Horse Trading
Both The Tampa Tribune and St. Petersburg Times unveiled redesigned business sections on the first Sunday of the new year, part of an attempt to capture new readers and adapt their products to a changed economy.The Times made the first move late last year when it chose not to renew a contract with Dow Jones & Co. Inc., publisher of The Wall Street Journal. The Journal had provided the Times with three to four pages of ready-to-go Journal content in a special section known as The Wall Street Journal Sunday. It appears in dozens of daily newspapers nationwide.
According to Times Managing Editor Neil Brown, the special Journal section hadn't succeeded financially. When Dow Jones executives could not make revenue guarantees for 2003, the Times decided to invest in producing more business pages locally.
"We noticed more and more that we were doing stories that were somewhat redundant to the Journal stuff," Brown explained.
The Times' new Sunday business section, now called Money instead of Business, focuses on personal finance issues, an area in which the Trib previously excelled. The Times uses Helen Huntley's column as a centerpiece.
As part of the redesign, business columnist Robert Trigaux has moved from Sunday to Monday, in a section redesigned from a tabloid to a broadsheet. The broadsheet, said Brown, makes the Monday business section "newsier," more "urgent."
Although the Times has not had to hire additional reporters, Brown admits that vacant posts on the business desk have recently been filled.
Thus far, the Times hasn't noticed a backlash from dropping the Sunday Journal section. "If the content is good and it's well displayed, everything else takes care of itself," Brown said.
When the Times did not renew its contract, the Journal approached the Trib, whose parent company, Media General Inc., already publishes the special section in some of its other newspapers. To Brown's surprise, the Trib signed up and unveiled the Journal section on Jan. 5.
"We think we've stepped up, ratcheted up to a higher-quality product," said Steve Kaylor, the Trib's senior editor/business.
According to Kaylor, Media General has committed significant resources to improving and expanding the business section, which will begin to focus more on small businesses and workplace issues.
Because of the Journal's reputation as a leader in business reporting, said Kaylor, the Times' loss is the Trib's gain.
"The business community is not static, and I don't think our product should be static," said Kaylor.
And reader response? "Overall, I think the response has been very, very positive," Kaylor said. "A lot of people look to The Wall Street Journal as the preeminent source for business news."—Trevor Aaronson
Debating Dance
It's difficult for political candidates to make debates interesting for voters. After all, if they want to get as many votes as possible from as many diverse groups of people as possible, their best bet is simply not to take a stand on any issue.Waffling, evasive stands are acceptable. But the kind of controversial stands that are likely to excite voters have to be saved until after the election, when it's too late for anyone to complain. Lucky for us, six of the candidates vying to be Tampa's next mayor got around this hurdle during a Jan. 8 debate at the University of Tampa.
Wellness expert Don Ardell got in a few zingers. His reason for wanting to do business with Cuban leader Fidel Castro: "We deal with other dictators, why not this one?"
While the other candidates danced around the Cuba question, City Council member Bob Buckhorn spoke up for the current unspoken U.S. policy on Cuba, otherwise known as Waiting For Castro to Die. Buckhorn insisted that he wouldn't be caught "skulking down there in the middle of the night playing footsie with a dictator for a box of cigars."
Former Hillsborough County Elections Supervisor Pam Iorio made the most benignly obvious statement of the evening, repeatedly. "The mayor must be engaged," she exclaimed. Since the statement usually was followed by a declaration to work with one city department or another, one can only guess that she meant that the next mayor should stay awake. Thanks, Pam!
One might have thought that candidate Frank Sanchez, who lacks local political experience but did work for former President Bill Clinton, would have been the candidate most adept at working his bigwig connections into the dialogue. Instead, that honor went to Buckhorn, who some speculate has never left Tampa — even on vacation. "My wife's aunt's brother is the president of Honduras," he claimed in response to a question on international trade.
The debate was sponsored by the Tampa Bay International Business Council. So it stands to reason that Sanchez, whose job in the Clinton administration focused on international trade as well as transportation, would have come off as the candidate with the most specific information.
On this score he didn't disappoint, citing the number of crates shipped annually out of Tampa's ports (6,000) and the number of crates the port is equipped to ship annually (100,000). Sanchez also knew that jobs in international trade pay 18 percent more than say, call centers, which don't involve international trade.
But again, Sanchez was bested by Buckhorn, who tossed out this interesting tidbit to great audience laughter: "You know, there are 800 people who live downtown. Four hundred of them are in jail."—Rochelle Renford
When Mr. Sanchez Went to the Hill
Mayoral aspirant Frank Sanchez could have used some of that statistical precision at his 2000 confirmation hearing to become assistant U.S. transportation secretary for aviation and international affairs.The Trib reported last year that Sanchez was confirmed for that job in August 2000. If Sanchez was confirmed, it wasn't by the U.S. Senate.
Although Sanchez's nomination was reported out of John McCain's Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, congressional records show it never came up for a floor vote.
Indeed, the nomination was sent back to the White House in December 2000, following Senate adjournment, three days after the U.S. Supreme Court stuck a fork in Al Gore's presidential bid.
What happened?
Sanchez was the beneficiary of what is known as a "recess appointment." When the Senate didn't get around to voting on his nomination, Sanchez says the White House put him temporarily on the Transportation Department payroll during the annual congressional summer recess.
That back-door treatment is usually reserved for controversial selections, like when President George W. Bush wants to employ Iran-contra alumni or somebody nostalgic for the Old Confederacy.
Sanchez has been vaccinated against controversy. So what was his problem on Capitol Hill?
Well, the committee hearing on Francisco J. Sanchez's nomination didn't go exactly according to the Clinton administration's script. Republican McCain, just a few months removed from his Straight Talk Express bus tour of presidential primary states, was in no mood for cautious, noncommittal replies to his questions.
The nomination was heard on the same morning that news broke of the latest in a series of big proposed airline mergers. Twice, McCain asked Sanchez if collapsing six major airlines into three mega-carriers through consolidation benefited Americans.
"I'm not sure what number is appropriate or inappropriate," Sanchez told McCain. "I know that it will be a priority of this office and my tenure to contribute as much as I can to analyze and —"
The Arizona senator cut him off: "I'd like some straight answers, Mr. Sanchez."
Sanchez pleaded ignorance, saying he was not yet in a position to evaluate the commercial travel marketplace. Sanchez says now that Clinton officials ordered him not to make any commitments to McCain on issues he might have to rule on as assistant secretary.
McCain met with similar success getting Sanchez's views on increasing flights from Reagan National Airport to western states. "Well, I regret that you can't give me answers to two very important questions," McCain told the nominee, who says he subsequently satisfied the chairman with written elaboration on his evasive testimony.
After Sanchez's encounter with McCain, committee Democrats moved in to administer smelling salts. They got extra help from an unexpected corner.
Then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, who served on McCain's committee, called Sanchez "an excellent choice" for the aviation post. "I look forward to working with him," the Mississippi Republican said.
Let the record show that Sanchez is not black.
As it turned out, though, Lott didn't feel strongly enough about Sanchez to bring the nomination up for a full Senate vote.—Francis X. Gilpin
This article appears in Jan 15-21, 2003.
