Nate Monroe takes over The Tributary, promises ‘high-impact journalism’

A high-profile Florida columnist is leaving the USA Today network for a new role effective Jan. 27.

True to form, he’s already planning the long-range development of the new project to which he’s contributing his considerable talents.

Nate Monroe, whose columns were traffic drivers for The Florida Times-Union and then for the statewide chain, will replace Andrew Pantazi, another former T-U scribe, as Executive Editor of The Tributary.

Monroe has hardware attesting to his skills and track record, including having taken the Frances DeVore Award for Public Service and the Lucy Morgan Award for In-Depth Reporting from the Florida Press Club, winning the Sunshine State Awards Reporter of the Year, earning a share of the 2017 Integrity Florida Award for Public Corruption Reporting from the Society of Professional Journalists’ Florida chapter, and a share of the Florida Press Club’s Freedom of Information Award in 2016.

In a phone conversation Tuesday, Monroe conveyed his excitement about the new role while showing appreciation for the path that got him there.

“I’ve had a number of roles at the Times-Union in the 11-plus years I’ve been there and I’ve been writing a column now since 2019. That’s a good stretch of time,” he noted.

But Monroe said he was ready to get back to his roots.

“Part of what was appealing to me about the tributary is the possibility of getting back to being able to take some time and do high-impact journalism,” Monroe said, recalling when he and other top-flight reporters like David Bauerlein, Chris Hong and Steve Patterson covered issues ranging from Corrine Brown’s legal problems to the JEA sale scandal.

“I was fortunate to get to the T-U at a time where we had a really good leader in Mary Kelli Palka, and really good colleagues, the best of the best. Some of them still work there, and it was kind of like we hit our groove. I feel like we were pumping out meaningful stuff pretty regularly, and it’s just, I think it’s fun to think about getting back to an environment where the high impact is kind of the point.”

Meanwhile, if Monroe had his way, The Tributary could flow statewide sooner rather than later. It would work in a nonprofit space in partnership with corporate media.

“Some of the work we’re going to do this year is figuring out what it would look like to give The Tributary a statewide footprint because that is something I’m interested in. I think there is a need for this,” Monroe said. “Everywhere in the state has the same pressures as the Jacksonville media ecosystem and so I think there are opportunities to kind of help fill the gap on a statewide level, so that is something we’ll very consciously be looking at this year.”

Reaching “nontraditional audiences” and using “alternative storytelling formats” are options, as is “making our stuff free for anybody to run. ” This means that smaller papers looking for deep-dive journalism may be able to reprint Monroe’s and the other writers’ work on the site under a “Creative Commons license” like the one ProPublica employs.

To that end, Monroe sees The Tributary’s key role as “figuring out blind spots” and “telling stories that newspapers have not been able to tell,” especially given their recent state of resource deprivation and rapid consolidation, which has stripped the “media ecosystem” of human resources and institutional knowledge.

“Government accountability,” whether Democrat or Republican, is part of the plan.

“Focusing on those kinds of stories relentlessly is what helps you build trust and credibility,” Monroe said. “We are out to report the problems that exist. Those problems don’t have a political party. If we’re doing our job right, I don’t envision partisan bias being something on our radar that I’m concerned about.”

However, the state’s power structure will bring the GOP under scrutiny.

“Republicans control state government across the board and have for a long time, so, yes, there is a good chance that if you’re writing about some sort of accountability story involving state government, it could be (about) some Republican elected official,” he said. “That’s just a function of power.”