It's been a while since I've read the Florida Times-Union so I took advantage of their introductory subscription offer and signed up to see how it's doing. If you access the site, as I'm doing, there are two sides to it. One side is a mixture of a small amount of local news along with healthy doses of Gannett publication articles from around Florida and the country. If anyone has had the misfortune of reading a USA Today edition, then you understand the Gannett publishing model of leftist bias. All pretentions of neutrality and context remain moldering by the wayside. It's an endless litany of slanted news and opinion.

However, with the subscription, there is also access to the eNewspaper, which is what is published on paper locally. This side of the site offers a more local focus, but again with a dose of Gannett and AP screeds. The Letters to the Editor section is the most disheartening to behold of what has become of our local paper tying itself to a national brand to stay afloat. I've had a few letters published in the T-U years ago when it was still an independent local newspaper with a brick-and-mortar office. The standards were a little more rigid. Now if one wishes to express any disdainful opinion of the Republicans, and especially Ron DeSantis, it gets top billing. One guy even wrote in saying DeSantis was using fascist tactics. Back in the day of actual journalism, that would have been passed over. In the modern day of journalism where anything goes in order to try to make profit, with an emphasis on bashing anyone who doesn't toe the leftist line, standards are almost non-existent.

What a shame. I really used to like reading the local paper, but now it reads like an echo chamber of CNN.

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