Tag: Creative Loafing Tampa Bay

 

Prioritizing news content lacks with the Tampa Bay Times online

Is the current goal of the Tampa Bay Times to simply one-up Creative Loafing and not to actually be a news organization that reports on the Tampa Bay metro area the state of Florida, and the United States? Maybe the print version is more news-traditiona., but the online site and its top-story headlines (on TampaBay.com or TBO.com) are anything but.

Wednesday, July 18th screenshots of the two news portals give you a glance at just what is taking priority:

 

Call me biased, call me small-minded perhaps, but with so much happening in the world, so many items of substance that affect people, so many events of negative and positive in the day to day life within the Tampa Bay metro region, how the living hell is a sales item at Publix a priority for reporting??  Since when is an amateur food tour relevant on a mid-week day in the region?

I hate to bring him up, but the President’s oft-used descriptive phrase is most fitting here: Fake news. What is being prioritized hee is closer to a distractive measure than actual relevant information.

While I cited Creative Loafing earlier in this piece, I’m not trying to fault the organization that offers a free weekly print paper. It’s casual, it’s leisurely. That’s what it has always been there for and built up its reputation through. The Tampa Bay Times originally sought to counter it with tbt*.  To do it with the main page headlines and top stories on two news portals though? To brush off informing local citizens about events, incidents and politics in the region, state and the world around them? Instead to put priority on day-to-day personal life and casual antics? That’s a huge, huge step down from the respectable news organization the Times used to be.

Members of the Tampa Bay music scene

I’m a regular in a Reddit subgroup that represents the entirety of the Tampa Bay area, /r/tampabay.  Most of the citizens of the cities in the Bay area aren’t members of that group, they’re in the singular cities like /r/tampa, /r/stpetersnurgFL, or not in a city subgroup as all (hey, power to the people – it’s not like everyone goes on Reddit to talk about local life).

Anyway, a couple of months ago on the less-populous /r/tampabay subreddit, a new-resident sounded a disdain for the lack of original musicians in the Tampa Bay area:

So, I’m starting to think there just doesn’t exist any kind of local music scene here at all, unless you consider septuagenarians playing jurassic-rock covers a “scene”. Please tell me I’m wrong. The only show that I’ve gone to in a year and a half was when I flew back to Ohio to visit. This is depressing.

This opens up a question of where in the Bay area they were looking for performances and when – it’s not like it’d happen every day of the week. It’s also not like you can expect original music by local band members to be available at a golf resort or at a bar/pub/club/tavern deep in suburbia.  Oh, it likely happens but you’re more likely to get cover acts in small time locales like that.

Lack of local music scene, though? No… That’s not the case. Read More

Brother, can you spare a Loafie?

Dear Creative Loafing,

Look, I’m not the most interesting guy out there. Just go through the archives here  (which stretch back to 2002) and you can find plenty of boring, personal, and petty drivel. I’m not flashy, but I have been involved with the sites and people that your independent newspaper has honored again and again — such as helping Tommy Duncan run Sticks of Fire from 2005-2007, or aiding CL columnist Catherine Durkin Robinson with her blog as well as editing one of her books. I’m online buddies with one of Tampa Bay’s most popular Twitter personalities in Clark Brooks (oh, yeah, he also writes for me on Raw Charge).

I’ve been blogging for nearly a decade, I am one of the longest tenured hockey bloggers in the sport (having started on Boltsmag.com in 2004). And I’m the only local net personality who has not only been threatened with litigation from the most popular pop group of the 20th century, but I’ve been in USA Today and quoted between the likes of Tony LaRussa and “Crash” Davis.

My point is, how about throwing a little recognition my way in your upcoming 2011 Best Of The Bay awards? I’m not as trendy and attractive as former Interbay Superstar Rachel Moran, nor am I as social as other personalities who’ve won accolades through their net presence…

But I have been around a while, and I’ve been the guy keeping things running for some of your favorites in the past. A hat tip to the mysterious online producer isn’t much to ask, is it?