Ex-Tampa Tribune columnist Joe Brown not sure old company's Internet strategy will succeed

When I got former Tampa Tribune columnist Joe Brown on the telephone Wednesday to talk about his unexpected departure from the Tampa Tribune -- the company laid him off Monday after 14 years working there -- he was surprisingly open and frank about what had happened.

"(Editorial page editor Rosemary Goudreau) apparently decided I was the least valuable player on her team," said Brown, 58, who was visiting friends and family at his alma mater, the University of Iowa. "I don't know what I'm going to do -- I'll probably take it easy for a month to figure it all out."

Brown became the highest-profile casualty this year of the Tribune's staff cuts, let go after the newspaper had moved his column to the front of its Sunday Commentary section. This latest round of reductions was supposed to include up to 10 editors, but enough people left voluntarily when staff cuts started among the reporters and editors that just three other people were laid off Monday -- all mid-level editors or managers.

Given that the Tribune will debut a smaller design Monday, it may not be surprising that the newspaper decided to pare down its editorial board. But columnists are often a personal connection with readers, and Brown was the newspaper's most visible columnist of color in Tampa, a city with a population nearly 50 percent black and Hispanic.

Feeling a bit stung by the office politics of his situation -- he was hired by Goudreau's predecessor -- Brown was also skeptical of the Web-first strategy articulated this week by Tribune executive editor Janet Coats.

"The Internet will not save newspapers," he said flatly, when I brought up the changes. "You need 22 Internet readers to produce the same revenue as one newspaper reader. You're not going to make any money like that."

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Comments

[HONG KONG WILLIE]

Soon they, the tampa tribune wiil be a dinosour. they have not keep up with the times.

They fired Joe Brown and kept daniel ruth, give me a break

[Mary Nelson]

What a shock to search through the Sunday Tampa Tribune in search of Joe Brown's column, but to no avail. My husband and I never failed to read and discuss his column each week. We feel that Joe Brown rejected the meretricious mandate of political correctness rampant in the media and wrote his columns with incisiveness. We want to know where Joe goes from here so we can follow his voice of reason. Good luck to a fellow Hawkeye!

who moved my cheese?

First Judy Hill, now Joe Brown. Even when I don't have time to read the Sunday paper I make sure my family does not throw out the commentary for I want to read what Joe has written about this week. He is insightful and many times has made me see the other side of issues. Big, big mistake for Mother Trib. I probably will not renew my subscription for there isn't that "personal" link anymore.

[GW]

This week the Tribune started to send junk email about advertisements and such. Junk email is not a strategy. It also looks like they've started to outsource editorials. That warm fuzzy thing today is lame. Brown is a definite loss, his angle on things cannot be matched.

There is nothing for newspapers to reinvent themselves to, outside of a web based delivery system. It's the fact of life.

And while it may take 22 web readers to equal one paper reader in terms of revenue, the cost to get those readers is a micro-fraction of the cost to get that single newspaper reader.

The issue is NOT revenue, or even cost. It is Bottom Line, and there is no question you can deliver content on the web much more efficiently and require only a small amount of revenue to make a profit.

In time, the profits on the web will far exceed those generated by newspapers, and on only a small amount of revenue.

Joe Brown and many like him in the industry have not come to terms with that yet. That may explain in part the decision to let him go.

However, there is no assurance that the latest Trib plan will work as it is being laid out.

I suspect that Media General management will be unsuccessful because there is nothing in their backgrounds to indicate an ability to lead with vision, and that is what is needed here.

[Lin Young]

A newspaper's columnists are an important link with the community. Whether readers agree or disagree with a column, the columns usually ignite passion in the readers and are something that readers look forward to. They have no idea what news stories will be in the paper, but they do know when a column is scheduled to appear and look forward to reading it. Lose that, and the paper loses readers.

And Joe Brown is right about web versions of newspapers needing more readers to be profitable. But people don't feel like being glued to their computers all the time. Plus some internet providers are talking about either limiting useage or billing more for internet use, or for downloading large files. What happens to papers if they have to compete with people taking care of emails and doing other things on the internet or pay more to spend time online reading the news.

Anyway, good luck to Joe Brown in whatever he does. Maybe another newspaper with more sense will snap him up.

[Mr News]

Some radio and television companies are attempting the same flawed strategy: co-opt the Internet while abandoning or seriously cutting their original medium. But a medium does not succeed in challenging times by becoming a different medium. It succeeds by improving and/or re-inventing itself. But, this is how bankers solve problems when they own communications companies, and the upper-managers who do the firing (while thanking their lucky stars they still have jobs) will hopefully be next to mount the guillotine.

Notice that the media is not laying off highly-paid upper managers and V-Ps, but rather vulnerable middle-managers and people who actually create the product. "That pesky 'talent'-- this BUSINESS would be so much better if we could just get rid of them all..."

[joe hillman]

while brown has a point about needing 22 internet readers to produce the same amount of revenue from one newspaper reader, the internet doesn't need the massive amount of expensive overhead (paper/ink/printing press/printing press operators) that a newspaper needs.

additionally, you can have significantly more content on the web.