Orlando Sentinel opens newsroom at UCF campus
The Orlando Sentinel, which vacated its former home late last year, has a downtown presence again.
The newspaper is renting a small amount of space from the University of Central Florida at its downtown campus for a new newsroom, providing Sentinel journalists a place to work other than their homes.
An agreement between the Sentinel and UCF was finalized this week and includes the newspaper paying monthly rent for about 1,000 square feet of space.
UCF and the Sentinel have enjoyed a long relationship, particularly with the university’s Nicholson School of Communication and Media’s journalism program. In addition to endowing a scholarship for the students in the Nicholson School, hosting interns for a number of years and providing part-time job opportunities, most recently UCF student journalists partnered with the Sentinel in November to cover Election Day. This location is expected to help enhance the long-standing relationship with the Nicholson School and the university as a whole.
“Having a closer relationship with UCF’s journalism program is mutually beneficial,” said Julie Anderson, the Sentinel’s Editor-in-Chief. “The Sentinel newsroom can provide learning opportunities for the journalism students, and we benefit from the fresh perspectives and story ideas that college students bring to the table.”
Sentinel employees left their newsroom and started working from home in March 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic. In August, the newspaper’s owner, Tribune Publishing, made a decision to permanently leave the downtown facility at 633 N. Orange Ave., which opened in 1951.
“After careful deliberation, we have decided to permanently vacate our Orange Avenue office,” then-Publisher and General Manager Nancy Meyer said in an email to Sentinel employees. “This decision was not made lightly or hastily. Instead, amid a pandemic that prevents us from safely returning to the office for an undetermined period of time, the company decided to formally close the Orange Avenue office on October 30, 2020.”
Because of COVID restrictions, only a limited number of newsroom employees are allowed to use the Sentinel’s UCF space at any given time. The newspaper’s journalists have opportunities to reserve space to work in the newsroom as needed.
A recent survey of Sentinel journalists found most did not want to return to a newsroom full time, but preferred to have a schedule that allowed them to split time between working from home and from a newspaper workspace.
From its beginnings as the Orange County Reporter in 1876, the Orlando Sentinel has been covering Central Florida and its communities for 145 years. The newspaper’s staff today produces the Orlando Sentinel digital and print products as well as digital and print editions of the Spanish-language El Sentinel.