Yet more layoffs in Tampa

Yeah, I posted that a few weeks back. Pretty damning, ain't it?

 

Yeah, but anyone who worked for MG (especially during the early 2000s, when all to corporate types were big on the "convergence" crap they were shoving down everyone's throats) could've told you this ...

 

You're wrongfully assigning blame here to a degree. Convergence didn't weaken the Tribune, management in Richmond did.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, convergence works when it's done right. While it could have been a huge advantage for MG to leverage against the St. Petersburg Times (which was years behind in its online presence, and about a decade behind in its TV partnership), MG bosses used it as a way to eliminate jobs and trim expenses in an effort to make up for stupid spending during previous years. The products got weaker ... driving audiences away ... causing more cutbacks ... making the products weaker still ... creating a never-ending circle cum death spiral.

 

Wasn't blaming convergence -- I agree with you, it can work IF done right -- I was blaming a corporate mentality that corrupted a good idea to do stupid, stupid things ...

 

We're on the same page, then. I admit to being a little sensitive to criticisms of convergence -- real or perceived -- as the root of the Tribune's problems since I was one of the leading newsroom advocates for it. It was a difficult crusade, to say the least.

It could have been a beautiful thing if they had done it right, and they could have been a national leader if they had. The fact that they were NOT doing it right was one of several reasons I left the company in 2000. Yeah, it was obvious even that long ago that they intended to use it as cover for reducing expenses, not strengthening market share.

I wasn't eager to work for a company that was playing defense. I'm not sure what the hell they're playing now. Zone? Stall? Prevent?

 

Cover .5, it sounds like.

 

I read the report and listened to the conference call because I was thinking about buying the stock. The future viability of the company basically depends on how much the banks are willing to lend against the value of the television stations. A lot of the conference call was spent with management arguing that thier televison stations were worth close to a billion dollars and the analysts saying no, you could not sell the stations for that much. It all comes down to whether they can refinance.

As for convergence I think it was a Hail Mary. The only chance they had. The Tampa paper was the number two paper in the market and fate has not been kind to papers who are second in thier market.

 

You've got your chronology out of whack and you're making an incorrect supposition.

Tampa Bay is a bifurcated market. Tampa/Hillsborough County to the east, St. Petersburg/Pinellas County to the west. The battleground historically had been in the northern counties. The Tribune was a strong #1 in its designated market area; ditto for the Times. It wasn't until the last five years ago or so -- well after convergence was under way -- that the Tribune's dam finally collapsed and readers finally began to turn to an obviously superior product.

Convergence wasn't seen as a "the only chance they had" ... not in the slightest. Quite the opposite, in fact. It was introduced as a way to gain market share. At least that was the pitch. That's how they got buy-in from the employees. By the time it became obvious what its real intention was -- a way to cut people and expenses -- it was too late. The plan was under way, and the Tribune's inevitable fate was sealed.

 

Why is my chronolgy out of whack?

I know that the primary circualtion areas of Tampa and St. Petersburg are in different parts of the metropolitan area. But I think that if you were/are the smaller paper in a larger metropolitan market that you are an endangered spieces. I would bet ten years ago that if you wanted to sell your car in Tampa you used the Tribune and if you wanted to sell it in St. Petersburg you used the Times. So each paper had a nice profitable niche. Now the classifieds are gone.

So away went the lucrative classifed niche. So there is not enough business to support the smaller paper as other advertisers move to the larger paper. So now Tampa Bay is one market.

As an example of a smaller paper in a metropolitan area that faced the same problems I refer to the East Valley Tribune and the Los Angeles Daily News.

 

It's out of whack because you said convergence was "the only chance they had." It wasn't the only chance they had, because it was implemented in 1993 when the Tribune was still a cash cow. The Tribune wasn't looking for a "chance" ... it was still in a position of strength at that time.

The Times was barely making a blip in Hillsborough County, and vice versa for the Tribune in Pinellas County. For all practical purposes, the two papers operated independently within their own segments of the market. Convergence actually was seen as an edge that the other guys didn't have, and the hope was that it could be leveraged into something that would not only reinforce the Tribune's position in its designated market but possibly even expand that market share through the broadcast reach of the TV station.

That didn't happen. Around 2000, the MG suits discovered that they could eliminate personnel and expenses by making journalists do double duty, rather than supplement and enhance. The steep downward trajectory began about five years later, when those cutbacks finally began to be noticed by the marketplace.

By that time, convergence was already 12 years under way.

Speaking as someone who lives here, works here and intimately knows the media industry here, I will repeat: Your premise that convergence was the Tribune's "only chance" is incorrect because your time frame is wrong. That was not the thought when it was implemented nearly 20 years ago, and I know this because I was a part of the process for the first seven years.

Your other line of discussion is correct in a textbook sense: When a second-place company begins to falter, business usually shifts to the bigger company. But this isn't an academic exercise, and business has not shifted from the Tribune to the Times. This region barely considers itself a single market. There are too many people who refuse to cross the bridges.

Advertising (classified and display) has not moved from the Tribune to the Times ... it has simply vaporized. Readership hasn't moved from the Tribune to the Times, either. While the Tribune is losing readers rapidly, the Times is not picking many of them up ... they're just not reading printed newspapers, period.

 

SportsJournalists.com needs a "like" button.

 

Let me add in the fact that when convergence was riding high the centerpoint was TBO.com with content from the Tribune and WFLA-Ch. 8. Yet when you tried to find a story on TBO - you couldn't. There was sooo much stuff on the home page that readers had to play "Where's Waldo" trying to find anything on there. It was kind of like "We're TBO let's throw as much as possible on the front page."

When you tried to search for something by entering the words "Plant High" everything gardens to Plant City to AP news that had the word plant in it i.e. "The GM plant in Detroit was on a 52-week high." would come up. The story you would try to find was one of 177,687 stories. It was too much for a reader to go through, hell I didn't want to go through it either and I worked there.

In addition to what reformed hack has said, let me add this. When I was there it seemed there were many who were more concerned with what the Times did than what we did. I was proud of the people I had (prep staff) who didn't follow that logic, my saying was "Let's do what we do, and we won't have to worry about the Tmes."


It hurts me more that the people I worked with have been laid off than when I was laid off from there in the first of what would be many purges. It really does.