For Tampa Bay's politicos, it was a rumor nearly on par with Bigfoot or the faked moon landing.
Until now.
On Tuesday afternoon, the Tampa Bay Times proved right a long buzzed-about speculation: it has indeed bought the Tampa Tribune. (Disclosure: this reporter is a former Trib staffer.)
In what seems like a weeks-late April Fool's joke, the Trib's former URL, tbo.com, reroutes to tampabay,com, the Times' URL. The paper also announced it on their page in two different stories.
And thus, we are now a one-daily town.
In truth, it had kind of been looking like things were heading in that direction for a while now.
The Trib's owners, L.A.-based firm Revolution Capital, sold the riverfront building that houses the Trib last year. Then, earlier this year, the Trib, which had for years printed its papers on site, began using the Time's printing presses.
The Times did not disclose the purchase price.
Both papers, and all papers, really, have faced financial woes due to a perfect storm of factors, including lack of a profitable Web content model, sluggish ad sales and the fact that people just don't fucking care about current events enough to bother reading about them unless Donald Trump or boobs are mentioned.
Many saw the Trib as a conservative counterpart to the liberal Times, but that's not really the case. As with most daily papers, both had an editorial page that expressed a certain set of views, but the partisanship ended there. And the Trib's editorial board has long considered itself "center-right" and often published some very levelheaded editorials urging environmental protection and Medicaid expansion (which almost makes up for their endorsement of Rick Scott over Charlie Crist for governor in 2014).
Times CEO and chairman Paul Tash said he hopes merging the two papers will create a single, stable newspaper.
"The continued competition between the newspapers was threatening to both," Tash said in a statement on the Times' website. "There are very few cities that are able to sustain more than one daily newspaper, and the Tampa Bay region is not among them."
The competition between the two has indeed been fierce, but now that all comes to an end.
Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn spoke to the press about the news shortly after it happened.
"The city of Tampa has a rich history that was told by the Tribune for over 100 years and they chronicled Tampa's amazing story with dignity and grace. They enriched our lives by telling the daily stories of heroes and villains, triumphs and tragedies and the many colorful characters that made Tampa special. We are in debt to the thousands of Tribune reporters, editors, photographers and other staff who made that happen. They should be proud," he said in an emailed statement. “I am absolutely confident that moving forward, we will continue to have that story told by the award winning journalists at the Tampa Bay Times. They have set the standard for journalists for decades and I know are committed to ensure that as the Tampa Bay area continues to grow together and succeed together, that the stories continue to be told."
Because there is likely duplication in various areas, the Times noted will likely cut at up to 100 of the 265 full-time staff the Trib has on board, though those who do get laid off will receive 60 days' pay.
Even so, that makes for some scary times for those on staff at the the Trib. It was a staff that made that paper a pretty damned great place to work, a group of people who handled the constant uncertainty about their future with humor and grace (all while being excellent at what they do).
We wish them all the best possible luck.
This article appears in Apr 28 – May 4, 2016.