New year bringing changes for Jacksonville Daily Record in print
The new year is the beginning of a new business model for the Jacksonville Daily Record and Jacksonville Record & Observer.
Responding to the evolving marketplace and new public-notice advertising laws enacted by the state Legislature, the Daily Record print edition and the free Record & Observer are merging to become the weekly Jacksonville Daily Record, distributed every Thursday beginning Jan. 6.
“It saddens me to take this step with this historic Jacksonville institution, which, amazingly, has published daily for almost 110 years, but we’re facing a cardinal rule of business: If you want to remain viable, you must adjust with the times,” said Matt Walsh, publisher of the Daily Record and CEO of Observer Media Group.
Walsh purchased the newspaper in 2017, making it part of the OMG family of business and community newspapers in Florida.
The company’s portfolio comprises four free community weeklies in the Sarasota-Bradenton market; two free weeklies serving the east coast markets in Palm Coast/Flagler County and Ormond Beach; two free weeklies serving Winter Garden, Windermere, Ocoee and Horizon West in Orange County; the Business Observer, a paid-circulation weekly with subscribers primarily from Tampa to Naples; and the Jacksonville Daily Record.
The move to weekly publication is not the first transition in the past 109 years for Jacksonville’s oldest business newspaper.