The Orlando Sentinel Cuts Jobs In The Newsroom

Central Florida Public Media | By Catherine Welch

Published December 29, 2015 at 3:52 PM EST

The Orlando Sentinel will be starting the new year with fewer people in its newsroom.

The Tribune Publishing Company owns the Orlando Sentinel and ten other papers. The Poynter Institute for Media Studies reported back in September that Tribune was looking to cut editorial expenses by roughly $10 million.

According to emails obtained by WMFE, Tribune announced a voluntary buyout in early October. The plan offers pay based on the number of years worked at the paper, employees who put in more than 27 years got a year’s worth of pay.

Fourteen newsroom staff took the buyout, including columnist Darryl Owens and transportation reporter Dan Tracy. The paper will hire eight new employees, leaving six positions empty.

Catherine Welch

Now that she manages a full newsroom she files less regularly for NPR’s All Things Considered, Morning Edition and Weekend Edition. In 2009 she was part of an NPR series on America’s Battalion out of Camp Lejeune, NC following Marine families during the battalion’s deployment to southern Afghanistan. And because Wilmington was the national test market for the digital television conversion, she became a quasi-expert on DTV, filing stories for NPR on the topic.

See stories by Catherine Welch