These are not happy days for journalism in Tampa Bay, and I take no joy in the fact that both of the mainstream daily newspapers are cutting back staff and/or space to save a few bucks as the business model that made print journalism possible for years crumbles out from underneath us.
First, the St. Petersburg Times. Over the weekend, the largest daily in Florida informed the readers of the outcome of its secret Flagship committee, which studied how to change the paper to meet a 21st Century audience and declining advertising revenues. Neither Eric Deggans nor Neil Brown used the word Flagship, but nonetheless, here’s what that committee came up with for May 19:
- Stop publishing Floridian except on Sundays. Floridians writers — among the best at the paper, including John Barry, Lane DeGregory and Ben Montgomery — will now compete with metro and national reporters for space in the A and B sections.
- Stop publishing a daily Business news section, putting biz news into the B section.
- Eliminate stock listings.
- The metro, B-section gets renamed “Tampa Bay.”
- Eliminate other features, including the Sunday Working section.
- Put comics and other reader favorites into the classified section and rename it all “BayLink”
Brown summarized the changes this way:
In a Starbucks world, it is the venerable Dunkin’ Donuts that sells more hot cups of coffee than anybody in America.
Even as the Starbucks “experience” transformed the coffee-drinking marketplace, the 58-year-old Dunkin’ chain found a way to soar, having grown its revenues roughly 50 percent in a recent three-year period. How? Rather than hunker down it adapted to changing tastes: more high-quality coffee, fewer fattening doughnuts.
This seems an apt lesson for newspapers, including the St. Petersburg Times, as we consider how best to deliver distinctive journalism and useful advertising in a time of profound technological change and extraordinary economic turbulence.
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