Jacksonville Today is a free, nonprofit digital news outlet covering the Jacksonville, Florida metro area as part of WJCT Public Media. The newsroom reaches more than 60,000 daily newsletter subscribers across five Northeast Florida counties, with additional distribution through its website, a Jacksonville Public Library widget, and editorial partnerships. The Jacksonville Today newsletter arrives Monday-Saturday around 6 a.m. Jacksonville Today is supported by reader donations, foundation grants, major gifts, newsletter advertising and syndication revenue.
The website includes three interactive features run consistently. The Jacksonville News Quiz, updated every Friday, lets readers test their knowledge of current events, drawing hundreds of consistent return visitors. The Number of the Week translates one civic data point into a visual, covering local subjects from school bus punctuality to sports team stats to house fire response times. In July 2025, the newsroom added an audio player to every article (see “listen” button at the top of the article). The small percentage of readers who use it spend nearly double the time on the page, and 71% complete the full playback.
The newsroom has also found creative uses of technology. #AskJAXTDY invites readers to submit questions to investigate; the resulting answers are shared not only through jaxtoday.org but also on the website of News4Jax, the dominant local TV news station, through a content partnership. A reader-sourced restaurant guide collects recommendations through the newsletter welcome email, pins them on a custom Google Map, and publishes the list as part of a growing “How to Jax” guide series. Our audience development has used paid social media advertising on Meta and TikTok to reach new readers. Paid social advertising on Meta and TikTok, managed in-house, added 31,567 subscribers during this period while holding a 44% average open rate.
Jacksonville Today uses Instagram and Facebook to create video reels that extend stories into different media. An RSS feed automatically posts stories to Jacksonville Today‘s Nextdoor page, where Nextdoor’s AI-assisted prompts generate reader discussion in the comments. A periodic “Your Take” newsletter feature invites readers to share perspectives on a story and publishes selected responses in the next edition. Between April 2025 and March 2026, reporters attended six neighborhood listening sessions across the region, including historically redlined areas of West Jacksonville, the neighborhood around Jacksonville University, the beaches communities, and Mandarin. Story ideas from those sessions shaped coverage decisions, and a dedicated engagement reporter will be hired this year to carry the work forward.
“The Show Must Go On,” a four-part investigative series by reporter Megan Mallicoat into teacher misconduct at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts, published in July 2025, is a finalist for Best Investigative Journalism in the 2026 Nonprofit News Awards, presented by the Institute for Nonprofit News. Megan’s education reporting also attracted extra match funds from the MacArthur Foundation at the end of 2025. Past recognition for Jacksonville Today includes a LION Publishers Sustainability Award for Product of the Year for our newsletter, and an OJA finalist selection for Excellence in Newsletters in 2023.
