Tag: Tampa Tribune
Dependability is offline at Tampa Bay Online
The site known as Tampa Bay Online – www.tbo.com – has been around for decades. TBO was once tied to both Tampa Bay NBC affiliate WFLA News Channel 8 and former print publication The Tampa Tribune (both media entities were owned by Media General). Let me stress that with the decades aspect of Tampa Bay Online as TBO started out in the early 1990’s in a form that was accessible through the Prodigy dial-up network and America Online. It’s sort of hard to explain things before the internet as you know it now – some people were exposed to it well before the general public. I was introduced to the Net through Prodigy and later AOL.
Back to the topic, TBO has been around a while as a media hub (to say the least). With the Tribune leading the charge so often, the flavor of news and writing from the Trib (with its right-leaning slant) was always on display but its general news coverage was complimented by video coverage of news stories that News Channel 8 reported on.
Yet a downfall has been rampant for a while: Media General sold the Tribune in 2012, and while the new ownership vowed they were here to stay, it didn’t play out like that. I’m not sure if there was an official end-partnership between the Trib and WFLA but things scaled back and ceased after the Tribune moved away to its own property. In the spring of 2016 the Tampa Tribune was acquired by print news rival, the Tampa Bay Times. The Tribune ceased to be while certain columnists, reporters and employees were imported to Times staff while others were dismissed. TBO.com has continued operations since then but has become a quizzical online destination for news information in the area. Read More
A Day in the Life at the Tampa Tribune
Copy Editor: “RUMORS OF OUR DEMISE HAVE BEEN GREATLY EXAGGERATED“; bold faced and centered across the front page. Print it.
Janet Coats: What are you doing?
CE: Refuting the rumors that are going around that the newspaper will be ceasing publication in the coming weeks. It’s really heinous stuff and we have to re-assure readership with…
JC: You can’t print that headline.
CE: Well, no, I guess we can’t now that I look at it. It’s kind of long… We could, well, you know, find another phrase to use…
JC: No, you can’t print a headline like that — in bold — at all. Ink isn’t on sale this quarter and stockholders are upset as is that Mother Corporate‘s share price is down. You need to pare down that statement to the bare bones.
CE: Well, all right, we’ll —
JC: Look, “exaggerated” is too big a word to stick in there. No one who still reads a print edition of a newspaper will understand it… That’s got to go.
CE: Oka–
JC: And then pare down the most common words you are using: of, our, have… They have no relevance in this age of buzz words. Change the typed out version of the word “are” to “R”… See, it’s looking fine. Now nix the -ly on greatly and we can save all of another penny on ink! This will so please everyone back in Richmond!
CE: But —
JC: Just LOOK! It’s a bold statement in itself without actually being bold! It’s hip and now! Print it! Ship it!
CE: “Rumors r great”?
JC: Don’t QUESTION it, just DO it. We’re in the Internet age! By now the Times has already posted three stories on their blogs and out on the rest of the Internet, there are thousands of new, fresh stories! How can we be with-it with you lolly gagging in your old ways?! HOP TO!
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Life. Printed Inanely.
Do us all a favor, Media General…
For the umpteen-hundreth time, the Tampa Tribune / WFLA / TBO mothership is trying to cut corners and cut costs in order to boost the stock price of Mother Corporate.
So, Media General, here is my suggestion to you: Sell the Tribune, sell WFLA, sell TBO.
The Tribune has been butchered for decades now – decades – because Mother Corporate wants to boost stock price and cut costs. I have heard nothign for years upon years about an expansion of coverage. I’ve only heard fo cutbacks “in order to serve you better”.
The fact is, Media General can’t afford their media trifecta, their “Crown jewel”. The evidence is that they keep cutting corners and further contract these two mainstays of the Tampa Bay area (and their online counterpart) in an effort to please Wall Street.
Bigotry against Hearing Impaired: Performance Computer Group of Tampa
What decade do we live in? The 1950’s or the 2000’s?
I’ve got a laptop computer I basically can’t use not because it’s not in working order but because it doesn’t have the capablity to do what I need it to do and thus it makes the machine expendable. I’ve been looking for a way to move the laptop without losing a ton of money on the deal.
I looked on the Tampa Tribune‘s website and through their classified ads in an effort to look through the Laptop market and see if anyone was trying to purchase laptop computers in Tampa. I found www.tampanotebooks.com which is operated by Performance Computer Group. They’ve got a shop on Dale Maybry and they say that they buy used laptops – working or not.
I figured to call them up and see how much I could get for my machine… A phone call isn’t such a painful thing after all. Even if it is Voice Carry Over through the Florida Telecommunications Relay Service.
So I called up Performance Computer Group of Tampa — three ring slater a man picks up and the text that comes across my TDD phone reads thus:
“Uh, we don’t do any Relay calls. OK, thank you.”
*Click*
Some people don’t get what a Relay call is… It’s when someone deaf is calling you through a carry over service. It is not an excuse for you to treat a caller like a complete piece of shit. I’ve dealt with that from Bright House Customer Service and Capital One customer service as well. Usually I call back and get a representative that isn’t such a moron.
But in this case? The company just lost my business and came off like he was against the Relay system to begin with. “Why bother? Just some deaf clown trying to hassel me.”
