More fun at St Pete/Tampa Bay Times

It's good news.

 

An interesting, albeit not entirely illuminating, look at the financial hard times faced by the Times and its parent company.

http://www2.tbo.com/news/breaking-news/2012/jun/02/tampa-bay-times-parent-facing-financial-squeeze-ar-410873/

The upshot is that Poynter acknowledges the Times no longer is a viable source of support.

 

Just when you thought it was time to start feeling good again....

 

It's getting silly. Earlier in the week, the Trib wrote a story defending a local steak joint that the Times criticized. That story was about as provocative as this one.
Trib also is making a point of referring to the Times as "St. Petersburg-based..."
Also heard the Trib sent a memo to reporters and editors informing them not to use "Tampa Bay" in any reference to the region. It's Tampa, Tampa area or the specific city.
This stuff has gone on for years. Times never used Bolts to refer to Lightning because the Trib did. Trib calls the Lightning's building the Forum.

 

And yet there's the "Tampa Bay Times" sign on the outfield walls at the Trop.

 

I grew up in the Tampa Bay area reading the SPT and the Tribune and really love and appreciate both of these papers. But I really hate when they go after each other with stories, whether that's the TBT frequently and gleefully breaking news about cuts at the Trib, or the Trib's underwhelming story on Poynter's insufficient funds, or the petty steakhouse ordeal. It's like watching your divorced parents' legal battle play out in court. I wish they would just stop worrying about each other so much, put out their best work and see who survives and for how long. Godspeed, good sirs.

 

So what do they do when they have to write about the Tampa Bay Bucs?

 

Oddly enough, it's their style to refer to them only as "our beloved Hometown Scallywags."

 

Bucs, Rays, Lightning on all references. Which is fine. We're smart enough to know the teams are here. I wish more papers would do that with home teams.
I'm just waiting for Jennings to leap over the Times' sign in left to rob a home run. There's no way they'd run that photo.

 

That just seems like such a defeatist attitude on the part of the Tribune. You're letting your competitor take ownership of the identity of the region's signature body of water, the region itself and the three Big Four sports that play there just because they grafted it onto the flag a few months ago. Good thing Florida TODAY doesn't publish in the part of the state in the middle of the western Gulf of Mexico coastal region.

 

Bucs or Buccaneers (or Lightning or Rays or Storm or Rowdies, etc.) on first reference should suffice, as it has for years. The interesting thing -- if there was indeed a directive, and I have not yet been able to confirm this to be the case -- is how they'll refer to the teams on subsequent references. ("Atlanta held Tampa Bay to 55 yards in the first half," etc.)

Near as I can tell, in stories referring to the business (as opposed to the team, you know what I mean), they're still the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, et al.

Likewise, the Tribune has been referring to the Tampa Bay Times Forum by its full, formal name when the occasion calls for it. There have been a few casual references to "the Times Forum" and "the Forum" but, by my reckoning, there's nothing different now than when it was called the St. Pete Times Forum.

@MysteryMeat: In a way, I kind of see it as a bit of an aggressive move rather than defeatist. Instead of calling the region "the Tampa Bay area," the Tribune is trying to establish the primacy of its hometown by calling the region "the Tampa area." It'll be interesting to see how it all plays out.

A little bit of backstory: The reason why the region's pro sports teams are known as the Tampa Bay Whatevers is thanks to late Tribune sports editor Tom McEwen, who spearheaded behind-the-scenes efforts to be inclusive of the metropolitan area. It started in 1973, when the North American Soccer League awarded a franchise to the region to begin play in 1975. McEwen and some of the area's movers and shakers recognized that, for the team to be successful, it would have to have the backing of the entire area, not just Tampa. Hence, the Tampa Bay Rowdies. A year later, when the NFL awarded a franchise to the region to begin play in 1976, the same people applied the same reasoning. We were aboutthisclose to having a team called the Tampa Buccaneers.

You can argue (and rightly so) about the ethics of a journalist being involved in the branding of the team -- and those debates have already been aired many times over the years -- but it was a different era. McEwen wasn't exactly a booster of St. Petersburg, but he did recognize that the region needed to coalesce to have credibility on a national scale. The Tampa Bay area took its name from the teams, not the other way around.

In the long run, the more-inclusive name was the right choice or a multitude of reasons ... not the least of which is that it helped bring three mid-sized cities together into one large metropolitan area in the eyes of the nation. (Even if many residents here still see distinct differences between Tampa, St. Petersburg and Clearwater.)