From Tampa Bay & Company:
Tampa Bay & Company is proud to announce that the NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Committee has selected Tampa Bay, and the University of South Florida, to host the 2015 NCAA Division I Women’s Final Four Championship.
I hope local media lays off the lesbian angle this time. If local media is still around in 2015, that is.
Downtown Clearwater is still working on their effort to find an identity. Their five step process?
Some of the plans in the five step process could be used in other areas seeking to find themselves.
It turns out that Media General laid off another 80 people this week, including 18 from the Tampa Tribune newsroom.
That newspapers are in dire straits is not news. Reporters are losing jobs across the nation as they trim the fat. But our local daily is completely cutting out all of the marble and cleaving the meat - leaving us with no flavor and little substance.
As Luis Viera points out in a letter to Trib editors, they have effectively chopped the “Tampa” from the Tribune:
The latest layoffs by the Tampa Tribune call into question just what kind of institution this newspaper wants to be. The names of the people terminated by this paper - men and women like Daniel Ruth, Rosemary Goudreau and Joe Brown - are not only the Tribune, but they are, frankly, Tampa. To the extent that the Tribune wanted to speak to the people of this city, it would have done so through thoughtful, talented and original people like this.
Along with Daniel Ruth, Rosemary Goudreau and Joe Brown, take a look at the name recognition of some of the others no longer with the newspaper:
All of these people are Tampa.
Take a look at the TBO Opinion page. They are down to THREE faces for the paper - Steve Otto, Martin Fennelly, and Tom Jackson (Pasco). Now that Joe Brown is gone, would you recognize anyone on the editorial board? Even their once ballyhooed community columnists have not written since August.
And to top all that off, here is the quote from executive editor Janet Coats:
“We have tried to make these cuts so the results are not so obvious to the reader.”
Janet, that is a sick joke to your former employees, and a downright insult to your readers.
Upon the Tribune’s redesign in October, Bob Ross said good buy to “a dying friend.” It’s time to pull the plug on Media General, and let someone else try to clean up this mess.
That’s right, folks! It finally happened.
Tampa has finally been named the flightcomparison.co.uk World Destination of the Week! Here are some highlights of their review:
… more commercially oriented than other Florida destinations, but it has plenty to offer…
… grand museums and golden beaches, all flavoured with a distinct Mexi-Flori zest.
… minimal traffic and discounts aplenty if you visit during summer. However, summer is hurricane season and can get very humid.
Getting around town can be done mostly by public bus…
Fun-Lan Drive In… atmosphere is still as great as it was nearly sixty years ago.
Not sure about that “public bus” comment.
And I’ll leave it to you to figure out what “Mexi-Flori” is (google it!).
Eric Deggans is reporting that snarky columnist Dan Ruth has been let go by the Tampa Tribune. It’s just the latest in a string of layoffs of well known writers at the Tribune:
Over the years, staff reductions and voluntary departures have taken some well-known names from the Tribune’s roster, including movie crtic Bob Ross, classical music critic Kurt Loft, political columnist/editorial writer Joe Brown and now Ruth.
Good grief.. So what’s next for Dan Ruth? He don’t know:
“I’m 59 years old and I’ve had a triple bypass…I don’t quite know what my marketability is,” Ruth said. “But I feel like I can walk out of here with my head held high. I did the best job I could as a columnist for as long as I could, and that’s all you can really do.”
Hey Dan - we here in the Sticks will miss reading your witty diatribes…
Dan Ruth is but the most well-known being laid off. Rumors suggest the Tribune canned a dozen folks today.
Update 4:30pm: Tribune (my so called quarter life) writer Daniela Velázquez twitters:
so far we’re minus 16 or 17 and the day isn’t done.
Minutes later, Rich Mullins posted the official word on TBO:
The Tampa Tribune laid off 18 newsroom employees today as the newspaper works to reduce its costs and cope with a worsening advertising economy.
Working at the Tribune is like living Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery.”
In 1985, Deborah Christen, and her Swiss gourmet chef husband John Christen opened the first Shells restaurant in South Tampa. The couple opened a second location in Tampa and a third in Sarasota, and in 1993, Shells Seafood Restaurants Inc. went public and expanded to the Midwest. They eventually had 45 restaurants across the US.
On Wednesday, all but the original three and one more (in Melbourne) Shells closed for good. Deborah plans to revamp the menu for those four sometime in November.
I used to like Shells, but like Hops Grill and Brewery before them (which also started in Tampa Bay, and shrunk to nearly nothing), the quality has been in decline in recent years.
Update 930am: May as well include links to news of the recent closing of Bennigan’s and this week’s announcement from Arigato’s Japanese Steakhouse. Arigato’s is trying to stave off bankruptcy.
I’ve been thinking about two things in the past week or so, and both have to do with the opportunity, artistic and otherwise, provided by living on the edge of a frontier, an exurban terra incognita.
Thing One: Getting in on the ground floor of any movement or trend is an appealing thought. Your chance to make big profits, be a big shot, re-invent yourself. But the reality of ground-flooring an urbanist movement on the new city frontiers is that of guts, risk, and hard, gritty work.
It seems to me that if your vision of a revitalized city neighborhood seems eminently do-able and just around the corner, it is far too late for ground-flooring. When the local zoning, law enforcement and neighborhood schools and shopping districts are on the way up, so are the property values and speculators.
Historically, who have been the first in?
Which places in the Tampa Bay area appeal to this demographic?
My suspicion is that if it is going to happen on a macro scale, urban pioneering is already happening in subtler, hidden but substantial ways. Without any media coverage. In neighborhoods that are a little, or a lot, scary. Places you don’t visit or have forgotten about. Places that are unpleasant to look at.
Thing Two: Sprawls like the Tampa Bay area have been described as “soulless”, but to the degree than any place has a soul, certainly the Tampa Bay area must have one. Perhaps it is a diffuse essence which is, like everything else in the Sunbelt, spread too thin to be distinctly visible. What is the Tampa-ness of Tampa Bay? What is the special thing that makes it not, say, suburban New Jersey? Or Jacksonville?
Here are some things that do not give regional definition to the Tampa Bay area:
On the afternoon of Aug. 18, Pinellas officials ordered mandatory evacuation of the county’s most flood-prone areas for 6am the next day. Tropical Storm Fay was heading our way.
Over at the TradeWinds Island Resorts in St. Pete Beach, visitors checked out and took off. They say they missed out on over $150,000 in canceled rooms and missed food and beverage sales.
The storm shifted and ended up making landfall south of Naples. Pinellas canceled the evacuation order at around 5:30am.
So now, hotel managers are saying that Pinellas “overreacted.”
“It was outrageous for the authorities to make the call prior to even being put on hurricane watch,” wrote Philippe Eversdijk, general manger of the Marriott Suites Clearwater Beach. “The decision … shows lack of respect for our area’s bread & butter: tourism.”
It sure is easy to whine about everything a month later. Pinellas County Commission Chairman Robert Stewart wants the hotels to man up and deal with it:
“This was an unavoidable development,” Stewart said. “We’re always going to err on the side of caution.”
Pinellas is Florida’s most dense county - they have more people per square mile than anywhere else in the state. The land is surrounded by water on three sides. Any storm is going to cause trouble, and a big storm will nearly flood the entire county. With that big of a responsibility, officials must act early.
If your business loses a couple of bucks to ensure that nobody gets hurt, then you gotta tough it out. You have another 330 days of the year to be profitable. Or, you can move your multi-million dollar resorts somewhere else, perhaps New Orleans.
I bet these guys piss & moan about the insurance bill, too.
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