Salaries at the St. Pete Times
May 20, 2008 at 11:27 am by Wayne GarciaI missed this in the print edition and a sharp-eyed reader of the PoHo blog pointed it out to me: The Times has revealed that its CEO and editor, Paul Tash, is now making about 553 G’s a year.
From the Times story about executive pay:
Paul C. Tash, chairman, chief executive and editor of the Times, was paid $553,131 in 2005. Marty Petty, publisher and executive vice president, received $450,869. Jana L. Jones, chief financial officer, received $290,907, including payment for moving expenses. Karen Brown Dunlap, president of the Poynter Institute, received $245,808.
Tash presides over a privately held company (Times Holding is 100% owned by the nonprofit Poynter Institute for Media Studies) but the owner of the Times newspaper has to reveal some data in Poynter’s annual Form 990 nonprofit report. The latest 990 is not yet available on line, but the 2006 report also has these tidbits:
- Tash’s salary in 2007 was down from 2006’s reported gross of $560,980, a 1.4 percent decrease.
- Times Holding had gross income of $335 million (up from $317 million in 2005, a 5.6 percent increase).
- Poynter’s highest-paid employee (outside of its board of directors) is James Romenesko, whose blog is the industry standard for media insider-baseball, gossip and criticism. Romenesko makes more than $170,000 a year.
The Times annually reports in its news pages the salaries of its executives but doesn’t go much beyond that info, unlike its competitor, the Tampa Tribune, which regularly sees its crummy financial performance splashed across blogs because it is owned by a publicly traded company, Media General.
UPDATE: Newsosaur reports that CEO pay at other media companies is down 11 percent.
Bonus Cuts:
- Previous publisher Andy Barnes on who owns the Times and why it is important.
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The Poynter Institute’s 2006 Form 990, poynter-2006-form-990.pdf
- Project Flagship remakes the Times‘ format.
May 20th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
What a tremendous amount of self-worth these over paid honchos must have. Kinda makes ya sick, don’t it?
May 20th, 2008 at 7:04 pm
So much for Poynter Institute being a non-profit org. Put the Times right in there with credit unions, megachurches, charities that can’t really show what’s done with their money, etc., etc.
May 20th, 2008 at 7:49 pm
jumpin jehosephats!
nice work exposing these gross paychecks. im not sure whether to be sick or envious. both, i guess.
170k for romenesko? what a lucky guy who doesn’t actually write anything. just a collector. he’s got to be officially the world’s best paid blogger.
May 20th, 2008 at 9:30 pm
Is any of this surprising? Enlightened liberalism is strictly for the editorial pages, a way of reminding the masses what they are supposed to believe. But when it comes to executive salaries and perks, when it comes to dealing with the blue collar employees, such as the guys who deliver the papers and a get a 1099 at the end of the year, that’s a different story.