St. Pete, err, Tampa Bay Times, cuts pay, people

Re: St. Pete cuts pay, people

Does it really cost $7,000 to fly to Australia?

 

Re: St. Pete cuts pay, people

It's amazing how much money sports departments used to waste, the Olympics being at the top of my list at each previous stop. Miami would send an editor to coordinate its Olympic coverage.

 

Re: St. Pete cuts pay, people

You would eat your own face if you knew how much money my paper spent on the 1996 Atlanta Games -- travel, housing, meals, incidentals. (Accounting didn't even blink an eye at a $600 bar tab.) Those were the last of the good ol' days, although we never would have guessed it way back then.

I felt bad that we could only send one reporter to Nagano in 1998 (and later Sydney '00, Salt Lake City '02, and Athens '04, after I left the company), but the suits put an end to any Olympic travel after that ... and probably forever.

Now my alma mater struggles to cover a prep football game outside the metro area.

 

Re: St. Pete cuts pay, people

Anyone ever heard the stories of USA Today's Olympics trips? I know USA Today takes a lot of pride in Olympic coverage, and it's definitely the place to go for that coverage. But I can't help but wonder why "The Nation's Newspaper" invests so much in an international event. If USA Today editors did serious paring down of Olympic expenses, they could probably have a reporter at two-thirds of the NFL's regular-season games.

 

Re: St. Pete cuts pay, people

Actually the Olympics would be an event where USA Today could and should dominate. They're serving a national audience that's usually squarely in the corner of one or two teams or competitors.

 

Re: St. Pete cuts pay, people

You could buy a roundtrip ticket today from NY to Sydney for $2,000. And airfares are probably much higher today than during the Sydney Games.

 

Re: St. Pete cuts pay, people

I should have said, "It was more than twice the price of my ticket to Australia."

My Sydney ticket was around $1800. I just remember we were joking at the time that for just another $1800 more we could cover three more preseason NBA games.

 

Re: St. Pete cuts pay, people

USA Today has sent writers to Lausanne and Rio De Janiero to write 12 inches total.

 

Re: St. Pete cuts pay, people

Imagine how much money newspapers could have invested, and should have invested, in research and development simply by reducing travel spending from "exorbitant" to "generous."

 

Re: St. Pete cuts pay, people

The Dallas Morning News had a coordinating editor on site in Athens and Beijing and I wouldn't be surprised at all if they send him to London with their crew of writers and columnists despite the recent round of layoffs.

 

Re: St. Pete cuts pay, people

I would. I'd be just as surprised if they sent a "crew." I think those days are over. This is why you have AP, wires, partnerships. Send a columnist to hit Dirk and the boys and the day's big or best story. That's plenty. It's really difficult to justify doing more than that.