Paul Tash speaks:

Thanks very much for the chance to be with you today at the Inland Press Association, and for the chance to come home for a short while to the Midwest. I grew up down the road a ways in a place called South Bend, Indiana, and went to journalism school at Indiana University. Indiana produces lots of journalists, many of whom migrate to other places -- like Florida. I tell folks that Hoosiers make good journalists, partly because after Indiana, everything else is interesting. (But only folks from Indiana can say that.)

It was that connection between I.U. and Nelson Poynter that brought me to the St. Petersburg Times, where I started working as a reporter in 1978. If you'd told me then that I would still be at the St. Pete Times 24 years later, I would have been pretty skeptical, because that wasn't the pattern of the business or the reputation of our newspaper. At that time, the St. Pete Times was sort of "Nelson Poynter's Finishing School for Journalists." But the grown-ups there kept giving me new things to do that always seemed more interesting than what anybody else was offering. Shift in point of view. Lo and behold, the skinny kid who was a cub reporter now finds himself responsible not only for the news report, but also for the business operations of Florida's largest daily newspaper.

So, I've seen first-hand how the news and business operations of the newspaper relate to each other. Fragment: We allow Faulkner and Proust these but not Tash until he learns where to put commas and where not to put them. How they can get in each other's way, but mostly how they rely on each other.

Okay, I'm a newsie who was steeped in the hard-charging journalism values of Gene Patterson and Andy Barnes, but let me be the first to acknowledge what some of my colleagues in the profession occasionally overlook: for a news organization to be strong, its business operations must be strong.

Last week, for example, the St. Petersburg Times took an unprecedented step for a North American newspaper by buying the naming rights to a major sports and entertainment center. This is persiflage. Everybody knows this move was to twit the Tampa Tribune because the building is in Tampa. That building had been known as: Passive and wordy edit: Use “was.” the Ice Palace, the home to the Tampa Bay Lightning NHL hockey team and a very Strunk & White’s redundant adverb successful concert venue. Now it's the "St. Pete Times Forum." Starting this year, the Times will pay $2.1-million a year, plus provide some free advertising, to have our name on one of the most busy Clunky modifier: “busiest” is idiomatic. and visible places in the Tampa Bay area. Next spring, the St. Pete Times Forum will host the opening rounds of the NCAA basketball tournament, dear to the heart of any true Hoosier, and Redundant comma splits a compound verb. is in the running for the Republican National Convention in 2004.

That would be a delicious irony, since Redundant comma cuts off a trailing restrictive adverbial clause. the newspaper for which it is named passive: Use “from which its name comes” has never supported a Republican candidate for president. My favorite quote in the coverage about the name change last week came from a GOP bigwig who noted that most Republicans in Florida had started out as Democrats but had been Dump: change to active voice. converted. "Maybe," he said, "we can even convert the St. Pete Times."

But best of all, Comma severs a restrictive prepositional phrase. from our standpoint, the Ice Palace (oops, make that the St. Pete Times Forum), sits smack dab The Hoosier leitmotif that dominates the diction of this lucubration ranks relentless, but “smack dab” goes too far with the Eiron pose and exposes Tash’s hand. Le Tash thinks his forced folksiness fools us that we are his intellectual superiors when he is the brains in the room. in downtown Tampa, at the heart of the metropolitan region. We think this deal both validates and also: Complete the correlative. advances an image of the newspaper we have been building for the last 15 years: the St. Pete Times is the dominant newspaper throughout the Tampa Bay region. As I mentioned earlier, the St. Petersburg Times is already the largest daily newspaper in Florida, and we sell roughly 110,000 copies a day more than any other newspaper in the Tampa Bay region.

But some folks still have trouble seeing the St. Pete Times as the newspaper for Tampa Bay. Mr. Tash is greedy. The bigots are entitled to their newspaper, The Tribune has served that purpose for many a moon. We think this deal will help us make stronger connections with some key customer groups: national advertisers, especially those 20-something media buyers who move restlessly Redundant modifier through the ad agencies. Young readers, who are not connecting with newspapers the way earlier generations, did. Fragment And readers outside St. Petersburg, especially Redundant adverb readers in Tampa, where our circulation is already showing strong gains -- but where we obviously Redundant adverb want more. Fragment

So, Redundant comma this naming rights deal is designed Passive: use “will bolster.” to bolster our long-term business interests, and Wrong conjunction: “but” makes sense. it will cause some complications for our newsroom. Initially, there was some controversy because the financial terms were not disclosed when the deal was announced. Inept sentence Edit: The parties’ not disclosing the financial terms caused controversy at first. were not open. Even though it was a financial deal between two private companies, some people thought it Two “it’s” in a sentence cause confusion. was hypocritical for a newspaper that presses for public disclosure to keep these numbers private. Edit “Despite the deal’s being between private companies, some people called hypocritical a newspaper’s keeping the numbers private with its history of pressing for public disclosure.”So, No comma three days after the deal was announced, Passive. Edit: “So three days after the agreement, the building owners released the financial terms: This colon gets the support of no known use of the colon. Jettison it. with our support and encouragement.

Longer term, my news colleagues will have to demonstrate show that our coverage of the Lightning, of the St. Pete Times Forum and the concerts that play there Dump. remains clear-eyed and Wordy unaffected by the fact that because our name is on the building. Some media critics and our competitors immediately Redundant adverbs subtract from credibility. They say, “Aw, c’mon. You’ve got to believe me.” criticized our decision, saying it would inevitably blemish our reputation for strong ethics and impartial coverage.

Personally, I've got more faith in our newsroom to base coverage on the readers' interests and not on our business interests. Twice in my decade as editor, our news coverage has cost the advertising department $1-million in lost business -- without a peep of complaint from the ad folks. And even though we have a substantial marketing sponsorship of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, our lead baseball writer irritated the team owner so much once that he pulled all our newspaper racks from the stadium.

I've also got more confidence in our readers than the media critics may have. The readers will be keeping an eye on us, and they'll quickly know if we're pulling punches or playing favorites.
Some of our critics have noted that until now, no newspaper has put its name on a stadium or an arena, with the suggestion that journalism ethics have held others back. Our critics are right that the St. Petersburg Times broke new ground last week, but I think the reasons have more to do with business than with journalism.

For one thing, there aren't many competitive newspaper towns left in America. As I said earlier, one of the key factors in our thinking was the chance to help establish the St. Petersburg Times as the premier newspaper for the entire Tampa bay area. Only one-third of the circulation of the St. Pete Times is in St. Petersburg itself.

But an even bigger factor is that most newspapers would have a hard time taking on a new expense -- especially during tough economic times. Like all of you, we've noticed that business isn't exactly great these days, and if we were trying only to boost our profits in the short term, we wouldn't be committing Progressive verbs sound handwringing. Simple verbs “tried” and “commit” are crisper and more convincing. to this new level of expense -- about $1.5-million a year above and beyond what we were already spending. spent

On the other hand, we also wouldn't have expanded steadily into new territories outside St. Petersburg over the last three decades, because Comma cuts off a restrictive adverbial clause. getting each of those new editions established cost money that would have dropped to the bottom line. And consequently, we'd have been a nicely profitable little Too coy by far newspaper, hemmed Redundant comma cuts off a restrictive past participial phrase. in on three sides by water and by competitors on the fourth, Stop this metastasis here. Start a new sentence here. our own fortunes tied to those of a mid-sized city with limited room for growth and a steadily younger population base. Instead, our circulation area stretches for nearly 100 miles along the west coast of Florida, and we are increasingly making good on our business goal: to be the newspaper for all of Tampa Bay.

It has taken a long time and a lot of money and effort to establish ourselves as the hometown newspaper in lots of places beyond our original hometown. It has taken a big circulation force, Redundant comma cutting off a restrictive adjectival infinitive phrase. both to sell and deliver the newspaper. It's taken a big advertising staff, with reps selling into part- and full-run sections. It's taken one of the most complex patterns of production and distribution in the business, as Redundant comma severing a restrictive trailing adverbial clause we try to adapt the various editions to the tastes and interests of readers in specific areas.

And most of all, it Pronoun reference: a new paragraph does not start with a pronoun with no antecedent so that the reader has to plod back through the previous paragraph to discover it or, worse, to provide the reference him- or herself. has taken a huge commitment to journalism. We have devoted dozens of reporters, editors and photographers -- plus the copy editors and designers to pull their work together -- to local coverage. Those local sections may reach as few as 20,000 subscribers, but a story or photo costs the same to create as if we sent it to the full audience. Andy Barnes, my boss and patron, observed wistfully I shall allow this adverb because of its piquant improbability. One cannot imagine Andrew Barnes’s being wistful. The first time I saw him was when he first came to the area and turned up to a community luncheon carrying some tome by Spinoza or Foucault or some other deep thinker under his arm to remind us rubes what a whiz had moved into our midst. He would flag down people in the street to tell them that he came from The Washington Post. once that we probably spend a greater proportion of our budget on local news than any other newspaper our size. Yes, I agreed, and if we didn't spend so much on local news, we wouldn't be a newspaper our size.

At the outset of my remarks, I acknowledged a point that some journalists need to remember: that the news report can be strong only if the business that supports it is vigorous.

But there's an important corollary that often gets overlooked, especially No comma: it cuts off a restrictive adverbial prepositional phrase. in newspaper publishing circles: that a newspaper ultimately can be strong as a business only if its news report and editorial comment is Subject-verb agreement error: report and comment are. worth reading. Sure, profits can be higher this year if we drop a reporter or two, or Redundant comma: the coordinating conjunction between the items in a series replaces any commas. if we can trim some newshole out of the newspaper, or if we can cut back on travel and drop some syndicates. Don't get me wrong: if done carefully, all those things can be accomplished Passive verb Edit: we can accomplish… without any real damage to the news report or reader satisfaction. We've taken our share of austerity measures at the St. Petersburg Times to help get us through one of the coldest and longest winters in newspaper advertising that anybody can remember.

But let's not kid ourselves: readers can tell when we're stretching the soup, and if they stop ordering from our menu, we're not left with much of a business.

Al Neuharth, the former chairman of Gannett, spoke to the Florida state newspaper convention last summer -- and scolded this generation of editors and publishers for letting circulation fall during the last decade. Even during a period of great growth in the state population, the combined daily circulation of Florida newspapers had dropped from 3.1-million daily copies to 2.9-million, Neuharth said, and he called those figures "disgraceful."

Part of the problem, Neuharth said, is that too many publishers are focused too much on the bottom line rather than growing their circulation and their business. I thought some of those in the audience would choke on their chicken dinner, given Neuharth's own role in driving up the profits that most owners and investors have come to expect from newspapers. Al Neuharth complaining Possessive before the gerund that we're too focused on profits? What's next? Hugh Hefner suggesting Possessive before the gerund we're too obsessed with sex?

But I was reminded of another speech I heard this year. At the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, Jack Fuller of Tribune Company said Commas to set of a nonrestrictive prepositional phrase that the profit magin Make friends with the spell checker to catch goofer errors such as this. of the Chicago Tribune had gone from roughly 8 percent in 1980 to 30 percent by 2000, 20 years later.

Okay, okay. This isn't supposed to be a speech about the right profit level for newspapers. My assignment is to determine whether newspapers can meet their business and journalistic obligations at the same time. For the record: I don't see how you can publish a great newspaper without having a strong business, and unless you publish an interesting, entertaining, compelling and provocative news report, you won't have much of a business for very long. So from my standpoint, the question about news vs. business values isn't a very productive question because it often leads to some false choices and dead ends.

Here's the problem, from my perspective. Wordy fragment: Dump it. The editors say they need more reporters and newshole. The publishers dismiss them as fuzzy-thinking romantics who don't have a clue about the demands of the business. The editors dismiss the publishers as mouth-breathing, money-grubbing neanderthals. Capitalize. End of discussion.

Think about how the conversation might change if we framed the issue as long-term business values versus short-term business values. In that context, good journalism is a long-term business value. So is Subject-verb agreement: Are circulation development and growth. So is advertising market share. Profit margins, on the other hand, are more a short-term business value. I'm not knocking profits; I'm very much in favor of them. But they are by no means the only measure -- or even the most important measure -- of the health of our businesses.

As a journalist, and I still think of myself as a journalist, With your frail grasp of grammar and punctuation, you do less harm where you are. Keep away from the news room. I'd welcome some fresh terms and new ways of thinking about this debate within our business. It shouldn't just be editors and reporters who are making a ruckus or stirring the pot about cutbacks and the potential damage they cause. I get tired of hearing the familiar laments, and some of them are self-interested, arising at the journalism conventions -- and only at the journalism conventions.

Some good folks at the Poynter Institute and other organizations are trying now to develop the business case for good journalism. At the University of North Carolina, Professor Phil Meyer is exploring the statistical connection between a newspaper's circulation and the size of its news staff. But these issues are much too important to the business of journalism to be left only to the journalists.

Imagine how much more healthy and interesting the conversation could be if we had business-side executives -- circulation and advertising directors -- asking pointed questions about a declining audience, what it means to the business, and No comma between a compound noun restrictive appositive what we can do to shore up our claim on the time and attention of readers.

As an editor, I'd welcome the company. We might even have Al Neuharth standing with us. And if nothing else, that would make many of the editors I know stop cold in their tracks and take a fresh look at their positions.

Thanks very much for your kind invitation and attention today. I'd be pleased to hear your reactions and observations.

Paul Tash is editor and president of the St. Petersburg Times. He delivered these remarks to the Inland Press Association on Sept. 12, 2002.