Plaudits to the St. Petersburg Times for doing more than retrenching during tough times. Its well-regarded, Web-harnessing Truth-O-Meter (PolitiFact.com) has now added Georgia to its previous expansion to Texas and Florida markets. Moreover, the Times continues to not pull any punches in its high-profile coverage of Scientology, coverage that can court a retaliatory response.
On the flip side, that was a pretty disingenuous approach the Times took on St. Pete City Council’s ban of solicitations on major city streets. The city said the ordinance was aimed at improving public safety. Something about the inherent conflict of solicitors and traffic and busy intersections and lights that go from red to green.
The Times, which sells about 7,000 papers via street vendors each Sunday, filed a federal lawsuit against the city saying the ban was a violation of its constitutional right of free speech. A federal judge, presumably with a straight face, upheld the ban prohibiting pedestrian-motorist transactions which ranged from charity soliciting to panhandling to newspaper hawking. (And, yes, Media General, the publisher of the Tampa Tribune, later filed a motion in support of the Times.)
Of course, St. Pete wanted a two-fer. This was a legitimately legal way of getting panhandlers–and others–out of traffic. Certainly better than ignoring the safety issue or masking it with day-glow vests. As for that free-speech, free-press gambit, 80 percent of St. Pete’s streets plus private property remain venues for paper-pitching. No one, presumably, will go uninformed because they couldn’t buy a St. Pete Times–or a Tampa Trib–on U.S. 19.