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.

That hasn’t stopped its owners from celebrating, as this official statement crows:

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.

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.

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

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.

But after hearing the denunciations of Tiller,  Svekis penned a letter to the Tampa Tribune last week, describing her encounter with Tiller, and her very fond memories of him.

Intrigued by her acknowledging the abortion with the late doctor, I spoke with her last week.

In 1985 there were only a few places Svekis knew where she could get an abortion after being 20 weeks pregnant (she says she was at 24 weeks into gestation).

She says her mother, a Unitarian minister, had learned through a contact about Tiller, and after her ob-gyn physician contacted the medical examiner in Kansas, she felt confident that she would be in good hands.

But unlike the Frankenstein depicted by his critics, Svekis says that Tiller was a compassionate man. She says nearly a year after her abortion, Tiller contacted her to see if she was interested in adopting a baby — after diagnosing that a woman patient he had was too far along in her pregnancy to abort.

“It was reminiscent of John Irving’s novel The Cider House Rules, the doctor who says he can give you an abortion or give you an orphan…. I don’t know what his guidelines were, but she was too far along for him to give her and adoption, and would we like to accept?”

She respectfully declined. But she was touched by his thoughtfulness. (She subsequently had two children of her own.)

“He spent the time to understand what a woman’s position was. Why she was there. What her physical and emotional situation was … he’d try to work with her and whomever came with that person to support her.”

Svetkis says she’s aware it’s a bit unconventional to want to tell the world about a surgical procedure from more than 20 years ago. She says her family and friends were aware of her abortion.

But, she says, when she heard of Tiller’s death, “It was like I needed to make my experience as public as possible as to what an incredible, compassionate man this was, and how important this service was.”

She continued, “There are so few people who can do it. And those that are and the people that can do this procedure are being intimidated out of their rights, and I view it as terrorism.”

Sherry Svetkis says she hopes that with the considerable skills that Barack Obama posses, that perhaps a discussion can be renewed in America about the issue of reproductive rights.

She says, “We need many more voices from the women, and families in this country who have made these choices, so we can have an understanding to what these situations are, and why its important to have services. It’s a woman’s right to her body, and Dr. Tiller was a firm believer in that. We need to support women so they don’t have to be in this situation.”

The Justice Department announced late last week that it was launching an investigation into whether anyone else was involved in Tiller’s death and investigating for potential violations of the Freedom of Access to Clinics Entrances Act.

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.

wow.

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).

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.

Updates after the jump:

UPDATE: Word is that Trib’s Pasco reporters were told the bureau in that county is closing. No details on what happens to the scribes stationed there.

UPDATE 2: TBO.com updates to include this:

More details were also unveiled about changes to the Tribune and other print products.

•Production of lifestyle publications, Skirt and Flair, will cease.

•The Saturday newspaper will now be formatted like the Monday through Friday paper. That means the news section will be one section now, and the stand-alone Business and Views sections will cease. Business news will appear on the back of the Sports section, as it does now during the week.

•The format of the T.V. book will be slimmed down but still include all the listings and some editorial.

•BayLife Magazine will be eliminated.

•News bureaus are closing, although the sections they produce won’t change. Staffers will either work out of one of two satellite offices or out of the main newspaper office in downtown Tampa.

The Brandon and Plant City offices will be sold to generate cash, said Janet Coats, vice president of news for the Florida Communications Group.

The other offices are leased, she said, and not renewing those leases will save money.

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.”

UPDATE: Re/Creating Tampa’s take is titled “Tribune Death Watch.”

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.