Posted by Wayne Garcia on Aug. 20, 2009, at 3:51 pm
Bill Foster wasted no time in getting the Times recommendation on his website
The drumbeat that the St. Petersburg Times was considering an endorsement (errr, recommendation, as the Times will always let a candidate know its preferred term) of Bill Foster. On its surface, it seems ludicrous. After all, Foster is the same guy who wrote to the school board a few years back making a strong pitch against teaching Darwinian evolution alone in public schools, hoping it would mix in a bit of “intelligent design.”
But the lack of an emerging alternative to Foster left the Times in the inexplicable position of endorsing an anti-gay rights, anti-evolution mayor of St. Petersburg. More to the point, however, the editorial board chooses a candidate based on who will play ball with it. Which candidate will kiss the ring over on 1st Avenue S? That’s what gets you the recommendation. Disagree with the Times on a core concern at the paper — say, firing Police Chief Chuck Harmon, as Scott Wagman as vowed to do — and you are at a disadvantage, to say the least.
It is OK to disagree with the Times on social conservative issues, as long as you play your cards right, promise not to let those views play out in public policy at City Hall and generally keep your wingy-ness in the closet. After all, the Times’ former editorial chief, Phil Gailey, was totally tight with Rick Baker, who was also a social conservative who refused to recognize gay pride parades or appear in them.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Aug. 9, 2009, at 11:21 am
This week’s column from the print edition of Creative Loafing:
About 500-600 people are voting for a new mayor of St. Petersburg every day now, part of what has become a vote-by-mail system of absentee voting in Florida. Nearly 60,000 city residents have requested an absentee ballot, almost 40 percent of the registered voters.
That’s a big number. So why do I hear so many complaints about the 2009 race to succeed Mayor Rick Baker being a real snoozer? Polling earlier in the month showed that 61 percent of the voters didn’t have a preference among the 10 candidates running. And although nearly 7,000 people had voted by the end of last week, there is very little visible to any of the campaigns, beyond the ubiquitous yard signs. It’s impossible to time the peak of your political campaign when Election Day lasts 45 days, and no candidate has enough money to run a full-bore mass media campaign for that long.
Take the latest mayoral forum, held by St. Pete Preservation last week in front of about 100 good folks at Studio@620. I popped in to shoot a few photos and perhaps hear their stump speeches, but after almost an hour the crowd had heard only from preservationists, who got five minutes apiece to school nine candidates on why historic preservation is important. Even the hometown St. Petersburg Times didn’t staff the preservation forum. When the candidates did begin to talk, there wasn’t much separation.
How can something be anticlimactic before it’s even over?
Here are the reasons why this year’s city election is having a hard time connecting with voters:
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 28, 2009, at 2:16 pm
The state of Florida’s searchable campaign database
The St. Petersburg Times tried to do its job; it asked each and every St. Petersburg mayoral candidate if they would supply their campaign finance information (their contributions and expenditures) so the newspaper could create a searchable database for voters to use, just like candidates for national, county or state office do. But not the city, which puts up only .pdf’s of the reports, which cannot be searched for names that contribute to different campaigns or to do other important analyses of who is funding whom.
If you’ll recall, that is one of my six ideas to fix Tampa Bay politics on a recent cover of Creative Loafing.
With one exception, however, the Times‘ request fell on deaf or uncaring or incapable ears. From A-Sharock today:
We’ve been told by computer experts that providing this data would take as little as 15 minutes of work.
The response from candidates: Silence.
Only Scott Wagman’s campaign attempted to comply with our request. Candidate Bill Foster said he didn’t think it was technically possible and candidate Larry Williams declined. The other candidates didn’t even respond to our request.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 22, 2009, at 5:30 am
Thanks to a little internal housecleaning at Creative Loafing (I mean that literally, not in the figurative sense of firing folks), a copy of “President Obama’s 500 Promises Deck” showed up on my desk this week. The card deck — not quite a game — is a partnership between the St. Petersburg Times‘ Pulitzer Prize-winning PolitiFact and U.S. Game Systems Inc.
The Deck features 500 campaign promises that Barack Obama made during his campaign and that PolitiFact is tracking after the president said, “I want you to hold me accountable.”
It has been on the market for several months, but it’s not tearing up the sales registers of America.
“I think it had a little bit of a problem finding its niche,” said Lynn Araujo, communications director for US Games Systems.
The cards don’t have a partisan slant; they merely recite one of the many campaign promises that candidate Obama made and invite card owners to go to PolitiFact’s online site to see an update on what progress President Obama has made on each pledge. They look like this:
But while that is pretty nonpartisan, apparently would-be buyers don’t see it that way.
By Catherine Durkin Robinson
PoHo contributor Catherine Durkin Robinson is a “feminist mother of twins” and a political blogger, working under the title Out in Left Field.
When Alexandra Zayas fromthe St. Petersburg Times called to talk about the Channel 8 protests, I couldn’t have been happier. Intelligent, friendly, compassionate — Zayas understood the topic and had done the research. She was covering the protest and surrounding story, gathering opposing points of view from friend and foe alike.
Hers would be a well-rounded story. I could just tell. So I was happy to contribute a verse.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 16, 2009, at 1:24 pm
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.
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.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jun. 29, 2009, at 1:41 pm
From the there’s-no-such-thing-as-bad-publicity-(or-polling) files comes this pitch to Scott Wagman supporters to pony up some bucks despite a pretty rotten showing in a recent St. Petersburg Times poll that placed Wagman tied for fourth, behind Kathleen Ford, Bill Foster and Deveron Gibbons and tied with Larry Williams.
For those not studied in the art of politics, this is called spin.
But before the Wagman haters chime in, let’s give some context to the poll. More than 60 percent of the voters surveyed said they didn’t have a preference yet, meaning that this is a wide open race and the poll was only an indication of a lack of voter engagement and existing name recognition, not a legit look at who will finish in what order. I don’t say this to defend Wagman’s poor showing; but the truth is not all of the campaigns have spent little or nothing in tems of direct voter contact (direct mail, television ads, radio ads, robo-phone calls, etc.) that is what gets voters ready to make decisions. At best, some of the campaigns have been walking door to door and using some new media advertising on Facebook and the like. That’s not enough to drive serious interest to an off-election year municipal election.
But Wagman felt his placement in the poll could be spun to his advantage with supporters and sent them this e-mail today: Read the rest of this entry »
St. Petersburg mayoral candidate Jamie Bennett is pitifully ignorant or disappointingly complicit when it comes to a series of campaign mistakes and second-rate dirty tricks. He has fired the campaign manager he never should have hired, but if he stays in the race that will not end the questions or remove the stains.
Sorting out who knew what when between Bennett and his former campaign manager, Peter Schorsch, may be an exercise in futility. But some of their maneuvers cannot be dismissed as low-grade sleaziness. At least one neighborhood president was given campaign literature and requests for contributions along with free baseball tickets to the city’s Tropicana Field suite. Candidates cannot legally use public resources to benefit their campaigns. Bennett said Monday he did not know that happened and has apologized for “a blurring of lines and lack of oversight on the baseball tickets.” But he continued to distribute the baseball suite tickets he receives as a City Council member to neighborhood association presidents even after the issue was publicly raised.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 1, 2009, at 9:42 am
The Poynter Institute, the nonprofit media educational facility and think-tank, owns the St. Petersburg Times in a unique relationship in U.S. newspapers, one that allowed it to avoid being snapped up by Wall Street (and then ruined) or other ownership succession entanglements. The Poynter, located just south of downtown St. Petersburg, does great work to forward the state of knowledge in news media and once was flush with cash, as its lush offices demonstrate.
But with revenues down at the main money generator, the Times, the Poynter is tightening its belt. Poynter officials today said they are following up a January pay freeze with voluntary retirements packages for all employees 55 and older.
Details after the jump. And here’s Dean Karen Brown Dunlap’s memo to the Poynter staff.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Apr. 27, 2009, at 11:49 am
I suppose that looking at print circulation numbers is anachronistic, if not downright depressing. But the Audit Bureau of Circulation’s Fas-Fax report is out and it is across-the-board bad news for Florida print journalism.
Circulation fell at all major FLA dailies, and it fell 7 percent across the nation. That is 3 million-plus fewer print readers than six months ago.
The St. Petersburg Times remains one of the nation’s top 25 circulated newspapers, but like its counterparts, the Times’ daily numbers are eroding.
The Audit Bureau of Circulations ranked the Times 22nd in the nation in Monday through Friday circulation over a six-month period ending in March despite a 10 percent dip that brought its daily print run to 283,093 compared to 316,007 a year ago. Although it lost more than 32,000 subscribers over the past year, its declines weren’t as sharp as many other newspapers in the top 25, and it even moved ahead of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in overall Monday through Friday circulation.
Daily circulation at The Tampa Tribune dropped by more than 25,000 subscribers Monday through Friday, representing an 11.4 percent drop to 195,277 subscribers. The Sarasota-Herald Tribune lost 17,650 subscribers, a 15.4 percent fall to an average of 97,254 subscribers.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Apr. 21, 2009, at 1:00 pm
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).
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Apr. 20, 2009, at 4:39 pm
The St. Petersburg Times can thank former Sen. Zell Miller of Georgia for its most recent Pulitzer Prize, because as it turns out, the right-wing Democrat is the one who inspired the creation of PolitiFact, the fact-checking website that won the 2009 National Reporting category award.
“It was at the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York, and it was the speech by Sen. Zell Miller making claims about John Kerry,” recalled Bill Adair, the Washington, D.C., bureau chief for the Times who came up with the idea for PolitiFact. “I was thinking, that’s not true. [But] I didn’t do anthing about it.”
Adair had other stories to write that night, not covering a minor speaker at a speaker-laden national convention, and documenting lies in politics must have seemed like trying to count water molecules in the Atlantic Ocean for reporters seeking a traditional news story on deadline. But the problem of letting politicians get away with lying stuck with Adair.
“A lot of things that Zell Miller said went unchecked,” Adair said late Monday afternoon from the Times‘ newsroom, where a celebration was winding down. In spring 2007, Adair and Times editors were planning coverage of the 2008 elections, and he suggested they do a website that looked at truth in politics. “It was based on my own and others’ sort of shortcomings, that we didn’t do a lot of fact checking in the past and we let a lot of candidates get away with misstatments,” Adair said. “This is penitence for those shortcomings.”
The top editors knew on Friday, but the rest of the staff weren’t clued until earlier today. By 3 p.m., however, the newsroom at the St. Petersburg Times was filled with reporters and editors awaiting the formal announcement of the news: the Times had picked up two Pulitzer Prizes.
It is a gigantic coup and shot in the arm for Florida’s largest daily. Although the paper has won the award in the past (most recently for Jeff Good’s editorials in 1995 and Tom French’s feature writing in 1998), winning two in one year was unprecedented for it. The two awards: one for national coverage for its Politifact.com fact-checking website and the other for feature writing for Lane DeGregory’s “The Girl in the Window.”
They are the seventh and eights Pulitzers for the Times. (Here’s a full list of them.)
The newsroom celebrated with champagne and cake. We congratulate the Times on a job well done. After all, one Pulitzer is golden, but two in one day? Incredible!
Here is the Times‘ own Eric Deggans’ coverage. And for the full disclosuristas among us, let’s put on the record that Times‘ CEO, president, top editor etc. Paul Tash is a member of the Pulitzer Board, although no board member is allowed to judge their own newspaper’s work.
For a complete list of this year’s Pulitzer Prize winners, go here.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Apr. 13, 2009, at 12:26 pm
She’s semi-retired and yet still winning awards for the St. Petersburg Times. But Pulitzer Prize winner Lucy Morgan added another recognition today when she won the Sigma Delta Chi Non-Deadline Reporting (circulation of 100,000 or greater) Award from the Society of Professional Journalists for her stories “Double Dipping,” which detailed how Florida and local governments allow workers to enter the DROP program, retire and then be rehired for their old jobs or ones similar.
Photographer Melissa Lyttle won in the Photography Features category for “Girl in the Window.”
Bay News 9 won for Breaking News Coverage (Large Market Station 1-50) for “Overturned Tanker.” It was a staff award.
Posted by David Warner on Apr. 7, 2009, at 6:51 am
A recent gallery from the Times' new mugshot site.
It was an idea so cheap, so lowbrow, so TMZ that you knew “serious” journalism would rip it off eventually. Last year Creative Loafingreported on the success of local mug rags: tabloids devoted to galleries of the recently arrested, with row after row of official law-enforcement head shots showing off alleged perpetrators at their most ignominious. So, perhaps inevitably, the St. Petersburg Times (which noticed the trend in 2007) is now following in the muddy footsteps of Sarasota’s Gotch-ya! and Tampa Bay’s Cellmates — not to mention national sites like mugshots.com — with its own hall of shame, mugshots.tampabay.com. Featuring mug shots of people “arrested in the last 24 hours in Pinellas, Hillsborough and Pasco,” the new site includes a careful addendum clarifying that none of these folks has been convicted of anything.
CL’s Joel Rozen talked to a media historian and a National Crime Prevention Council spokesperson for his story; neither of them saw much value in mug rags either as journalism or as law enforcement tool. Yet the photos are a matter of public record, something that anyone could look up on a county sheriff’s website. The Times is just making access more convenient for the curious. And if we can already see Nick Nolte et al at their worst, why not our friends and neighbors?
Is mugshots.tampabay.com the next nail in the coffin of journalistic standards? Or merely irresistible online junkfood which you clicked on before you even finished reading this post?
The newspaper’s business section website was recognized for its overall excellence, and reporters Kris Hundley, Kathleen Flynn and Kainaz Amaria were awarded for their online series, “Testing grounds,” a multimedia report about how drug companies save money by testing US pharmaceuticals in India.
And a shout-out to my former Tampa Tribune business section colleague Chris Roush. The two students recognized by SABEW for their journalism were both from Roush’s department at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, where he heads up its Carolina Business News Initiative.
By Peter Schorsch
PoHo contributor
Peter Schorsch is a political consultant and writes St. Petersblog 2.0.
There is a mis-editorial in yesterday’s St. Petersburg Times claiming that early, mail-in voting is causing frustration in several municipal elections in Pinellas County:
Some candidates were surprised, too. Local election campaigns don’t typically kick into high gear until about six weeks before Election Day. But in mid-January candidates, started hearing from residents who had ballots and were frustrated that they had seen no information about the people running for office. Candidates scrambled to try to connect with those voters, and in some cases had to order more campaign materials — and incur extra costs — for a campaign season that grew by weeks.
I’m sorry but if the only frustration with Supervisor of Election Deborah Clark’s promotion of voting by mail is with candidates caught off guard by early balloting, then spare me the hand-wringing. Serious candidates for local office should hire political consultants and staff knowledgeable enough to help prepare them for the accelerated election calendar.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Feb. 6, 2009, at 12:03 pm
The story just breaking today is hung on a pretty thin thread: the fact that St. Pete Mayor Rick Baker told reporter Cristina Silva that “I’m not taking anything off the table.”
What politician doesn’t say that?
The Times‘ blog post starts out:
Mayor Rick Baker said he hasn’t ruled out a potential Senate run.
“I’m not taking anything off the table,” he said when asked whether he would go after the seat being vacated by Republican Mel Martinez.
Baker said that while other Republican politicians are waiting to see whether Gov. Charlie Crist gets in the race, he has other considerations to weigh. “I’m primarily focused on doing my job,” he said. “I don’t want to get distracted.”
UPDATE: By afternoon, the Times was retracting its take on Baker’s plans and Baker was emphatic that he is not considering a run:
The bottom line is he doesn’t have any plans at this point and, unlike Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio, is not actively mulling a statewide campaign. He’s not calling money raisers, political pros or anything else.
“I’m not seriously considering it. I’m not ruling it out, but I’m not reviewing it or any of that. From what I’ve read in the paper, mine is a different category from Pam. It sounds like she’s actively reviewing it,” said Baker, who also once again dismissed the possibility of running for Congress if C.W. Bill Young retires because it would require too much time away from his kids, ages 12 and 13. (Presumably a senate seat would too.)
Asked about a gubernatorial run should Charlie Crist jump to the senate, Baker implied that would be more appealing to him, noting that he tends to prefer administrative jobs.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Feb. 4, 2009, at 12:45 pm
My favorite magazine, The New Yorker, has taken a blowtorch to Florida, rightly branding it “The Ponzi State” in an article just hitting subscribers’ mailboxes. The article details how fraud and greed created the housing bubble in Florida, and its subsequent collapse and recession. Creative Loafing owner Ben Eason is even quoted. The story is available online only to subscribers, but here is what Ben’s mentions look like:
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Feb. 3, 2009, at 1:43 pm
Employees at the St. Petersburg Times were told today that the newspaper is making some more quiet cuts/adjustments to its bottom line. Significant on the list: the media company’s employees who didn’t take last year’s buyout offer will be asked again to consider the package.
In addition, the Times is stopping its contributions to employee 401(k) plans, freezing pension credits for those longer-term employees still eligible for pensions (the company stopped offering pensions to new hires some time ago) and extending a 1-year wage freeze that was set to expire on June 1 for another year.
Media General, the owner of Newschannel 8, TBO and the Tampa Tribune, publicly announced similar benefit cuts in January.
UPDATE: After my post I got my hands on the e-mail announcement, it follows the jump. The Times’ Eric Deggans also writes about the move.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jan. 7, 2009, at 2:37 pm
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.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Dec. 22, 2008, at 5:21 pm
It’s a holiday tradition that this year gets a multimedia facelift, as St. Petersburg Times metro columnist Howard Troxler does his annual rewriting of old Christmas tunes to give them political themes. It worked much better in print, where we could sing them in our heads. Here’s the new version, however:
Not as good as the old days.
And has anyone else noted that Troxler very quietly retired his blog? Back in September he wrote on his blog, which was on hiatus at that time, that he was discontinuing his online presence:
There are several reasons, but the main one is that I want to spend more time on columns — in particular, more time away from the keyboard and in the world. What I found was that to do justice to the blog, I was spending a pretty good chunk of each day, then playing catch-up on column topics and research.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Dec. 15, 2008, at 12:29 pm
I was on vacation last week when I got an e-mail from a former Tampa Tribune reporter, pointing out that the Tallahassee Democrathad reported that our former print journalism home (I was a staff writer there from 1988-1992) was going to soon cease publishing on newsprint in favor of an online-only presence in tbo.com:
The Christian Science Monitor quit being a newspaper: It will publish online only. Reportedly, the Tampa Tribune will follow suit in January.
I was flabbergasted. Not because of the idea of something drastic happening to the print product (which just about everyone in the business that I speak with expects) but because I thought I had missed it being verified. Sticks of Fire even picked it up. So I e-mailed the writer of the piece, the Democrat’s Gerald Ensley, about where this story had been reported, and he replied:
No, it hasn’t been reported. I had heard it from several people in the business and originally wrote it as “Rumor has it that the Tampa Tribune . . . ” For brevity, it got shortened to “Reportedly.” I wish it hadn’t.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Oct. 24, 2008, at 4:56 pm
The Times has previewed its Sunday newspaper with its endorsement of Barack Obama:
We recommended Obama before the Florida primary in January as the Democrat who offered the most promise and a fresh start. Since then, he has continued to impress. His approach to creating a fairer tax policy and expanding health care with a blend of public and private coverage stands up well to scrutiny. His determination to rely more on diplomacy than force in foreign policy and to seek a timely, orderly withdrawal of troops from Iraq remains the most pragmatic approach. His acknowledgement that more troops are needed in Afghanistan should reassure those concerned about his willingness to use military force where needed. His energy proposals, while opening the door more than necessary to offshore drilling, are bold and balanced. As the economic crisis has mushroomed, he has responded with an appropriate mix of caution and sound principles grounded in reality.
We also recommended McCain in the Florida Republican primary. At the time, we acknowledged our serious disagreements with his embrace of the Bush tax cuts he once opposed, his determination to keep fighting in Iraq and his opposition to abortion rights. But the Arizona senator’s history of challenging conventional Republican thinking on issues such as immigration and climate change, his candor and his willingness to reach across party lines made him an attractive candidate. McCain, 72, remains an American hero, a former Vietnam prisoner of war whose service to his country has been honorable. Yet his campaign in recent months has been unworthy of his record and raises serious questions about his judgment and leadership if elected.
Most disturbing has been McCain’s choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate. It was a reckless decision based on political calculations, not the country’s best interests. There were many more qualified candidates, including Florida Gov. Charlie Crist. While Palin is an aggressive campaigner who has her own independent streak, she is clearly not prepared to be a heartbeat away from the presidency. Contrast McCain’s most important decision as a presidential candidate with Obama’s thoughtful selection of Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, an experienced hand comfortable on the world stage and well versed in foreign policy.
The Times also recognizes this coming landmark of diversity:
A generation ago, the nomination of an African-American for president would have been unimaginable. Now Obama stands on the brink of history, and his election would send a powerful message to the world about how far Americans have come on issues of equality and opportunity. But voters should look beyond skin color in selecting the next president. They should look for the candidate who best represents their hopes and aspirations, who can meet the nation’s difficult challenges with sophisticated responses, who can inspire us and unite this country as he turns the page and leads America in a new direction.
For president of the United States, the Times recommends Barack Obama.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Aug. 18, 2008, at 4:27 pm
Fully 40 percent of the locally experienced work force there over the age of 50, reports the Times media critic Eric Deggans:
In a memo to staffers this morning, St. Petersburg Times editor, CEO and [c]hairman Paul Tash tells staffers that strong response to the company’s early retirement incentives means “we can avoid the general layoffs I warned might be coming” when the voluntary retirement offer was closed.
Tash says 200 staffers across the company, 150 full time and 50 part time, accepted the enhanced retirement benefit, or 40 percent of all staff aged 50 and up with five years’ service or more.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Aug. 12, 2008, at 1:38 pm
For the second time this year the St. Petersburg Times editorial board has given a backhanded approval to a candidate with an anti-gay record. This time it’s Darryl Rouson, an incumbent Republican-turned-Democrat House member who has often enjoyed the newspaper’s largess.
As I wrote last week, Rouson is on record in a 2006 TV appearance as saying that being gay is “morally wrong” and opposing gay adoption. After taking some heat from gay rights activists last week, Rouson explained that he has changed his position, an evolution of thought in his mind.
As a member of the Taxation and Budget Reform Commission, Rouson was a leader in placing Amendment 5 on the November ballot. It would reduce school-related property taxes and open the door for a sales tax increase and the elimination of many sales tax exemptions. Other votes are more difficult to defend. On the commission, Rouson supported an amendment that would remove a constitutional ban on public money going to churches and religious organizations but opposed one to allow public money for private tuition vouchers. Curiously, he does not see the inconsistency.
The Times has always come to the aid of gays under attack, so it is surprising that Rouson’s editorial recommendation wasn’t the slightest bit tempered by a mention of his “evolving” stance on gay rights. Then again, neither was the recommendation for St. Pete City Council candidate Gershom Faulkner, who lost the race to Wengay Newton. While the newsside wrote about the gay controversy with Faulkner like this:
Two state legislators have pulled their endorsement of City Council candidate Gershom Faulkner after he told a group of local gay and lesbian political activists that people choose to be gay.
Faulkner, a Democrat running for the nonpartisan council in District 7, said he could not support what he called a gay lifestyle because of his religious beliefs, according to those who attended the August meeting of the Pinellas Stonewall Democrats.
… it still didn’t mention the issue in its editorial recommendation.
When President Bush is anti-gay, the Timesrebukes him editorially. Hillsborough parents who want gay clubs pushed off campus get a smack. But establishment candidates in St. Pete who are anti-gay? Not so much.
Now, I played the race card in the title, and to be fair, you can be white and anti-gay and get a pass from the Times if the gay issue is not central to the campaign. Like the recent endorsement of the wildly anti-gay Brian Blair. Yet I seem to recall at some point Blair being spanked for his anti-gayness editorially, even if I haven’t found a link yet for it. It seems much more acceptable for the politically correct Times to accept a bit of anti-gayness from black candidates, who play to an audience that is much more socially conservative than the MSM every acknowledges.
Bonus cut: The only mention on the editorial pages about Rouson’s stance(s) on gay rights is an op-ed piece by Bill Maxwell.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jun. 2, 2008, at 1:39 pm
Here is the Angry Hillary Supporter getting thrown out of the DNC RBC on Saturday. Watch it at the :51-second mark to see AHS question the St. Petersburg Times political reporter about whether he is an undercover agent:
On a related note, we’re taking bets in the office on where in Manhattan Harriet Christian (AHS) is from. Upper East side is just edging out Upper West Side, with one native Long Islander here offering this: “She’s from Queens.” “But she said in the video she was from Manhattan?” “That’s what everybody from Queens says.” I will look up AHS’ residency online later and announce a winner.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 28, 2008, at 10:57 am
The other shoe has dropped over on 1st Street South in St. Petersburg; the Times today revealed that it is offering an enhanced early retirement deal to unspecified staffers and could be forced to lay off employees if not enough volunteers come forward:
In a letter to staff, Times editor and chairman Paul Tash said the measures were a response to a “difficult economic climate” that has been especially hard on advertising, the largest source of newspaper revenue. Over the last two years, the Times’ fulltime staff has dropped from more than 1,500 to fewer than 1,300, mostly by attrition.
“We are navigating a period of historic change and challenge,” Tash said. “Getting through this stretch will not be easy, and it will take everyone’s best efforts, but I remain fully confident about our prospects.”
Last week we published a story in which Times Managing Editor Stephen Buckley acknowledged that downsizing was in the future. “It will clearly take a smaller staff to produce a smaller newspaper, across the entire organization,” he told CL, “and we’ve been very open about that within the organization. We will do that as gracefully and carefully as we can.”
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 20, 2008, at 11:27 am
I 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.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 19, 2008, at 12:04 pm
The result of months of work and consumer testing, the St. Petersburg Times today launched its new, slimmed down version, and it looks suspiciously like its cross-bay competitor, the Tampa Tribune.
Gone is Floridian and the standalone Business section. Tampa Bay, the old Metro news section, now hosts Biz, which, along with a full stable of paid obits, should make the news hole way too damned tight. I already dislike it, even though I understand the reality of why it has to exist. But then again, I am not the normal reader, who gives not a tinker’s cuss for local government news.
Here’s today’s 1A from both papers:
Any thoughts about the changes in today’s Times? Love ‘em or hate ‘em?
Posted by David Warner on May. 19, 2008, at 10:58 am
OBAMA IN OREGON: Barack Obama spoke to a crowd of 65,000 on Sunday in Portland; another 15,000 couldn’t get in. How well will he pack the St. Pete Times Forum Wednesday? (photo by Ryan Harvey)
So, among the items in the shrunken section formerly known as ‘Metro’ in the St. Pete Times was this tidbit: “Obamania, or Obamaybe Not?” — in which the writer raises the specter that “snubbed Floridians” might “stay home and sulk” rather than attend the Obama event in Tampa on Wednesday. Really? Biggest political celebrity in years, who attracted 2,000 without hardly trying last time he was in town, and now arrives with nomination in reach? Who are these “snubbed Floridians,” anyway? As far as I can tell, they’re a projection conjured up in the minds of “snubbed” St. Pete Times political reporters who haven’t been paid sufficient homage by the Obama people, and so have been harping endlessly on his failure to campaign here — whereas I suspect most voters (except for the Clinton-or-else crowd) see that both Democratic candidates have been hobbled by an impossible situation aggravated by the FL legislature and the DNC, and will gladly turn up to see either.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 13, 2008, at 10:47 am
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”
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.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Apr. 28, 2008, at 3:41 pm
Insiders at the St. Petersburg Times have been relaying to me for about two weeks bits and pieces of the planned cutbacks at the larger of the two Bay area dailies, but nothing officially has been released from the HQ on 1st Street South. Now, the word is reaching a wider audience, with former Times and Tampa Tribune reporter Chris Roush reporting in his business news blog:
The St. Petersburg Times will cut its standalone business section during the week but keep its Sunday business section, current and former members of the business desk have confirmed.
The change is expected to occur next month, likely with the paper of May 19. The business section will be combined with the paper’s metro section.
The Florida paper joins other large metro dailies such as the Denver Post, Orange County Register, Cincinnati Enquirer, Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch, Reno (Nev.) Gazette-Journal, Winston-Salem (N.C.) Journal, Monterey (Calif.) Herald, Palm Beach Post and Akron (Ohio) Beacon-Journal.
The paper will also be cutting its stock listings, using three-quarters of a page for market data bassed on Associated Press modules. It will have a full page for business news and the bottom of the market data page for jumps and briefs. Business stories will also be candidates for the front of the metro section.
Business will not be alone. In addition, the Times is cutting its Floridian features section during the week. It will also have a page inside the metro section.
The changes would echo similar cutbacks already undertaken at the Tribune.
Our former music writer and 
The change is expected to occur next month, likely with the paper of May 19. The business section will be combined with the paper’s metro section.
