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The Times Came And Went As Things Do
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Published: April 4, 2008
It was almost 26 years ago that the small group of people put their names on a sheet of paper and jammed it into a bottle. They walked over to the banks of the mighty Hillsborough River, gave the bottle to the biggest guy in the group and watched glumly as he heaved it about a third of the way out and into the river, where it immediately sank.
"I think," said one in the group, "we're going to have to go out and find a job somewhere else."
It had been a bad week. It wasn't just the announcement that the newspaper everyone in the group worked for was shutting down, but it was dealing with the other media folks who had roamed through the newsroom asking anyone willing to talk what it felt like losing a job. I suppose we deserved that, having asked enough victims or relatives of victims over the years how they felt about whatever tragedy they had undergone.
That's when the features department that I belonged to decided on the bottle idea. We would attach our names to a resume, offering up a perfectly good features department, toss it in the river, and wait to be contacted by a newspaper looking to hire a staff. Like I said, the bottle sank, as did a number of careers in journalism.
On Saturday, some 80 members of the late Tampa Times afternoon paper will get together, complain about things, wonder at how everyone else has aged except themselves and almost certainly grouse about the state of journalism.
First Byte
The world, as it tends to do, has indeed changed dramatically over the past quarter of a century. That afternoon newspaper we look back on was only one victim - if victim is the right word - of the technological and cultural changes we've all been through.
Computers were just taking their first bytes into a new information age, and most of us still had typewriters on our desks and saw those electronic word processors as just another waste of management's money that could have been better spent on reporters. I don't think any of us had any idea what was just around the corner.
It took awhile to get over the closing of the Times. I mean I would come home in the afternoons and instinctively look for the paper lying in the yard, usually over by the sprinklers.
I believed that we had lost something as a community. Newspapers were such a large part of our daily lives. It was more than a business; it was a part of us.
I still believe we are the lesser for its demise, although in truth the newspaper is only a method of gathering and distributing information. There are faster, more visual ways of getting most of that information out now.
The Blogosphere
Today, I look on the Internet and find out that everyone is me. We have evolved into a Blogosphere where everyone can become his or her own reporter, columnist, evangelist or politician, with an unlimited potential audience.
But it is not the same. The Times in its heyday was a well-crafted, thought-out newspaper. I could settle down and count on reading not just the who, what, when and where, but also the whys of the world.
It wasn't perfect; heaven knows we will be talking about our bloopers on Saturday. It certainly wasn't always right or even balanced, but The Tampa Times - like many of the great afternoon dailies that are gone - made an honest attempt to tell the story of a community and the world around it, and I still miss her.
Keyword, Otto Graphs, to read and comment on Steve's blog.
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