St. Petersburg Times = Tampa Bay Times

Nah, I got it. The legend lives on in newsrooms throughout the Bay area. Ask me about the time four years ago when the Times had to trash about 20,000 copies because of a headline that was supposed to read "crab trap" ... but didn't.

 

The St. Pete Times' office isn't even in St. Pete, is it? I remember the giant Times sign on a building in downtown Tampa and assumed that was the office.

 

That's the Tampa bureau. They actually occupy only part of that (I think) eight-story building and bought signage rights ... they wanted to give the public the same impression you got. The main office is still in downtown St. Petersburg, with the printing plant in north St. Petersburg, as well as bureaus throughout the region.

 

My anecdotal evidence (daily morning walks in my old eastern Hillsborough County neighborhood) show that there are a very few two-newspaper driveways, but the driveways that had one newspaper were stacked about 5-to-1 in favor of the Times.

I can't think of one coverage area that I would say the Tribune "owns" in the Tampa Bay area.

I think it's a great move for the Times and is a better reflection of the newspaper's reach, and goes very nicely hand-in-hand with the Times' guerrilla radio and billboard marketing campaign pointing out how many coverage areas it does still own that the Tribune has cut.

(And no, I never worked for either paper; this is entirely a reader's opinion.)

 

This move will be one of the final swords in the Tribune's coffin.

 

Too bad, because the idea was actually kinda cute.

 

Mizzou's been predicting the Tribune's demise for at least two years, I think. Maybe more. Classic case of extending a deadline (it will happen in June, it will happen in December, etc.). My offer still stands from 2009 -- if the place folds, I will buy you a drink. Although if it does fold, and the panhandling law in Tampa is going to crack down hard, I might be hard-pressed for cash.

 

He's completely right. I thought it would be the next big paper to fold after the RMN and the Seattle paper. I've been wrong and I continue to hope you never have to buy me that drink.

 

While it depends where you live, the Tribune certainly still owns most of Hillsborough and the Times owns Pinellas. The more affluent areas of Hillsborough and those closer to Pinellas might go with the Times because of its national repuation, but it is a very large area and the Tribune is selling plenty of papers (of course not nearly as many as in the past, but that's the case everywhere). The Times renaming makes sense in trying to create the illusion that it is a regional paper (not sure how much money it is really investing in Hillsborough), but will that national reputation and brand be lost in trying to do that? Must have been one of the toughest decisions that's ever been made in those offices in St. Pete. Tribune is still the 43rd-largest paper in the country, while the Times is 18th ... and the Trib still does pretty well on Sundays (largely thanks to the Bucs, no doubt).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_in_the_United_States_by_circulation

 

I have never been to the area but it seems that St. Pete is becoming the dominant paper regionwide. If the Rocky Mountain News couldn't make it despite having the same circulation as the Denver Post why should the Tampa paper? Where is there a smaller paper competing profitably against a larger metro paper? And with the continuing revenue declines it seems to me that the Tampa paper has to be on the critical list. I wish the Tampa Tribune well but if I worked there l would be sending out resumes furiously.

 

I understand what you are saying but there are dozens of large regions that support two (or more) papers (See Minneapolis/St. Paul, Pittsburgh, etc. on the ABC list). I don't know the Rocky's situation, and obviously you don't know the bay area's situation. How do you know it's becoming the dominant paper regionwide if you've never been to the region? And Denver to Tampa/St. Pete seems to be apples to oranges ... they are two distinct cities that cover very large counties. The Times long has been a widely read and respected paper, but it is dealing with the same challenges as everyone else. And it is going to have to put a lot of resources into Hillsborough to become what it wants to be. ertainly, it's a much safer environment in a one-paper town, but let's not get carried away.