Florida Today
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Florida Today | |
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 The July 27, 2005 front page of Florida Today |
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| Type | Daily newspaper |
| Format | Broadsheet |
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| Owner | Gannett Company |
| Editor | Terry Eberle |
| Founded | |
| Price | Daily: USD 0.50 Sunday: USD 1.50 |
| Headquarters | 1 Gannett Plaza Melbourne, FL 32940  United States |
| Circulation | Daily: 85,000 Sunday: 110,000 |
| ISSN | 1051-8304 |
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| Website: floridatoday.com | |
Florida Today is the major daily newspaper serving Melbourne, Brevard County and the Space Coast region of Florida. It was founded in 1966 by the Gannett corporation.[1]
In addition to its regular daily publication, Florida Today publishes four weekly and eight biweekly community newspapers which are tailored for distinct neighborhoods within Brevard County. Daily circulation (50¢/issue) of the main publication is about 85,000, with Sunday circulation ($1.50/issue) is about 110,000. Circulation of the paper tends to be higher in the winter, lower in summer.
Contents |
[edit] Teen section
The teen section The Verge was "by, for and about teens." The section was composed by 40 students, as long as they were under 20 (most were in local high schools, but a few attended the local Brevard Community College). The section had regular articles in rotation such as Generation Gaps, where teens and someone from a different generation (parent, teacher, coach, etc.) wrote opposing views to a topic and regulated riots, with the same premise with two Verge writers. The section began expanding into other parts of the paper and throughout the week. It was originally published on the back of the Sunday's People section.
At a 2006 conference, The Verge won its first two national awards: First and Second Place for Best News Story.
In May of 2007, it was announced that The Verge would be integrated with the paper, rather than have its own section.
[edit] In the beginning
Gannett's Florida Today, initially simply Today, was built at the Cocoa Tribune, to compete with the regional and dominant Orlando Sentinel and the state-wide Miami Herald. When Gannett (Gannett Florida) acquired the Cocoa newspaper, it also acquired the Titusville Star-Advocate in the county seat to the north, the Melbourne Times to the south, and the tabloid weekly Eau Gallie Courier, the latter published from the Cocoa facility.
In order to guarantee advertisers a minimum circulation, Gannett delivered papers at no cost to all residences in Brevard County for the first two weeks of the newspaper's life. It continued this free circulation promotion to specific parts of the county until its circulation met the minimum set for the advertisers.
Both the Titusville and Melbourne papers maintained their independence and continued to be printed at each publication's own facility.
Source: John Glenn, former stoneman at Today's start-up and for the Eau Gallie Courier, and (later) reporter at the Titusville Star-Advocate.
Florida Today owns the Central Florida Future, originally the University of Central Florida school newspaper. It is distributed free of charge on campus as well as through several nearby businesses.
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ http://www.gannett.com/map/history.htm retrieved on June 4, 2007
