and other cost-cutting efforts, may only be enough to stabilize an industry that some critics have said cannot survive long-term. “Sometimes, we [newspaper executives] talk about our own sins too much,” remarked Mikolajczyk. The reality is that despite record losses industrywide – newspaper advertising revenues have been estimated to have dropped 43% in the last three years according to the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism conducted by the Pew Research Center in Washington D.C. – FLORIDA TODAY management feels optimistic about the future. “The bleeding has stopped, recent efforts to expand circulation are working and local advertising is starting to increase,” reported Mikolajczyk.
The challenge facing many newspaper publishers going through this same transition from print to digital media is the financial business model. According to Mikolajczyk, “there is not as much revenue potential on the web as there is in print.” Wall Street seems to agree and has been hammering newspaper stocks for the past decade. Gannett stock (NYSE: GCI), for example, was trading for $90 a share in early 2004 before crashing to $1.85 in March 2009; it currently is trading in the $16 range.
A Community Guardian
Despite the financial challenges facing its industry, FLORIDA TODAY understands and embraces its responsibility to the community. “Not only are we the watchdog, keeping the public informed and holding our local officials accountable, but we feel responsible for mobilizing the community when needed,” said Mikolajczyk. Recently, for example, FLORIDA TODAY stepped in to host a local space forum to facilitate a dialogue with elected officials and space experts sharing the current status, challenges and prognosis for NASA and this important economic engine in Brevard. Similarly, FLORIDA TODAY assumed a key role in Project Hunger, a grassroots effort to restock our local food pantries and ensure children receive healthy meals. Mikolajczyk even headed up this past year’s United Way of Brevard campaign, which raised a record $6.7 million.
Despite its many contributions to the community, FLORIDA TODAY still receives its share of criticism from locals who opine its editorial “leans to the left.” A self-proclaimed “Republican with a heart,” Mikolajczyk finds this perception “unfair.”
“It’s our responsibility to the community to determine what is the right thing to do… which doesn’t come without making some folks upset,” explains Mikolajczyk.
Perhaps the evolution of FLORIDA TODAY – from a local daily newspaper to a multi-platform news source – will also raise controversy among some long-time Brevard residents and newspaper readers. But there’s a whole new generation of FLORIDA TODAY customers embracing the change, whether getting their news via television, Internet, smart phone, email, tweets, blogs, social media or good old fashioned ink on newsprint.
Technology and consumer-driven demand are changing the face of the newspaper business and FLORIDA TODAY is changing right along with them.
Meet the Publisher
Mark Mikolajczyk, president and publisher
FLORIDA TODAY
Age: 49
Hometown: Parma, Ohio
Education: Rochester Institute of Technology, Bachelor of Science in Printing Management & Technology
Work Experience: 28 years with Gannett Company, Inc. starting in 1982 as a production coordinator at USA Today. He later worked at the Cincinnati Enquirer and the Times Herald in Port Huron, Michigan before joining Gannett’s Newspaper Division in 1996 where he served as the president and CEO of the Detroit Newspaper Partnership before taking over the reigns at FLORIDA TODAY in 2006.
Family: Mark and his wife Kim have been married 23 year and are raising four children, ages 12-19, in their Satellite Beach home
