The Political Whore

I’m starting a new Saturday feature to wrap up news and blog posts you might have missed during your busy week. Here’s a look at the Week in Review:

New book blasts sportswriters for ‘hysteria’ regarding steroids – Mitch Perry. The WMNF anchor writes about a new book that lays the blame for steroid-mania at the foot of writers who aren’t aggressive. “The writers, the supposed experts, watched over the last 20-30 years as steroids became a very, very common substance. And they didn’t see it.”

Economic report calls Florida “a state in trouble.” The single most depressing (and real) assessment of Florida’s economic shortcomings we’ve ever seen. A must-read. (The graph above is from the report.)

POTUS and the Pope — Peter Schweitzer. Our contributors asks: if the US bishops are sideways with Barack Obama over his abortion stance, why is the pope so warmly receiving him?

Shadowy 527 group unloads YouTube attack ad against governor candidate Alex Sink (video). A Gainesville GOP leader is the face of the anti-Sink political group.

Bankruptcy judge sets auction date for Creative Loafing alt-newspaper chain. It is likely that two groups will bid in late August for ownership of Creative Loafing, pitting the company’s current management against lender Atalaya.

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Dan Ruth, unceremoniously dumped from 200 S. Parker St. earlier this year, is apparently not content with his every-Friday column in the rival St. Petersburg Times; he has started his own blog.

In a welcome to the Ruthington Post, Dan writes:

It has taken a while for someone who began in the newspaper business back in the lead type days to come around to the vast world of the emerging new technologies, but with the help and encouragement of friends, here it is – the Ruthington Post blog of Daniel Ruth.

I’m still learning how to work with this form, so please bear with me. I will probably spend the next few days playing around and experimenting. But in the future I hope to be posting a daily blog that will deal with all manner of issues, from politics, to popular culture to who knows what?

Stay tuned. Let’s see what the future holds.

Welcome to the blogosphere and its world of quality journalism, Dan.

h/t to Sticks of Fire

In my two decades in Tampa Bay, there have been three dominant Metro columnists at the Tampa Tribune: Steve Otto, Howard Troxler and Dan Ruth (who was on 1B for a while before being moved inside the A section and god knows where else).

So it is an indication of the Trib’s decline that two of those three now work for the rival St. Petersburg Times. And here is a weekly video segment with Ruth and Troxler discussing the ideas of the day, and it is surprisingly good (for two old print guys sitting in front of a camera, that is).

Our former music writer and Bar Tab columnist Wade Tatangelo, laid off in December in a round of budget cuts here, has landed a new bar-writing gig, with the St. Petersburg Times’ daily free tabloid *tbt. Here’s the announcement:

Good news for all you intoxication connoisseurs in Tampa Bay. Tbt* has found a new Barfly who will be hitting the streets in search of the best places for booze hounds to go. Wade Tatangelo is the new man who will steer you to beer and he’s off to a good start with his new review of the Beef O’ Brady’s on the USF campus that will be published in Friday’s tbt*. Formerly, Wade was the music critic at Creative Loafing but his skills will put to good use at tbt* as you can see below.

“Nestled in the Marshall Student Center on the USF Tampa campus, this Beef ’0’ Brady’s is the place to enjoy hot wings and other pub grub goodies alongside undergrads in a room decked out in Bulls green and gold. There’s a 10-stool bar, cafeteria-style seating, a dozen LCD screens and billiards tables. And yes, there is beer and wine. But if you wish to enjoy an adult beverage, don’t arrive before 5 p.m. Apparently school officials are afraid students might tie one on before suffering through that College Algebra course. Guess they’re not worried about night class inebriation,” — Wade Tatangelo

That’s just a teaser, but I’ll link up the full review when it’s available or you can check it out in Friday’s tbt*.

Tatangelo joins a number of journalists who departed their papers recently and have found new work at the Times, including former Tampa Tribune columnist Dan Ruth, who writes a Friday op-ed column, and former Tribune classical music and science writer Kurt Loft, whose first arts piece for the Times ran on Sunday.

The Tampa Bay chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans has criticized former Tampa Tribune/current St. Petersburg Times op-ed contributor Daniel Ruth before because of his anti-confederate flag columns (he called them “narrow-minded simpletons” in this one), but this is a new high/low: the group has erected a sign thanking/blaming Ruth.

The group’s e-mail blast on it reads as follows:

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