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This Newspaper Is Fighting Back

Despite Rumors To The Contrary, The Tribune Isn’t Going Anywhere

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By JANET COATS, Executive Editor, and DENISE PALMER, President and Publisher

The Tampa Tribune

Published: December 14, 2008

Let's state the obvious: These are difficult times for the newspaper business.

All over the country, newspapers have been cutting staffing and pages, combining some sections and eliminating others altogether. A business that was already undergoing a major shift in advertising away from print and toward online has been pummeled by first the real estate downturn, then the general economic collapse.

The story is the same across the country, but there's no question that the pain has been even greater in Florida. Here, newspapers had been cushioned by the incredible real estate boom. When the bubble burst for real estate, newspapers were punched in the gut.

Florida has been a haven for newspaper readers, and the competition for those readers has always been fierce. In economic hard times, it makes sense that competitive markets such as Tampa would face especially difficult challenges, as two newspapers chase after the same readers and advertisers.

It makes sense that one of those newspapers would face a greater struggle, and be forced to cut a larger number of pages and reduce local news coverage more than its competitor.

That's what has happened in Tampa. But the newspaper doing all the cutting is not the one you may think. It's time to set the record straight.

In the past few weeks, rumors have swirled around this community and the journalism industry about the future of The Tampa Tribune. Many were confused by the Chicago-based Tribune Co.'s very public bankruptcy filing last week, thinking The Tampa Tribune is owned by the same company that owns the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and Orlando Sentinel.

For the record, we are not. We are owned by Richmond, Va.-based Media General; our company is not seeking protection in the bankruptcy courts.

While that confusion is understandable, even more disturbing has been the persistent rumor that we're going to close the Tribune after the Super Bowl, relying on our Web site, TBO.com, as the conduit for our journalism and advertising.

The Tallahassee Democrat reported that rumor as fact, and we demanded a correction. Subscription solicitation crews, working for the St. Petersburg Times, spread rumors that the Tribune is closing in January. We have asked the Times to stop the solicitors from spreading this lie.

So why have we been the subject of these rumors while our competition has not?

Because we are owned by a publicly traded company, many of our business dealings are more widely known than those of our privately held competitor.

Beyond that, we've been more forthcoming about the reductions in staff and pages that we have made because we believe that newspapers, like the government institutions we cover, have an obligation to act in the sunshine and be accountable to our communities. Other media companies in this market have made a different choice.

A Franchise Of Local News

The truth of the matter is this: We are here to stay. Like every newspaper, we have had to make tough choices this year. Those choices have been difficult for our staff and our readers alike. But we at the Tribune have always been fighters, and we believe the fight we're in now is one we will win because of our commitment to this community.

Here are the facts about the strength of our journalism:

•We are giving our readers more pages of coverage than the St. Petersburg Times. Because we look at both papers every day in more detail than most readers do, we've known for some time that the Times has cut more pages than we have.

A comparison of the two papers during the first 10 days of this month — a period when neither paper was offering special coverage and there were no big news events driving up the number of pages — shows that to be true. From Dec. 1 through Dec. 10, the Tribune published 420 pages in its core news sections, while the Times published 404.

Because the Times had more pages than we did when the economic crisis began, its cuts have been even deeper than that number reflects.

•The story is more dramatic on Sundays. Because we believe the Sunday paper is so important to our readers, we added pages to Sunday in September. As a result, we provide readers with 20 more pages in our news sections on Sundays than the Times does — the equivalent of two full sections.

•We are providing our readers with far more coverage of Hillsborough County. This isn't even a close race. In that same period, the Tribune published 365 items about Hillsborough County. The Times published 190. We provided our readers with 92 percent more Hillsborough County news, proving once again that we truly are Tampa's hometown newspaper.

•The only category in which the Times had even a slight advantage was for national and international news. The Times published 365 national/international news items during this period, while we published 315.

•Still, we published more total news items — 740 to 701 — because we publish so much more local content than the Times does.

We've been able to do this, even though we have undergone some painful cuts, because we are focused on local news — Tampa news — as our franchise. Although some readers have not liked our recent redesign, there have been very good reasons for the changes.

By organizing the paper as we have, we've been able to preserve more space for local content. The Times, which clings to traditional sections as being more important to readers than local news, is stuck with a format that requires reducing local content.

We think our readers will see that for what it is: a way of maintaining a traditional look to the newspaper while letting the cheaper, easier national and international report carry the bulk of the newspaper's pages. Their approach may rock fewer boats, but the result is clear and simple: They publish less news about our community and the things that matter most to readers here.

A Watchdog For You

We know that sheer numbers are far from the only way to judge the quality of a newspaper. The mission of every local newspaper should be to look out for you — to be the watchdog on alert for misspent tax dollars, environmental dangers, the powerful preying on the powerless.

We are proud that we've kept true to that mission this year.

Without the reporting of the Tribune's Baird Helgeson, this community would have no idea about the issues at Lowry Park Zoo — one of Tampa's gems — that led the Association of Zoos and Aquariums to suspend the zoo's accreditation a week ago.

Without the reporting of the Tribune's Lindsay Peterson, the state's questionable financial dealings with CSX would have not received the scrutiny they warranted and your tax dollars would have been misused.

Stories about financial issues at Without Walls church, the ongoing foreclosure crisis, problems in the state's My Safe Florida Home hurricane protection program, National Football League veterans plagued by drug abuse — all of these are investigative stories the Tribune reported this year.

Our partnership with News Channel 8 and TBO.com has expanded the reach of our journalism, giving our readers stories about cracks in the C.W. Bill Young Regional Reservoir, a toxic plume in Pinellas County and databases that allow readers to learn which teachers have earned National Board certification.

Those stories reflect our commitment to be here for you, every single day, in print, online and on television. We view this as so much more than a business. We have a covenant with this community to be here, through good and bad, to document Tampa's constantly unfolding story.

We are here for you, and we are here to stay.

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