LT’24 class members navigated the dark Florida Aquarium parking lot in the early hours of a mid-October morning to make their way to their bus. Seatmates were randomly assigned via a deck of playing cards. The bus embarked on its trip, traversing across the Gandy Bridge and through St. Petersburg, where it made its first stop at the venerable Poynter Institute. The LT classmates were met by Program Day chairs, Heather Rubio (LT’20), local sales manager for 10 Tampa Bay, and Samantha Fiske (LT’23), account executive with the Tampa Bay Business Journal.
Times Leaders, including Bruce Faulmann (LT’03), vice president of sales and marketing, Joe DeLuca, general manager, and Conan Gallaty (LT’20), CEO, presented during the first portion of the day and opened up the discussion with a brief history of the newspaper, which is the second oldest business in Tampa Bay at 139 years in operation. Additionally, Jessi Navarro, chief operating officer and chief financial officer for the Poynter Institute, discussed the unique structure of the Tampa Bay Times as being independently owned by a nonprofit. This structure has helped the Tampa Bay Times to remain ‘beholden to none.’ The group touched upon challenges for print media and the transition to digital. The speakers acknowledged that how news is consumed has changed, with DeLuca conceding that newspapers have a distribution problem, not a content problem. Technology has changed the behavior of consumers, both readers and advertisers have migrated to the internet. Although trust in media is at an all-time low, there is a general distrust brewing across many institutions. It is not the job of the newspaper to get the consumer to trust. Rather, it is the job of the newspaper to transparently share the facts of a story. The most important take away from the morning session is that power flows in the direction of hope.
A panel discussion on the local media ecosystem capped off the morning at Poynter, including Gallaty, Tampa Bay Business Journal Market President and Publisher Ian Anderson, Times Vice President and Editor Mark Katches, Telemundo Station Manager and Regional President Migdalia Figueroa, and PolitiFact Audience Director Josie Hollingsworth. Local media is valuable because it exists to expose the problems of society, not to tear down institutions. One trend that has emerged in the wake of George Floyd is that of the citizen journalist – the technology to record a newsworthy event and broadcast is at everyone’s fingertips. A question was asked on what happens when the newspaper prints factual errors. Sherri Day (LT’24), communications director for the Times, responded that the news will occasionally get it wrong, as it is a human endeavor, but it is not intentional.
The group broke for lunch, where celebration co-chairs, Sherri Day and Ray Hawat, recognized LT 24 classmates with October birthdays, including: Matt Newton, Joshua Kwasnicki, Dionne Holt, Leslie Hudock, and Chris Claytor, with gifts of homemade pound cake.
LT’24 classmates headed to the second venue – 10 Tampa Bay (WTSP), where they broke into three groups to learn about broadcast journalism, which included reporting on the weather, developing local news, and the VERIFY Fact Check segment.
Class members won praise from Kari Jacobs, President and General Manager of 10 Tampa Bay, for keeping live news conversational and to tie it back to the community when they took a stab at reporting on developing news.
(David Everett, II (LT’24) reporting on a developing news story on the rescue efforts of first responders who attempted to rescue a man who fell into a manhole.)
LT’24 classmates once again returned to the bus and traveled back to Tampa, where they rounded out their day at Vu Technologies, North America’s largest virtual studios. The final stop was located at Tampa’s former University Mall, where classmates entered through the proverbial looking glass and entered into the otherworldly Vu production studios. CEO of Vu and Founder of Diamond View, Tim Moore, described his vision and how Vu and Diamond View evolved to provide a critical media service during the pandemic – a virtual production studio that can substitute for on location shoots. The Dream Big mural emblazoned on Diamond View’s office building (pictured below), notably exemplified Moore’s creative vision, persistence, and community mindedness.
(CEO of Vu and Diamond View, Tim Moore, describing the evolution of the virtual studios and their community efforts)
Darren Richard, chief operating officer for Tucker Hall, capped off the presentations with a media training exercise on crisis communication. Richard gave examples of good response and poor response to various crises – something with which each organization faces.
LT 24 classmates finished off the day with an unofficial debrief at the Lighthaus Beer Garden in the Sparkman Wharf area. The consensus among the LT 24 classmates was that Tampa Bay has incredibly rich and diverse media resources. These resources span from a Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper that stretches back to the ‘pioneer’ era to broadcast journalism to the novel Vu Technologies.
(Ray Hawat (LT’24) giving a weather report at 10 Tampa Bay)
(The ‘Diamond’ group with 10 Tampa Bay This Evening anchor, Josh Sidorowicz, following a discussion of the Verify Fact Check segment.)
(LT’24 classmates Ray Hawat, Ruth Cate, JP Lopez, Lily Li, and Kelly Yeloushan enjoy the ethereal virtual cityscape at Vu Technologies.)