Category: Media Watch

To anyone familiar with the competition between the St. Petersburg Times and the Tampa Tribune over the last decade and a half, news of the “St. Pete Times Forum” is no shock. No more than public-records hypocrisy.

When the Times secured the naming rights to the Ice Palace, it was a logical, if arrogant, extension of its modus operandi . It’s known for its aggressive marketing, such as sponsorship arrangements with Centro Ybor and International Plaza, as well as its penchant for putting it to the Trib .

Ever since the gentlemen’s no-poaching agreement was discarded in the late ’80s, the Times has cherry picked Trib staffers, often outhustled the competition on metro stories, added the CityTimes and planted its flag in downtown Tampa with the high-profile Times building.

Now the Times name will perforce show up in copy of Trib coverage of events, such as Lightning games and concerts, at the erstwhile Ice Palace. Call it the House of Chutzpah — and a lot worse. But call it hardball marketing — and tough to take for the Trib — and any number of downtown Tampa interests.

It sounds more like a seminar at the Poynter Institute, but the St. Pete Times Forum is the name downtown is now stuck with for the Ice Palace. But no one, of course, is stuck more than the Tampa Tribune . Its reporters and editors will be forced to mention the St. Pete Times Forum in copy about major concerts, Lightning games and maybe even a GOP coronation. Ouch.

For anyone keeping score, the House of Chutzpah is merely the latest Times’ coup in what has long ceased being a newspaper war. For too long the Times has cherry-picked Trib staffers and outhustled the competition on metro stories. It also planted its flag atop a downtown Tampa office building and debuted the weekly CityTimes .

The Times , which can be arrogant, self-righteous and journalistically first rate, is also promotionally pugnacious and street smart. Witness the sponsorship arrangements with Cento Ybor and International Plaza. Now this. Even its naming rights-announcing press release, which didn’t deign to disclose relevant information about financial terms, couldn’t resist lobbing another round across the bow of the Trib .

Paul Tash, the Times’ editor and president, fired off a vintage, take-advantage-of-this-high-profile-local-news-story quote. “This deal demonstrates that the Tampa Bay area is growing steadily into a single metro region,” matter-of-factly noted Tash, who didn’t stop there. “And that the St. Petersburg Times is the premier newspaper for that region,” he then sniffed.

At least no one was editorially asleep for the Trib . The self-serving second part of Tash’s quote never saw the light of Trib print. So there.

The run-up to an election is an especially hectic time for candidates, campaign staffs — and newspaper editorial boards. For the latter, it means a barrage of candidates, good and bad, coming and going; a serious societal responsibility as voter surrogates; and a number of tough calls. It also means missed or hurried lunches and unforgiving daily deadlines.

Take it from Tampa Tribune Editorial Page Editor Ed Roberts. Please. His phone is on permanent voice mail these days because of the predictable onslaught of calls, many less than polite, representing all those not endorsed by the Trib .

“This is a very tough time for us,” acknowledges Roberts. “We have to get out our opinion pages every day. We have to schedule the candidates one right after the other. It’s that time, and it’s our job.”

Which begs the question: how much impact does this job have?

It depends on the race, say both Roberts and Robert Friedman, deputy editor of editorials for the St. Petersburg Times . The bigger the race, the less the impact.

“For example, voters don’t need us for information on presidential candidates,” notes Friedman. “For constitutional amendments and the more obscure races, it’s more important.”

According to Roberts, “It’s very important for judges, school board and county commission,” where voters are often relatively uninformed.

“The real problem,” adds Roberts, “is where we have a race where we don’t like any of the candidates. Then we have to pick the lesser or least of the evils out there. So then we make it a point that we are perhaps less than enthusiastic on a particular endorsement.”

And speaking of endorsements, ever notice that where the Trib “endorses,” the Times “recommends.” The difference?

“I never really thought about it,” says Roberts. “When we endorse, it is a (well-researched) suggestion not a command.”

Explains Friedman: “From what I’ve been told, it goes back to (founder) Nelson Poynter. In his mind, ‘recommend’ meant this is the person we believe is the best choice of those available. ‘Endorse’ meant to embrace and vouch for — as in character — which is beyond just recommending.”

Now you know.

Tampa Mayor Dick Greco’s controversial trip to Cuba — and its ex post facto revelation — are certainly fair game for commentary as well as parody.

Having said that, Times’ columnist Sandra Thompson certainly abused the latter in her Aug. 10 column. Her send-up of a Greco sojourn to Baghdad was not funny, merely sophomoric. But that’s not the issue. Not everyone can be intentionally humorous, let alone dead-on satiric. Some efforts are just laughable.

The column morphed from bad to bad taste when referring to the mayor denying “the rumor that he and Linda will be guests of Osama bin Laden at a Sept. 11 anniversary bash

Let’s just enjoy this while we can.

That gripping, melodramatic rescue of nine miners from the all-but-clenched jaws of death was a news antidote counteracting media coverage of homeland insecurity, stock market trauma, kidnapped children and Middle East carnage. The Quecreek Mine drama embodied so much of the human spirit that we so easily take for granted in a world too mindful of mankind’s dark side.

No less impressive than the trapped miners’ presence of mind and notes to loved ones was the fortitude and technological know-how of their rescuers. A 77-hour reminder of the ingenuity and can-do ethic that is the American spirit.

Also associated with America, however, is media overkill that can turn people into public and private property.

Geraldo and Donahue had early dibs on interviews. Networks touted and teased their “exclusives.” Letterman and Leno are in line. The rights of the “Somerset 9” will need to be secured for a made-for-TV movie. Book scenarios and even endorsements — think Skoal — could be in the mix.

Not all miner-survivors are equally photogenic or articulate. Some will have opportunities outside the mines. Others, when their celebrity status wanes, will have to return to their sub-strata culture.

For now, however, let’s just revel with a cause and enjoy this for as long as it is what it is: a celebration of life against some really long odds.

It’s not been a good fortnight for the St. Petersburg Times.

First, the Times was sued by the St. Petersburg chapter of the NAACP. Among others, the chapter had noticed that the Times’ board of directors was lily white. Oops.

For such a self-righteous, self-congratulating citadel of diversity and proponent of affirmative action, it was an embarrassing revelation. The Times will talk the talk with the best, but then walk away from follow-up where it matters most in-house. Publisher Andy Barnes seemed properly chastened and vowed to do better with the two years left on his black-and-white watch.

Worse yet, on the editorial side — where it really counts — the Times found itself reporting on the Tampa Tribune’s reporting on the Sami Al-Arian case.

The Trib , which sent reporter Michael Fechter to Israel for research, cited anonymous Israeli intelligence sources who said USF’s most notorious professor helped establish, among other involvements, the governing council of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Al-Arian’s role with the council, called Majlis Shura, was in fundraising and political ideology, said the Israeli sources.

Although the Times was unsuccessful in reaching USF President Judy Genshaft, it was able to reach Paul Tash, its own executive editor. While acknowledging wariness over using anonymous sources, Tash said the Times did so on the merits and impact of the Al-Arian saga. Said Tash, according to the Times: “It could have some bearing on a controversy that is playing out in the Tampa Bay area.”

Indeed.

For All Eyes Only: The Washington Post recently reported on secret U.S. plans for dealing with Iraq. The Post reported that President Bush had signed an intelligence order directing the CIA to undertake a comprehensive, covert program to topple Saddam Hussein. Such a program, informed the Post , included the go-ahead to use lethal force.

Thanks for sharing.

Anyone else see a certain incongruity in the public reporting of covert plans? Was this part of the Post’s celebration of its Watergate anniversary?

Chung News Network: In its haste to keep up — actually, catch up — with the media Joneses, as well as the O’Reillys, Van Susterens and Banfields, CNN has brought in Connie Chung. She’s now its marquee player. The days of Bernard Shaw are as remote as the days of Howard K. Smith at ABC.

Yawn. Ten years ago this sort of high-profile defection from ABC would have been, well, news. Now it’s just another show biz salvo in the ever-ratcheting network-and-cable-news ratings wars.

Besides, a decade ago most of us didn’t know Connie Povich.

R IP: No disrespect intended, but the appropriately lengthy obit of H.K. Wallace, the self-made millionaire co-founder of Lazydays RV SuperCenter, read like an infomercial.

That Lazydays is the world’s largest RV dealership was mentioned more than once. Also prominently noted were sales figures — more than $600 million per year in recreational vehicles. Even RV bragging rights for being “the number one distributor for each of the manufactures it represents” were included.

Perhaps it was an oversight.

Last Sunday’s St. Petersburg Times and Tampa Tribune both reported prominently on the outrageous story of the elderly Tampa couple who had been viciously beaten while on a morning walk.

The Times’ account noted that Victor and Mildred Hall, both in their 80s, were attacked by someone “described only as a black, 200-pound man in his 20s or 30s.”

The Trib’s account noted that police were looking “for a man between 20 and 30 years of age, 6-foot to 6-foot-2 and about 200 pounds. At the time of the incident, he was clean shaven and wore blue jeans and a gray pull-over shirt.”

How curious is it that the Trib , which bothered to note what kind and color pants and shirt the suspect wore, as well as his clean shaven state, left out his race? Is that not relevant?

Political correctness and profile paranoia are bad enough, if that’s what this was. But never at the expense of pertinent information that could help effect the arrest of an obvious predator.

Then, again, it might have been an oversight.

Last Laugh: What’s with Terry Bradshaw always playing the bumpkin foil to guys like Doug Flutie and Mike Piazza in those “10-10-220” Telecom USA commercials? Granted, it’s Gomer Pyle convincing, but isn’t he marketable enough without the Hee-Haw hick persona?

You would think that Bradshaw, of all people, would not want to go the Forest Gumption route in his commercial endorsements.

That’s because as a Hall of Fame quarterback for the Pittsburgh Steelers, he had to overcome a media perception that he was, well, stupid. It had everything to do with his down-home ways and Louisiana drawl — and playing in Cajun-challenged Pittsburgh. By all accounts, he was hurt by the drumbeat of criticism that he was too dumb to master quarterback, which has never been confused with, say, quantum physics.

Eventually fans and the media figured out that not only was Bradshaw not dumb, but he was football smart, talented, engaging and business savvy.

How ironic, then, that a guy who fought so hard to overcome the demeaning image of Southerners as dumber then fence posts, couldn’t supplement his considerable Fox Sports income in a way that doesn’t revisit that stereotype.

Unless, of course, Bradshaw figures the ultimate irony is to take that dimwit image he was unfairly saddled with — and ride it all the way to the bank.

O’Donnell Outing: Apparently Rosie O’Donnell outs herself in her upcoming memoir, “Find Me.” Thanks for sharing.

Prominent piece in this week’s Sports Illustrated on Tampa Bay Lightning goalie Nikolai Khabibulin. The Lightning have been embarrassingly bad for so long that it was refreshing to read something other than ridicule from a national publication.

The area, however, didn’t escape unscathed. The SI piece stooped to a demographic stereotype to underscore how bad Lightning goal tending has been since Darren Pupa’s final back spasm. Tampa Bay, noted the SI article, was a place “where lousy goalies have been outnumbered only by early bird dinner specials.”

It’s vintage SI wise ass. But at least update the cheap shots. It wouldn’t even be hyperbolic to say that lousy goalies have been outnumbered by, say, disgraced judges, Muslim fund-raisers or racial-discrimination plaintiffs at USF.

Two minutes for high-schticking.