Posted by Wayne Garcia on Aug. 11, 2009, at 2:00 pm
Back when it started, TBO.com was a pioneering website, easy to navigate with lots of good info fed into it from a robust Tampa Tribune and WFLA-TV newsroom.
Today, 15 years after its birth, TBO.com is the growth engine on Parker Street for Media General, but it is a shadow of itself content-wise. It also uses video poorly (given all its access to video from owning the top-rated local TV station) and has an absolutely incomprehensible and unnavigable blog structure.
August 11, 2009 – Today, TBO.com celebrates 15 years of serving the Tampa Bay community online. August 11, 1994 marked the first date of online publishing for TBO.com, making The Tampa Tribune one of the first newspapers in the nation with a dedicated news Web site.
… Today, TBO.com serves more than 3 million unique visitors each month with well over 20 million page views every month. TBO.com recently introduced new interactive elements to its site including VIPIR Interactive Radar from Storm Team 8 allowing users to zoom down to street level and view storms just above their neighborhoods. TBOsnap.com launched as the new user video submission tool, allowing Tampa Bay residents to record news and report it straight from their video cell phones via e-mail to myshots@tbosnap.com. Also as a leader in mobile Web technology, m.tbo.com recently released news and weather videos on the iphone platform and is receiving record views from TBO mobile iphone users.
“The biggest change in 15 years has been the growth of digital news – first on the Web, and now on mobile and social networks. We’re proud of the team that’s dedicated to the success of this 24 hour news service and that continues to work every day to make us Tampa’s No.1 source for breaking news,” says TBO.com’s Content Director, Loren Omoto.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 22, 2009, at 10:05 am
From Media General, which owns TBO.com, the Tampa Tribune and News Channel 8 in this market:
RICHMOND, Va., July 22 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Media General, Inc. (NYSE: MEG – News) today reported net income for the second quarter of 2009 of $20.6 million, or 90 cents per share, compared with a net loss of $532.2 million in the 2008 period, which included a non-cash, after-tax impairment charge of $532.1 million. The current quarter included a $7.1 million after-tax gain on the sale of a CW television station in Jacksonville, Fla., a $3.6 million tax benefit that resulted from a favorable determination concerning a state tax issue, and $7.5 million of tax benefits attributable to the company’s first-half results from continuing operations. Excluding severance expense from both quarters, and last year’s impairment charge, income from continuing operations before taxes was $3.8 million in 2009’s second quarter compared with $2.6 million in the year-ago quarter.
“A 23-percent decrease in total operating costs year-over-year was a major contributor to the company’s improved operating results, helping to offset a 20 percent revenue decline. Actions driving the lower expenses included reductions in force across the company, a furlough program, a suspension of matching in the company’s 401(k) plan in 2009, and the final freeze of the company’s pension plan effective May 31, 2009. Service accruals ceased in the partial freeze of the plan in 2006 and now future salary increases do not affect retirement benefits. Media General has implemented many difficult but necessary expense reductions that strengthen our ability to weather the deep recession and recognize the reduced revenue streams available in our business. As a result, we are in a stronger position to take advantage of an economic recovery,” said Marshall N. Morton, president and chief executive officer.
“Our aggressive cost elimination actions were particularly evident in our Publishing segment, which generated a $12 million profit in the current quarter compared with $6.8 million in the prior-year. Publishing revenues declined 20.3 percent in the second quarter, about the same as the first quarter. We saw the rate of Classified advertising declines abate somewhat in the second quarter compared to the first quarter of 2009, mostly in the automotive category, and particularly in our Florida, Virginia and Alabama markets. The decline in Retail advertising in the current period was also less severe than in the first quarter of 2009.
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 Mitch Perry on Jun. 8, 2009, at 11:44 am
Mitch Perry PoHo contributor Mitch Perry is the anchor of the WMNF Evening News on 88.5 FM community radio
The shocking assassination of late-term abortion doctor George Tiller on May 31 has brought back the volatile issue of abortion on to the national landscape.
Of course, it’s never gone away. But the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor by President Obama to the Supreme Court — and her relatively scant record on abortion issues — has elicited analysis that, perhaps unlike every previous Supreme Court nomination over the past few decades, her nomination won’t be heavily focused by her thoughts on Roe v. Wade.
Pro-choice advocates were stunned when Gallup reported last month that for the first time since it began asking the question, a majority of Americans now call themselves pro-life vs. pro-choice (although a review of other similar polls taken over the past year continue to reflect a majority pro-choice America.)
If that wasn’t at least a soft blow to those reproductive rights advocates, Tiller’s death by the hands of 51-year-old Scott P. Roeder absolutely was.
And for a portion of the public, upon learning of Tiller’s death, thoughts immediately turned to Bill O’Reilly, who focused relentlessly on the controversial doctor’s status as one of just a handful of M.D.’s in the country who continued to perform late term abortions.
Some liberal commentators and bloggers immediately blamed the cable news analyst for inciting Roeder to commit murder. O’Reilly, predictably, pushed back, and used the opening moments of his show last week to argue that his foils, NBC News and company, were just as responsible for the murder of U.S. soldier William Long in Arkansas by a Muslim convert.
For many in the abortion rights movement, Tiller’s death brought back the dark days of the 1990’s, when doctors David Gunn, Bernard Slepian and John Britton were killed for their work as abortion providers.
Sarasota resident Sherry Svekis received a late-term abortion from Tiller in 1985. Not being a regular Fox News viewer, she was unaware of the very public campaign O’Reilly had wrought against Tiller over the years until his death.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 15, 2009, at 2:06 pm
What else are you going to do after you cut daily home delivery to an entire county? Raise your rack prices.
The Tampa Tribune will increase the price of single copy newspapers – those sold at stores and in boxes — starting Monday.
Single copies of the newspaper will now cost 75 cents Monday through Saturday and $1 on Sunday.
“Most metropolitan newspapers charge in these price ranges for their newspaper as single copy purchases. We publish a fresh, unique, local paper every single day,” said Denise Palmer, publisher and president of the paper in a prepared statement.
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 Mar. 31, 2009, at 11:25 am
Holy sagging revenues, Batman, it’s a fire sale over at The News Center on Parker Street in downtown Tampa as the Media General-owned properties shed newscasts, employees, sections and real estate. The Tampa Tribune is shutting its bureaus and killing the BayLife magazine on Sunday; the TV station is cutting a newscast.
Details:
First, News Channel 8 is killing its midday newscast. Anchored by Gayle Guyardo and Bill Ratliff, the 11 a.m. newscast just wasn’t attracting advertisers, station officials said in a TBO.com report.
[News Director Don] North says the cutbacks at WFLA are the result of the continuing decline of advertising that is affecting television stations throughout the country.
“Advertisers just aren’t buying the 11 a.m. newscast,” he says. There has not been a decision made on what will replace the newscast, he added.
“Midday” anchors Bill Ratliff and Gayle Guyardo will continue on the “News Channel 8″ morning newscasts and contribute to online coverage.
More shocking is the loss of the Tampa Tribune,’s Sunday BayLife section, home to Twitter-champ Jeff Houck’s food writing. Not surprising from the standpoint of a dearth of ads in the section, but stunning from a readability angle. It is the only section of the now-miserable Sunday Trib that was worth reading, for Houck and for the gardening info alone, stuff you don’t see a whole lot of in other local publications.
The story gives no indication what will happen to that content, so I’m checking to see what I can hear.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Mar. 31, 2009, at 6:20 am
More budget cuts at Media General’s converged Tampa operations, as the company axed 65 positions, 12 of which were vacant. Doing the math, that means 53 news industry professionals hit the bricks.
The highest profile was sports co-anchor Dave Reynolds, one of a handful of journalists of color at the TV station. From The Feed:
Reynolds, 45, had been covering sports with one other anchor, Dan Lucas; he said WFLA never really named another lead sports anchor after former top dog J.P. Peterson left more than a year ago. The change also means WFLA has just three people of color among an on-air staff of 26 reporters and anchors.
Now, Reynolds says WFLA plans to use more staffers from the Tampa Tribune to help report sports stories on air. The station also has cut back the Sunday Sports Extra show, he says.
“It’s obviously tremendously disappointing,” adds Reynolds, who has a wife and 4-year-old son. “After a certain while, you think you might be safe…This year was arguably the biggest year ever for sports in the Tampa Bay area, with the World Series and Super Bowl and so many other stories. for us to do what we did with two people…we worked very hard.”
Employees of Media General Inc., the Richmond, Va., parent of The Tampa Tribune, News Channel 8, TBO.com and Centro, will take a mandatory 10 days off without pay during the remainder of the year, President and Chief Executive Marshall N. Morton said in an e-mail to workers this afternoon.
“So far in 2009, economic and corporate earnings reports have been worse than expected,” Morton said in announcing the furlough plan.
“Despite aggressive sales initiatives and significant cost reductions, I regret to report that we need to build in additional expense savings to offset the revenue shortfalls our divisions anticipate.”
The Tampa Tribune became the latest newspaper to deliver copies of the New Testament to subscribers as a part of national effort by the International Bible Society, distributing 56,500 copies in its Saturday edition before the Super Bowl.
The effort was spearheaded by a pair of local residents who raised about $127,000 from 15 area chruches and 19 local businesses, including McNichols Co., AnazaoHealth Corp., Ferman Automotive Group, Idlewild Baptist Church, Florida Dental Centers and Bayshore Baptist Church.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jan. 21, 2009, at 4:33 pm
Let me start off with a few disclaimers:
I am not a grammarian, and Lee Drury De Cesare, aka Grammar Grinch, has taken my stories apart in the past.
I’m not an English teacher, although I have a lengthy resume of teaching journalism and writing at the college level.
And I don’t really give a shit whether a downtown Tampa sign has a (mostly unnoticeable) grammatical error in it, nor whether Mayor Pam Iorio wants to get rid of said sign because of that error.
Super Bowl visitors entering the city’s downtown next week will be greeted by this message: “Welcome to Downtown Tampa: There’s so many reasons to love it.”
Sounds like a nice message. But there’s a problem. The banner, at Franklin and Platt streets near Channelside Drive, contains a glaring error: The subject and verb in the second part don’t match.
Grammatically speaking, “There’s” should be “There are” or “There’re.”
So a buddy who is pretty good with words called me and said: “There’re”?
A contraction for “there are?” Not a real word. Maybe not grammatically correct, he posited.
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. 30, 2008, at 2:26 pm
This just in from the NewsCenter over on the Hillsborough River, from Media General’s top manager for its Florida Communications Group:
From: Schueler, John R.
Sent: Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Subject: Standard Annual Merit Increases
Dear Colleagues;
As you know, our national and state economies are still deeply troubled and that dramatically impacts many of our key advertisers including automotive, real estate and employment services. Although we continue to serve more readers, viewers and users than any media company in Tampa Bay, we have to continue our actions to manage through this economic downturn.
Therefore, as of January 1, 2009, employees of The Tampa Tribune, WFLA-TV, TBO.com, Centro and Associate Publications who normally qualify for the merit cycles for January 2009 and July 2009 will not receive a merit increase.
We all know that these are very difficult times. Thank you for your hard work, dedication and understanding.
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 Dec. 2, 2008, at 4:24 pm
As Michael Hinman at The Business Journal so eloquently points out, the Tampa Tribune is just coming off an utterly destructive round of layoffs that claimed marquee columnist Dan Ruth and editorial page editor Rosemary Goudreau and yet … its parent company is partnering to launch a new luxury magazine called Blu:
[Financial difficulties at the Trib haven't] stopped Tribune parent Media General Inc. from moving forward with new projects, including a luxury focused magazine the publisher created with a Tampa media group and expects to launch during Super Bowl XLIII.
Called Blu, the new magazine is a joint partnership between Media General (NYSE: MEG) and South Tampa Magazine publisher Fourthdoor Creative Group. The two organizations formed Rain Publishing Group in July and a sales team hit the streets to sell ad space costing between $1,800 and more than $13,100.
At the same time, Blu bought a sponsorship said to cost nearly $60,000 from the Super Bowl Host Committee, the group bringing the National Football League’s biggest game to Tampa in February. The sponsorship includes a kickoff event for the magazine during festivities leading up to the Super Bowl, said John Schueler, president of Media General’s Florida Communications Group and the representative for the Richmond, Va., publishing giant with Rain Publishing.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Nov. 17, 2008, at 12:05 pm
I was out of the office last week but was in town and heard all about the latest round of layoffs at Media General in Tampa (including some high profile folks at the Tampa Tribune). I had a few vodkas with Phil Morgan, a three-decades features reporter, after he got the axe last week, And in the past day, a few of the ex-Tribsters even won a mention in a New York Times article on the failing media biz:
Last week, Media General, a company that owns newspapers, television stations and Web sites in the Southeast, eliminated 80 positions in Florida, including a prominent columnist and the editorial page editor at The Tampa Tribune. “The Book of Ruth,” a long-running wiseacre feature by the longtime columnist Dan Ruth, will be missed, now and then. He and the editorial page editor, Rosemary Goudreau, follow a political columnist, Joe Brown, the movie critic Bob Ross and the classical music critic Kurt Loft to the exit.
Readers, especially the ones cranky and serious enough to still be buying newspapers, have not missed the trend.
“Fire your best employees and watch your business go out of business, just like Circuit City is finding out right now. Who wants to read old news when one can find quality articles outside of the TampaTribe. Bye Bye TampaTrib, you have fired one too many of your excellent personnel and now I am firing you!” said a reader, Bob, in a comment posted to The Feed blog at TampaBay.com, a media blog by Eric Deggans, a media and television reporter at The St. Petersburg Times.
The verdict at StopBigMedia.com is that greed and profit-motive is blame, in an article titled “Bloodletting in the Newsroom”:
Greed and Profit
The Internet has transformed the media industry and how the public consumes news. More people are reading their local newspapers online than ever before. Online ad revenue grew for 17 straight quarters until its recent decline. Nevertheless, the NAA expects online ad revenue to continue its growth next year.
Despite the changing industry, newspapers remain extremely profitable. The Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) reported that the average pre-tax profit margin for newspapers was 18.5 percent in 2007. Some newspaper profits remained above 20 percent. “The industry remains profitable, but it has come time to take the ‘obscenely’ out of that commonplace observation,” PEJ said in its annual State of the News Media report.
But the majority of newspapers are publicly traded companies for which any decline in profits is unacceptable. As a result, newspapers are trying to please Wall Street by axing jobs and scaling back coverage.
With fewer reporters on the beat — and less quality local coverage — it’s no wonder people aren’t subscribing to the paper. While these cuts may please stock analysts, they harm the public. There are fewer journalists covering the business of government at city halls and state capitals across the country. Media companies are closing their Washington and foreign bureaus, while the number of lobbyists pushing the legislation agendas of their corporate clients at the local, state and national levels has increased under the diminishing watchdog eye of the Fourth Estate.
I take no glee in any of the layoffs. With Creative Loafing working to reorganize its finances in Chapter 11 bankruptcy court, the view from here is nothing but sadness about this industry and our clear failure now to provide the information that people will need to make good decisions in a democracy. You can blame Wall Street, but there is plenty of blame to bring home to this industry, which spent almost nothing on R&D for technology and new products until it was too late, did little training of its employees to give them digital skills and continues to wander mindlessly from technofad to technofad in search of eyeballs.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Oct. 29, 2008, at 2:46 pm
John McCain is down the street from our West Tampa news factory, at the University of Tampa. But as William March of the Tampa Tribunepoints out in his blog, it is damned unusual to see the candidate have a no-press, no-public event so close to the election:
One thing some of them can’t figure out is why, just six days before the election, McCain is holding an event in Tampa that’s closed to most of the media and the public.
“I don’t know. I’ve been asking the same question,” said Pinellas County Republican Party Chairman Tony DiMatteo.
Hillsborough County Commissioner Mark Sharpe, McCain’s county co-chairman, emphasized that national security concerns could affect voter decisions.
“It’s a very important issue at a time when people are beginning to focus” on the election, he said.
As to why McCain would hold a closed event, he said, “McCain doesn’t always do things that appear on their face to be purely political—he just does what seems right.”
The Trib’s Anwar Richardson (who last time he appeared in this column was flogging the incredible economic impact of Brett Favre’s imminent arrival in Tampa Bay) is at it again.
Ringo is far too busy to sign autographs, so stop sending him shit.
Is there anybody on the planet who doesn’t do Christopher Walken?
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Oct. 6, 2008, at 9:35 am
Today marks the first day of the Tampa Tribune’s new Mon-Fri one-news-section era. PIck one up and check it out and let me know what you think. In the meantime, here’s today’s top political and media news headlines, with updates daily (box, right, you know):
Pulling apart the Yes on 2 arguments like a roasted chicken from Publix.
The 7th Annual Blogger Boobie-thon (all for a good cause); local Out in Left Field once again bares it all for the cause, but you gotta pay to see it.
Yes, the Tina Fey turn as Palin on SNL was hilarious, but for those who stayed tuned for another 5 minutes got treated to another example of why Kristen Wiig is the funniest player on the show today:
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Oct. 1, 2008, at 10:03 am
After the jump I’ve got latest internal memo from Trib news chief Janet Coats on the reorganization of the daily’s newsroom in a combined newgathering operation with the broadcast folks at Newschannel 8 and the digital workers at tbo.com.
Lots of talk about platforms and finishing and such, but the hottest news for you info consumers isn’t in here: On Monday, multiple sources have told me, the Tribune will launch its reconfigured daily newspaper into one section of news/sports/whatever and a second section of classifieds/comics. The first tip about the changes to come in the daily print product came in Jeff Houck’s Food section column this morning:
SO LONG, FAREWELL, SEE YOU SUNDAY
One of my favorite ads on TV right now is the Dunkin’ Donuts commercial that starts with one of the characters singing the line, “You neglected to mention the sleeper sofa,” before breaking into an Egyptian slavelike moan. “I forgot all about the air hockey table,” the second character replies. More painful moaning, followed by images of possessions tumbling down an apartment staircase. The first character then finishes by singing, “Re-LUC-tant-LY hel-PING my friend MOVE!”
What does all this have to do with The Stew? Well, like George, Weezie and Lionel Jefferson, it’s time for us to move to that deluxe apartment in the sky-y-y, so to say.
On Sunday, this column and many of the features you read each week in the Flavor section will join with stories from the At Home section as well as fashion, parenting and pet columns, and articles each week in a new journalism condo we’re calling BayLife Magazine.
Not everything will be the same, unfortunately. As with all moves, (Gosh, this relocation metaphor is getting tiresome), Orlando-based columnists Pam Brandon and Anne-Marie Hodges, better known as The Divas of Dish, end their 20-month run with us. Their playful recipes were like a vacation for the taste buds. Their helping of sass and fun-loving attitude helped us remake the Flavor section earlier this year with a much more lighthearted tone.
We also say goodbye to Tony “Fatso” Siciliano, our king of barbecue and grilling, who joined after the Flavor section switched in March to a tab format. Thanks to his column, I’ve stolen more grilling tips than I’ll ever admit. We thank him for his work and wish him well with his “On the Grill” radio show each Saturday on WFLA 970 AM.
Jaden Hair’s Steamy Kitchen column will continue to appear weekly in BayLife Magazine, but Greg and Michelle Baker’s Culinary Sherpas column will run every other week.
“Recipes Lost & Found”? It’s making the move. “Consumers Ask”? Same. “Greasy Remote, “Cravings” and “Eat Their Words” will still run with the same regularity, too, just on Sunday instead of Wednesday.
All of which means – if I haven’t been clear – that the Flavor section will end its publication with the section you have in your hands today.
We at the Tribune all know it will be hard for you. Routines are always difficult to change, and the Flavor section has run on Wednesdays like clockwork since John McCain was a toddler. Flavor was a section you held on to, read during the week, shopped with on Saturdays and cooked with on Sundays. You and other readers have a relationship with Flavor. Recipes you clipped in 1968 are still in your files, just in case someone needs one they can’t find. As I wrote in March when we changed formats, I’ve always been honored to be a part of a section readers deeply cared about. To that end, we’ve tried to cover your life with food, not just about what was in the pan, on the plate or in your glass.
But this change is not only inevitable, it’s necessary.
While we’re all up in this change thing, feel free to drop into my food blog, The Stew. I’ll be posting items there more often – especially on Wednesdays when you want them the most. And the food channel on TBO.com with the catchy address – www2.tbo.com/static/sections/ tbo-life-food/ – will feature more stories, podcasts and videos as well.
If you want to chat about the changes, I’ll be glad to talk or e-mail with you. I’d also love to hear your ideas about what food stories you’d like me to write.
The Tribune made some cuts this week, four editorial employees that I’ve been able to sniff out so far with the biggest name being editorial page columnist Joe Brown. Embedded in the Coats memo that follows are the names of others who made the latest cut and still have news jobs:
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 16, 2008, at 3:23 pm
My story in the print edition of CL this week details the personnel changes and newsroom reconfigurations going on at the Tampa Tribune and St. Petersburg Times. It focuses on intern Jessie DaSilva, who blogged about Coats newsroom explanation of how she hopes to combat the tough times that led her to lay off 11 editorial staffers two weeks ago. The full story is here.
Bonus cut: DaSilva would agree only to an e-mail interview, and here is her entire exchange with me about the reaction to her blog, which supported Coats’ plan and was seen by some as either naive or uncaring about the reporters who lost their jobs. My questions were, Did you have any hesitation about posting your thoughts on the layoffs and realignments?
Any regrets?
Has management at the paper had any reaction to your blog? In the past, I know from some reporters they have told folks not to discuss newspaper business in personal blogs.
What is your reaction to all the comments and reaction your post attracted?
Are you the incoming Alligator editor? If so, what lessons do you take back to that paper from this realignment?
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 16, 2008, at 2:36 pm
I am completely digging on the story in this morning’s Tribune about Karen Peoples, the Tampa Housing Authority board member who can’t seem to follow the rules of her own agency. This from John Allman’s tale:
Tampa Housing Authority commissioner Karen Peoples responded angrily this morning to a Tampa Tribune report that she is being evicted for violating federal housing guidelines.
“Whoever was responsible for this article, may God be with you when the time comes,” Peoples said near the end of the authority’s monthly board meeting. “This was not necessary.”
The authority this week began eviction proceedings against Peoples, who has been in violation since November 2007 of federal Department of Housing and Urban Development guidelines that dictate the apartment size a resident can occupy.
Peoples is a single woman living in a four-bedroom apartment at C. Blythe Andrews, a north Tampa housing property. She has refused three offers to move to a one-bedroom apartment since January. The authority has more than 200 people waiting for a four-bedroom apartment at her complex, and authority President Jerome Ryans said Peoples has run out of chances.
Reading the story, however, raises an even more important question than who the hell appointed this broad to the board and when are they going to kick her off of it: namely, why doesn’t tbo.com provide ANY hyperlinks in its news stories, even to its own coverage? Why do I have to take 20 minutes searching through the rest of the site to find the initial story that Peoples was bitching about??
Posted by David Warner on Jul. 3, 2008, at 4:53 pm
Inside the layoffs at the Trib, as reported by intern Jessica DaSilva. Commenters praise her passion (admirable) while criticizing her spelling (lamentable). As for Editor Janet Coats’ quote that the Tampa Tribune is an “add-on” to TBO.com, not vice versa: Is this a bravely candid acknowledgment of the reality of today’s media, or (like Jessica’s spelling) the death knell for journalism as we know it? Or both? Opinions vary, but to newspaper editors everywhere, the debate is familiar.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jun. 27, 2008, at 5:20 pm
Tampa Tribune Editor Janet Coats will meet with her restless troops next week to discuss what they have all been awaiting/dreading: the future of the newsroom. She sent this e-mail to her staff today:
From: Coats, Janet E.
Sent: Friday, June 27, 2008
Subject: Newsroom staff meetings
We’ll have staff meetings on Tuesday to talk about plans for the second half of the year. We’ll talk about the subject that is foremost in your minds – job reductions. But we’ll also talk about the new structure for the newsroom and the ways we see the newspaper and TBO.com changing in the coming months.
We’ll also try to draw a road map for the next few months. We live in uncertain times, and there’s not much I can do to change that. But I will try to give you a little better sense of the decisions we face in the next few months, and how we’re going to work through them to create the best opportunities to do good journalism.
Bonus cuts:54 take buyout at Media General Fla operations; Closing the South Tampa office
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jun. 11, 2008, at 4:56 pm
Part of the other shoe has dropped over on Parker Street; sources tell me that 75 employees in the Tampa Tribune’s advertising department were let go earlier this week. (UPDATE: the official word from Media General was that it was 21, according to a story published by the Trib on Thursday after this blog post was written.) No editorial cuts were announced, but today, the head of Media General’s combined operations in Tampa (the Trib, Newschannel 8, tbo.com and other properties) wrote to the staff that more layoffs are coming in the next few weeks. Here is a copy that was supplied to me by a source who requested anonymity. (I left a message to speak with Schueler about the cuts and will let you know when/if I get to interview him.):
From: FCG_Communication
Sent: Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Subject: A message from John Schueler
Over the next couple of weeks, we will be wrapping up the voluntary buyout program we offered. Out of the 650 eligible for the buyout, as of today 54 will be leaving us. There may be a few more as individuals make their personal decisions. We appreciate all of their many contributions and wish them well. They will be missed.
As we stated before, if the voluntary buyout program does not produce the necessary reduction to align our expenses with our current revenue expectation, we will need to follow up with an involuntary program. These plans are being announced within departments and to individual employees as they are finalized. Some are happening now and others will occur over the next few weeks.
We realize how difficult and uncomfortable this is for everyone. We have an obligation to review our processes, products and services and then align our resources with revenue. As a result, we have to make tough decisions and develop priorities. We must continue doing the things that are most important to us and to the communities we serve. By taking this approach, we expect to retain our market position, support our journalistic mission and be capable of leveraging a rebounding economy.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jun. 11, 2008, at 9:11 am
OK, the closing of the Tampa Tribune’s South Tampa office on Bay-to-Bay Boulevard had been planned for some time; I recall hearing whisper about it before the latest announcement about the latest round of buyouts and the like. But still, this is not a good symbol of a healthy MSM in town:
Word is that the office actually stayed open a bit longer than anticipated. Its reporters, who write for the daily and the South Tampa News weekly, have been transferred to the nearby downtown headquarters on Parker Street.
(Since I live in that ‘hood, I’m sorta hoping something cool goes in that space. We could use a good restaurant on Bay-to-Bay; right now only Pappas and take-out from Cappy’s does the trick on that stretch. But since this space isn’t already tricked out for restaurant use, I’m betting that a mortgage or real estate brokerage will go in there once the market improves a bit.)
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jun. 6, 2008, at 4:24 pm
They’re not the only Big Media company looking at this, but the Tampa Tribune is in the midst of outsourcing some advertising layout jobs to India, reports The Business Journal:
“We’re recreating jobs [in the production department], and everybody in the department already knows what’s happening,” said Denise Palmer, president and publisher of the Tribune. “This is not news for any of our employees, but we haven’t yet settled on a final number.”
Most of the cuts come as a result of the outsourcing that will take place in the Tribune’s downtown office, Palmer said, but some cuts also could take place at the paper’s Sebring office where its Highlands Today is published. The move to outsourcing should be completed by September.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jun. 4, 2008, at 10:08 am
Tampa Bay is down to one major daily newspaper classical music critic as the Tampa Tribune’s Kurt Loft has given notice that he is leaving for a job at Pricewaterhouse Coopers. Loft told me yesterday evening that he was sad to leave the paper but excited about the opportunity he will be given at PwC, where he will carry the title Lead Editor.
Loft worked at the Tribune for 27 years and covered science, classical music and restaurants. He did not take the buyout offer that the newspaper gave to more than 630 employees.
“I’m going to miss the beats,” he said of the unusual mix of subjects that he had worked into his newsroom responsibility. “It’s been a great mix.”
Loft also said he told the newspaper in his resignation letter that “I will always be a goodwill ambassador for the Trib. In its prime, it was the heart and soul of the city.”
Loft also bemoaned the impact on the local arts if the Trib, as expected, doesn’t replace him. Many state grants are sought on the basis of news coverage, and without classical music previews and reviews, the Florida Orchestra could suffer. “I think it’s tragic,” Loft said. “I feel very bad for the Orchestra. For all the arts, you’ve got to have an experienced reporter to have a dialogue between the organization and the community.”
In full disclosure, I must comment that I am close friends with Kurt, have been for 20 years, and will sorely miss his writing in the Tampa daily.
He joins several other past Trib scribes at PriceWaterhouse who left the daily over the past few years, including pop music critic Philip Booth and computer-assisted reporting guru Doug Stanley. In February, Trib business reporter Dave Simanoff also quit to join PwC. Loft said three or four other Trib reporters gave notice last Friday along with him to take jobs at PwC but their names could not yet be confirmed.
Florida Sen. J.D. Alexander, still has one four-year term to go before he would be prevented by term limits from running again, but he was tired of all the hours and the need to attend his business.
In fact other potential candidates had been waiting in line to see if he would decide not to run this year.
But Alexander is running again and he quipped at a recent Lakeland Chamber breakfast that it was the Tampa Tribune’s editorial stance that convinced him.
“Actually I wouldn’t be true to my promises to the constituents of my district if I didn’t continue on, but clearly there are some unfounded criticisms of USF Polytechnic that I feel must be addressed,” Alexander said.
Bonus cut: here’s the Trib editorial that so angered J.D. that he decided to stay in public service.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 22, 2008, at 3:12 pm
Michael Hinman over at The Business Journalreports that Tampa Tribune parent Media General is cutting 750 jobs companywide and expects 60 of those losses to come in the Tampa newsroom.
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. 29, 2008, at 11:18 am
Was just talking with a local media maven about the woes at Tampa Trib-parent Media General and the coming buyouts/possible layoffs, and he commented, “They should just put a bullet in it and be finished with it.” Reminded me of this scene:
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Apr. 29, 2008, at 11:12 am
Just getting caught up from last week’s expected public spanking of the current Media General brain trust. (Deggans had a good piece on it if you want to get caught up on the details. Hinman at the BizJournal, too.) For those who don’t follow arcane public media company goings-on, even those involving the owner of our favorite whipping-boy local daily, the Tampa Tribune, three dissident board members beat out the insiders for seats on the Media General board.
Those nominations had led to a nasty proxy fight that MG lost. And what a sore loser the company’s management was. MG CEO Marshall Morton sent the faithful the following e-mail:
Subject: Marshall Morton Comments on Media General Annual Meeting
April 24, 2008
Dear Fellow Employees,
Media General held its Annual Meeting of Stockholders this morning. Based on preliminary election results, it appears that the three individuals nominated by the Harbinger hedge fund were elected to the company’s Board of Directors. Our press release has been posted to the Meganet.
We are disappointed that three very capable directors, who have contributed significantly to the Board’s deliberations, both through their ability and their experience, have been displaced.
I want you to understand that Harbinger cannot, under any circumstances, forcibly gain control of Media General, and that the three new directors cannot gain control of our nine-member Board.
We will listen with courtesy to the ideas of the new directors, but, frankly, I believe they are going to have to prove themselves worthy of their places on our Board before they will be able to earn the confidence of the remaining directors.
I appreciate the many notes of support I received during the proxy contest. Throughout, you stayed focused and continued to make a difference to our audiences, our advertisers and the communities we serve.
You deserve tremendous praise for the successes we have been achieving. Through your efforts, we are transforming the company into a new media enterprise. We know that our customers are in charge, and we are leading change to meet their needs. Employees across our company have created opportunities for us to:
Foster a critical culture of innovation
Adopt a successful Web-First strategy in all of our newsrooms to increase total audience and market share
Create targeted new products to reach new audiences and attract new advertisers
Expand our interactive advertising services to generate new revenue and cash flow streams
Complete the transformation to digital broadcasting, launch high-definition local newscasts and use the expanded digital spectrum to offer secondary channels in many markets
Deliver our content to mobile consumers via cell phones and other portable devices
We will succeed because we have the right strategic focus, the right tools and you are the right employees. Thanks to the relationships we’ve built with consumers and the skills we’ve developed to address their needs, when people want information about their communities, they turn to the Media General brands in their markets. Consumers value our information and we intend to continue to be the leading provider of news, information and entertainment in all our markets.
Your continued support of our mission, our values, and our strategy for success is the right way to build shareholder value for all of us.
Thank you.
Yours sincerely,
Marshall N. Morton
President and Chief Executive Officer
So, at MG, how do new board members “prove themselves worthy?” Vote to overpay for four piddling NBC affiliates in a down economic cycle? Uphold MG’s insistence on broadening the FCC’s media monopoly rules so it can do “convergence” in more markets? Lost tons of money year to year?
Seems that’s the way that the old board members made their bones.
Oh, and the buzz from 202 S. Parker Street (”the News Center”) is that it will be June before the company sorts out its buyout offer situation and plows through the stacks of those who offered to take the bullet now and those who are holding out to be Leo Di Caprio, clinging to the railing as the ship goes down. (”Never let go.”) Said one person with knowledge of the situation: “It’s like a mauseoleum.”
Our former music writer and 
Loft worked at the Tribune for 27 years and covered science, classical music and restaurants. He did not take 
