Yet more layoffs in Tampa

Was anybody else reminded of the incident of the intern blogger who hailed how Tampa's innovations that would stem and turn the tide during one of the last memorable waves of layoffs? See this thread from 2008's "Black Wednesday" in Tampa: http://www.sportsjournalists.com/forum/threads/58169/

Update: She didn't end up keeping her zeal for the news business and has sought refuge in law school http://www.linkedin.com/in/jessicadasilva

 

Has the Tribune seen it's advertising decline in the last five years more than the Times. My guess is yes. And if that is true doesn't that support my argument about the second newspaper in a metropolitan area being an endangered species (sadly)?

 

Your guess is wrong.

Yes, ad dollars are down ... but they're down equally at both organizations. The Tribune's advertising hasn't declined any more than the Times' has. They both have the same national ads. They both have roughly the same numbers and types of local ads. Classifieds have bottomed out in both papers, of course, but that's hardly unique.

The difference is that the Tribune is owned by a publicly held company and must return a certain percentage of cash to Media General in Virginia. The Times is privately held by a nonprofit organization and can reinvest its earnings locally. If that weren't the case, the Times would be in an equally desperate situation. Which is not to say the Times isn't having money problems ... it's having HUGE ones, too, as documented elsewhere. But the Times is in somewhat better financial shape because of its ownership structure and thus can afford to take steps to take control of the marketplace (name change, sponsorships, etc.) as part of its plan for survival.

Again, you're trying to impose textbook logic to unique market conditions. In a vacuum, your expectations would be correct, but as I've been saying for a while now, throw your business assumptions out the window about this. You don't hear of the Times' cash-flow issues because it's a private company and doesn't issue earnings reports or hold shareholder conference calls, while the Tribune's problems are transparent by law. That's what creates the illusion of disparity.

Bottom line: Tribune advertisers and Tribune readers have not -- repeat, HAVE NOT -- switched to the Times in any measurable degree. As mentioned before, the reality for most Bay area residents is this is a bifurcated market. Hillsborough County advertisers and readers do not want to be in a Pinellas County newspaper, and vice versa. It's backward and goofy and antediluvian, I know, but that's just how it is here.

This isn't a market with a #1 newspaper and a #2 newspaper. It's a market that has two #1 newspapers on each side of the fence, with occasional border skirmishes. But the #1 newspaper on the Tampa side is dying because of its own self-made business conditions. The Times isn't affecting the way the Tribune does business ... the Tribune is killing itself, and quickly. Other than some sponsorships, the Times hasn't really taken anything away from the Tribune.

 

"The Times isn't affecting the way the Tribune does business ... the Tribune is killing itself, and quickly."

This. Only, I maintain that the Tribune struck its self-inflicted death blow in 2007, when longtime movie critic Bob Ross, community columnist Judy Hill, brilliant artist David O'Keefe, and Mike Harris Not That One were caught in the first, inexplicable round of layoffs. Everything since has been decomposition.

 

Four corners ... as in "let's keep tossing the ball around so no one notices that it's gone flat ..."

I concur with you that when the whole convergence movement at MG began in the early 90s it was a great idea, especially for the smaller papers that didn't have the resources of the bigger papers ... but as time marched on and MG went through upper level management changes, the whole process got corrupted -- not only as an excuse to cut expenses, but as a way to "con"-vince the board of directors into giving out raises and bonuses for the execs without having to achieve any real goals or progress ...

I started at one of the N.C. community papers in 2001, and while the concept as explained to me by my boss at the time was sound, I quickly saw how it was being practiced was completely different than the theory (example, while exchanging stuff with the other nearby community papers was more or less easy to achieve, getting the "big boy" metro to even put their stuff on the exchange site at a reasonable hour was next to impossible) ... that, and how much money MG was throwing at the Interactive division for what every newsroom was telling them was a crappy product ...

That's why when I was eligible for the 401K program, I specifically put down that none of my money was to be put into MG stock (and that was when it went from the low teens into the 70-dollar range in the course of 12-15 months) ... a lot of people I know who were long time MG employees stuck with the stock, and their plans took a real beating because of it ...

 

Ahem. Hi there.

 

Sorry dude ... :|

 

I'm not as bad off as many others. I got out when the shares were around 50, but I certainly remember when they were around 70. As of this morning, it's trading at 4.

 

Why does Tampa have a bureau in Sebring? Just curious.

 

I believe Highlands Today is still part of Media General ...

 

At one time, dating back to the 1920s and '30s, the Tribune's circulation area stretched from Gainesville to Okeechobee because readers in those outlying regions wanted news from a big-city paper and the local papers weren't particularly strong. But as the local papers improved, readers turned to their local products and the Tribune pulled back.

However, Sebring (about 90 miles southeast of Tampa) was (and is) an area ignored by other daily papers, so the Tribune has maintained a presence there. In 1996, the Tribune spun its Heartland edition into a separate daily product called Highlands Today. The paper is printed in Tampa, but its office is no longer considered a Tribune bureau. Highlands Today reporters feed the Tribune as needed. In recent years, Highlands Today has been rebranded as "an edition of The Tampa Tribune" for marketing purposes, but it is otherwise an independent business unit, overseen by Media General's Florida division.

Hope that helps.

 

I used stringers from the Sebring bureau a long time ago -- well, maybe a stringer -- and they/he were damn good. There was a time when the Tribune had a very solid army of prep correspondents.