Andrew Barnes said he is secure in the knowledge that Paul Tash "will be an excellent successor."
By HELEN HUNTLEY
Published March 31, 2004
[Times photo: Dave Morrison]
Paul C. Tash, left, will replace Andrew Barnes as chairman and chief executive officer of the St. Petersburg Times in May. Barnes has been with the Times since 1973, and Tash since 1978.
Andrew Barnes, chairman and chief executive of the St. Petersburg Times for the past 15 years, will retire in May, turning those responsibilities over to Paul Tash, the newspaper's editor and president.
Today's announcement is based on a succession plan created by Nelson Poynter, who owned the Times until his death in 1978, and who wanted to insure its strength and financial independence. Tash will be the third Times chairman since Poynter's death.
"I've never felt so secure as I do that Paul will be an excellent successor and meet whatever the new challenges are wonderfully," Barnes said.
Barnes officially steps down May 15, when he turns 65, the mandatory retirement age for members of the Times Publishing Co. board of directors.
His journalism career began 43 years earlier on the Providence Journal, following his graduation from Harvard University. Barnes later worked at the Washington Post and joined the Times in 1973. He became Times editor and president in 1984, then chairman and chief executive in 1988.
Tash, 49, has had extensive preparation for the job. He joined the newspaper in 1978 as a reporter and has been city editor, metropolitan editor, Washington bureau chief and executive editor of the Times, as well as editor and publisher of Florida Trend, a business magazine owned by the Times. For the past four years he has been Times editor and president, responsible for both news and business operations.
"We've seen this time coming for several years and now I can feel the responsibilities Andy has carried so well shifting to my shoulders," Tash said. "The St. Pete Times is a special newspaper, and I am both honored and humbled by the confidence that I will be a good steward."
The Times is wholly owned by the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, a non-profit school for journalists based in St. Petersburg, and newspaper profits go to support the school. The company's stock is controlled by the chairman and CEO, who chooses his successor. Barnes selected Tash to succeed him, just as his predecessor, Eugene Patterson, had selected him.
"Nelson Poynter built the St. Petersburg Times on trust," Patterson said. "When he died he trusted me to run the newspaper well and to pass on control of it to a fit professional successor of my choosing. I chose well in selecting Andy Barnes upon my own retirement, and he has honored the trust splendidly on his watch.
"Now as Andy retires he has chosen a powerful and proven young successor in Paul Tash, who can be trusted to lead the Times to yet new levels of quality.
"Mr. Poynter rests in peace, I know, at seeing this strong new link forged in the chain of professional leadership he trusted to keep the Times independent and excellent."
Under Barnes' leadership, the newspaper rebuffed a takeover attempt led by Texas billionaire Robert Bass. The Times ended up buying a minority interest in the newspaper the Bass group had acquired from Nelson Poynter's nieces. That settlement and other steps that followed it assured the Times' independence. The Times is now one of the few remaining major U.S. newspapers that is not owned by a chain.
The Times is also among the few to successfully swim against a tide of declining circulation throughout the industry. It is now Florida's largest daily newspaper.
"At a time when newspapers across America have been losing their readers and have had a hard time seeming relevant, we have gained readers and we have been part of building places that people want to live," Barnes said.
Barnes, a former chairman of the Newspaper Association of America, said he thinks there is a connection between independence and quality.
"Because we now have so many of America's newspapers owned by companies that do lots of other things and are basically interested more in money than in journalism, they are shorting their readers on the amount of space they devote and the number of smart people they hire. It shows. People aren't stupid. If a newspaper isn't as good as it used to be, they don't like it as much."
During Barnes' tenure as editor and president, the Times won four Pulitzer Prizes.
Barnes will continue as chairman of the Poynter Institute, which offers a variety of seminars on writing, ethics, broadcasting, photojournalism and leadership for journalists as well as programs for students and teachers.
In addition to the newspaper, the Times company owns several other publications: Congressional Quarterly, which covers Congress and the federal government; Governing and Florida Trend magazines; and a group of weekly community newspapers. Together, the various publications employ more than 2,000 fulltime staff and will have annual revenues in 2004 of roughly $300-million.
