Sticks of Fire: a Tampa blog

My brother and sister-in-law are having a tough time right now. Their beloved dog Holly is suffering major organ failure and won’t survive much longer. Our whole family shares their grief.

I suffered a less tragic but heartfelt loss yesterday. I canceled my Tribune subscription and ordered the Times.

After 25 years of home delivery, 22 of which I also worked at the paper, I had to put that relationship out of its misery. The new, “improved” Trib was just too painful to live with. Anemic beyond hope, skimpy in size and content — with a “lead” story about how Christmas merchandise is being put on sale during October — it’s the new Coke of modern journalism.

I feel the same tinge of guilt that one feels when allowing the vet to euthanize a beloved companion. The Trib was a daily habit that I stuck with before and after my employment there. But I could no longer watch my old friend suffer.

There remain many fine writers and editors at that paper, but we won’t be seeing much evidence of it any more. And while the Times has also pared back, there’s no longer any comparison in the amount of news in the two papers. We can only pray that the St. Pete folks are not forced to follow the Trib’s steeply declining path.

Oh, yeah: If you are prepaid at the Tribune (I had almost a year to go), they will give you a refund. And if you talk to the circulation department at the Times, tell them that  your friends in Tampa got a full year of home delivery for $39. I ended up making money on the deal. But that doesn’t make me a bit happy about it.