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Newspapers In Decline

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: December 16, 2008

Re: "This Newspaper Is Fighting Back" (Views, Dec. 14):

I have a love/hate relationship with The Tampa Tribune and newspapers in general; fortunately, the love part cancels out the other, and I'm grateful for the opportunity to know more about the news business from your viewpoint.

Newspapers provide that special tactile sensation that screams "First Amendment" out loud, don't they? Nothing else has that touch or that smell; certainly not my computer or the magazine addressed to "occupant." Newspapers are historic, too. They have chronicled the world's triumphs and tragedies, its victories, victims, and villains, fact, fiction and everything in between. It's unfortunate that your contemporaries are using rumors and other fictionalized accounts to demean the Tribune, but do you think that you may have yourselves to blame?

Newspapers, and other conventional media outlets, have always used rumor, stories of tragedy and other fictional accounts to promote one political party over another. The First Amendment provides for that, even though it's highly inaccurate. For the Tribune to lament the tools it has used to disparage others when they are now the target smacks of a double standard.

Former Tribune columnist Daniel Ruth was valuable, even necessary, to an informed citizenry, but don't expect your readers to like being dumped on every day. As for being "the watchdog on alert for misspent tax dollars," you've fallen short there, too.

Hundreds of millions of dollars spent on bridges to nowhere is an easy target, and every newspaper in the country covers those stories; they require no imagination or skill to report. But what about the $127,000 here or the $2.3 million there that's spent on why men with college degrees make better fathers or why boy boll weevils chase girl boll weevils or how much methane is in cow flatulence? And why isn't there a newspaper reporter sticking a tape recorder in the face of those who ask for these things?

I can ask until I'm blue in the face and get nowhere, but a newspaper has the clout and resources to find the answers. Until newspapers actually go back to seeking out and reporting news, they will continue to decline in relevancy, and that would be a tragedy.

STEFFAN F. CRESS

Tampa

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