Janet Weaver is no longer editor of the Trib
April 17, 2007 at 12:08 pm by Wayne GarciaShe’s now Janet Coats. The editor of the Tampa Tribune hasn’t even been remarried for four full days and she’s already changed her office voice mail message to reflect her new surname: Coats instead of Weaver.
Coats married former TBO.com general manager and current Media General new media guru (not an official title I’m sure) Rusty Coats on Saturday. She skipped her honeymoon, however, not wanting to appear to be tripping the light fantastic somewhere in the same week that she had to let a handful of news staffer go in the Tribune’s 70-employee downsizing.
Weaver was divorced in January.
April 17th, 2007 at 12:36 pm
It was all an elaborate ruse to confuse the public and give her an out for never returning an email or phone call …
April 17th, 2007 at 6:31 pm
now who is gonna tell rusty that his web site is one of creation’s worst?
April 17th, 2007 at 8:04 pm
I’m guessing that she didn’t want to be confused with the same Janet (Weaver) who made such inane comments about the Tribune not being interested in having writers who are “personalities,” or something, in the Times story on the Trib’s cutbacks.
Does that mean no more promos of columns by Dan Ruth, Steve Otto, Walt Belcher, Martin Fennelly, etc? Of course not. Weaver/Coats/Whatever was just struggling to give some sort of reasonable explanation for why longtime, high-profile columnists were axed, and since she couldn’t tell the truth (because, duh, they made more money than the younger staff members) she went for something off the cuff.
Bad move and, you’d hope, a lesson learned for Janet and new hubby, and Mother Trib: She’s probably the worse spokesperson the Trib could have used to help deflect attention from the bad news.
April 18th, 2007 at 7:39 pm
“Does that mean no more promos of columns by Dan Ruth, Steve Otto, Walt Belcher, Martin Fennelly, etc? Of course not. ”
Their columnists is a major reason they don’t sell more papers. What kind of journalist makes a drunken fool of himself as Pappa Guava. Ruth writes with the same cookie cutter dullness Jim Davis makes Garfield comics.
The last good columnist the Trib had was Paul Wilburn. Most people are scatching their heads when they read that.
April 19th, 2007 at 12:14 pm
Including Paul.
April 19th, 2007 at 4:27 pm
Huh? Wayne, it’s no secret that Wilburn quit the Trib because they wouldn’t nominate him for a Pulitzer. He wrote a play about some of the people he wrote about for his column.
I once met Wilburn when he was writing for the Trib. Trust me, Wayne. He used to work there. This was long before his days working for Creative Industries.
April 19th, 2007 at 4:43 pm
Was just being sarcastic. And Wilborn didn’t leave cuz they wouldn’t nominate him for a Pulitzer; he left because he got a better job and more money from the Times, which is something that almost every Trib reporter I ever worked with or met had as an ambition.
Now if I could only remember the details of that long weekend in N.O. we held for Paulie when he left for Germany …
April 20th, 2007 at 5:27 pm
The old story around the campfire about Wilburn is the Pultizer. Maybe not true.
I wonder how long the Trib is going to be able to keep John Allman. I suspect not very long. They still have Steve Otto’s yearly chili cookoff op-ed.
What’s your thoughts about the American Prospect hiring young bloggers like Matthew Yglesias and Ezra Klein. They understand policy, but no no seems to read their articles. Lack of investigative journalism skills? They would be really interesting if John Sugg trained them.
April 20th, 2007 at 10:20 pm
Not familiar with them, but will check it out.
April 21st, 2007 at 3:46 pm
My fellow PR blogger Litbrit guestblogs at Ezra Klein’s site. American Prospect must have really fell off your rader.