You may have noticed the Spring Hill and Brooksville Beacon newspapers around the area. They are distributed in blue boxes on the side of the road. The Spring Hill and Brooksville Beacon are a free monthly newspaper that is published by the Tampa Bay Newspapers, an affiliate of Times Publishing Company, parent company of the Tampa Bay Times.
None of the branding on the Spring Hill and Brooksville Beacon newspapers nor their website mentions the affiliation with the Tampa Bay Times. The newspapers only mention that they are part of the Tampa Bay Newspapers and Suncoast News. However, if you look more closely, it becomes apparent that the Tampa Bay Newspapers and the Times are closely affiliated. Paul C. Tash who is the chairman and CEO of the Tampa Bay Times and Times Publishing Company is listed as CD (Chairman/Director) on the officer/directors of Tampa Bay Newspapers. On the Tampa Times website you can find the biography of Dan Autrey the publisher of the Tampa Bay Newspapers. An excerpt of the biography “Dan is publisher and president of Tampa Bay Newspapers, an affiliate of Times Publishing Company, which includes five weekly publications, three monthly publications and the TBN Weekly website. These community newspapers serve Seminole, Pinellas Park, Largo, Clearwater, Dunedin, Palm Harbor and the beaches from St. Pete Beach to Clearwater Beach.”
When the Tampa Bay Times purchased and closed the Tampa Tribune Paul Tash said in the Times “the Times also will continue operation of several other properties previously owned by the Tribune: … the Suncoast News, weekly newspapers serving west Pasco and North Pinellas counties.”
From a business standpoint this makes sense, the Times’ free newspaper product produces a higher circulation and edges out competition from startup newspapers. Many community newspapers start out as free publications and as their ad sales and circulation increase they able to charge for their newspaper.
This practice is counter intuitive to the motto of the Poynter Institute, owner of the Tampa Bay Times. Their motto is, “Democracy needs journalism. Journalism needs Poynter.” With such a motto, the Poynter Institute should undertake efforts to grow the diversity of news sources, not monopolize the market whereby eliminating valuable news sources.
It is important to know who owns and funds a news source. A diversity of sources is often used as an indicator of whether or not something is true. If all of your sources are newspapers controlled by the same people then you only have one source of information.
The Hernando Sun is owned by the paper’s co-publisher Julie Maglio with the support of her husband Rocco Maglio (co-publisher) and four children. “It is truly a family owned business with our children stuffing envelopes, bagging newspapers, verifying mailings, pulling data from the web, and helping out in other ways. Our team of writers, photographers, ad reps and distributors help us produce an amazing product each week,” said Julie Maglio.
We are working hard to maintain another news source within the county, which was recently described as a ‘news desert’ by the Tokyo Shimbun, a Japanese newspaper with a circulation of 3 million.
