Dear Readers:
Dr. Ink’s objection to the St. Pete Times buying the naming rights to a sports and concert venue is more aesthetic than ethical. Doc gets an ear ache anytime nifty names like Candlestick or Ice Palace get replaced by brittle corporate monikers that grate on the sensibilities like the throbbing of an impacted wisdom tooth.
On the conflict of interest side, the pragmatic Doc thinks the deal is far less farshtinkener than many of his colleagues. What Doc likes best is the boldness of the move from a competitive perspective. To put the move in historical context, it was the former Times CEO, Eugene Patterson, who grabbed the Times by the scruff and dragged it assertively into the once hostile territory of Tampa.
Patterson, a former tank commander in Patton’s army and an old United Press hand, knew how to get the competitive juices flowing. When the future of UP was in doubt, he wondered out loud if, in the absence of competition, an AP reporter would ever run for a phone again. He believed that a newspaper without competition devolves inevitably toward complacency and mediocrity. He’s right.
The invasion of Tampa (a town that built its tourist reputation by surrendering each year to crew of invading “pirates”) has improved both newspapers. It has inspired the Times into the development of an aggressive bureau across Tampa Bay, at a huge financial cost for more than a decade. It has driven the Tampa Tribune toward groundbreaking experiments in convergent news technologies.
One uncomfortable and embarrassing part of the story is the Times‘ unwillingness to tell its own reporters what it paid for the naming rights. (Estimates are between a million and two million a year.) This looks like hypocrisy for a newspaper that has been so aggressive about open records and government in the sunshine.
This inherent contradiction places into sharp relief the schizophrenic essence of all news organizations. A newspaper, like a for-profit hospital, is a profession embedded in a business. The journalism side of the house makes its living revealing other people’s secrets. The business side succeeds by keeping its most important secrets.
(There are many manifestations of this Janus-faced condition. The reporters in the newsroom cannot accept freebies. Yet the advertising managers give gobs of goodies to customers and potential clients, including, my guess is, some tickets to watch events in the newly named St. Pete Times Forum.)
Any newspaper that needs land for expansion is unlikely to publish that intent, although it may be important for the community to know, out of a justifiable fear that speculators would jack up the price of real estate.
These days, so many newspaper seem so averse to competition, so limited in vision, so unwilling to invest in the future of the company, that it is refreshing to see a private company, owned by The Poynter Institute, take on a big public news operation. Such a move seemed downright puckish although Dr. Ink will miss the onomatopoetic sibilance of the name “Ice Palace.”
