Q&A

CEO Paul Tash: Guiding the Times 'as a force for good'

	[Times photo: Cherie Diez]
	"We've got to make newspapers compelling and worth your time and money," said Paul Tash, new chairman and CEO of the Times. Paul C. Tash Age: 49 Birthplace: South Bend, Indiana Occupation: Editor of the St. Petersburg Times and CEO and chairman of Times Publishing Co. Family: Married 20 years to the former Karyn Krayer of St. Petersburg; they have two daughters, Kaley, 18, and Kendyl, 14. Education: Graduated summa cum laude from Indiana University in 1976; received a Marshall Scholarship and graduated with a bachelor of laws degree from Edinburgh University in Scotland in 1978. Career history: Started with the St. Petersburg Times in 1978 as a local news reporter. He also has been a Tallahassee reporter, the city editor, metropolitan editor, Washington bureau chief and executive editor for the Times. In 1990-91, Tash was the editor and publisher of Florida Trend, a statewide business magazine owned by the Times Publishing Co. Industry involvement: Active in First Amendment issues as chairman of the Florida First Amendment Foundation and a director of the Committee to Protect Journalists. He serves on the boards of the Newspaper Association of America and the Poynter Institute for Media Studies. He has been a judge in various journalism contests, including the Pulitzer Prizes.

On Monday, Paul C. Tash will come to work as CEO and chairman of the St. Petersburg Times and the Times Publishing Co. He succeeds Andy Barnes, who retired Saturday.

In a 26-year career at the newspaper, Tash has risen through the news ranks. He remains editor of the Times. Last week, two months shy of his 50th birthday, Tash sat down in his office in downtown St. Petersburg with Times business columnist Robert Trigaux to discuss the future of this newspaper - and all newspapers - in challenging times, the newspaper's editorial page, and life beyond his work. Here are some excerpts:

Q: What's the big challenge ahead for the St. Petersburg Times?

Tash: I don't mean to go too Zen-like here. After all, I am from Indiana. But your greatest weakness can be the flip side of your greatest strength. I think the St. Pete Times has two gold-plated assets. One is its security. Because Andy (Barnes) was able to consolidate the ownership of the company within the Poynter Institute, we are protected from the kind of public-company pressures and corporate-takeover possibilities that attach to just about everybody else in this business.

The other great strength is our independence. We are able to make decisions, both on the news side and on the business side, here on the West Coast of Florida, that are based upon what we think is best for the St. Petersburg Times, its readers and its advertisers - not based on what kind of profit they need in San Jose or in northern Virginia or in Chicago.

The flip side of security and independence would be complacency and insularity. I think we are unlikely to fall victim to those perils.

Q: Where do you want to guide the Times?

One goal is to continue to expand our audience throughout the Tampa Bay area. A second goal is to find ways to expand our breadth and reach deeper into some new segments of the audience. We need to be able to find people by more narrow interests than simply the general run of news.

Q: Will the St. Petersburg Times change its direction while you are in charge?

The newspaper today is far different from the newspaper that Andy inherited 15 years ago, and certainly from the one that Nelson (Poynter) left in 1978. I hope I'll make an impact in this job. But I don't think either the staff or the readers are likely to see any huge shift in direction. I'm very much a product of the St. Petersburg Times and the Times Publishing Co. So much of what you see already is what you're going to get.

Q: What do you like to do when you're not here?

Most mornings before I come to work, I swim at North Shore Pool. I try to swim at least 100 miles a year. I don't particularly like doing it, but I think it makes as big a difference for me mentally and emotionally as it does physically.

I've got a 21-foot sport boat. I like going out when I can get anybody from my family to go with me, which is increasingly rare these days. The girls used to be pretty keen to go, but now they're older and so the boat doesn't get as much use as it would like or I would like for it.

Q: Your wife, Karyn, teaches, your older daughter is a student at Harvard, and your younger daughter attends high school here?

Well, I grew up in a house where my mother was the only female. Now I live in a house where I'm the only male, except for the dogs, and they're not the men they used to be. So occasionally it feels like uncharted territory.

Q: What are the biggest news days in your life?

One was the collapse in 1980 of the Sunshine Skyway. The other biggest day, of course, was Sept. 11, 2001. I remember going to the press room that night because I wanted to feel the power of the machines as they started to come to life and produce the record of this amazing and horrific story, with the sense somehow the world had changed.

Personally, the biggest moments were the births of my daughters. The great sense of exhilaration and terror with the first, and with the second a wonderful sense of satisfaction that we're all here and we're all safe.

The most difficult thing I ever had to do was bury my mother, who died quite suddenly on a spring day in 1988, and to know that there is no recovery from that. Most things you can come back from.

Q: How relevant will newspapers be in the future?

The bigger question is: To what extent will most Americans remain interested in news - not just in newspapers, but in news?

How much of an appetite is there going to be for news of politics and government and foreign affairs? How prepared are people to take a genuine and significant interest in those complex, difficult and sometimes dispiriting questions? I think the newspaper piece of that is only a part of the larger question. Voter turnout has declined steadily since the end of the 1960s. All news organizations have to find ways to get people interested in public affairs and events to help them lead more fulfilled and prosperous lives.

Q: Isn't that a rather tall order?

It is a tall order not just for the newspaper. It's a tall order for democracy. That sounds a little old-fashioned, but I think it's a much more fundamental question than just the economics of newspapers.

Q: How do you engage readers?

The best thing that newspapers could do to assure their own future is to be more interesting. The problem with most American newspapers is that they're just too boring. We've got to make newspapers compelling and worth your time and your money. If you go to a lot of American cities and look at their newspapers, it won't take you more than 10 minutes to read.

Q: What about the newspaper's editorial tilt?

My politics may be a little different from Andy's personally, but not more than one standard deviation. Besides, the point of the editorial page is to reflect the institution's view rather than the view of any one individual. So I don't think readers are going to be disoriented by any lurch in either direction. My politics are pretty Midwestern and middle of the road. As an example, I voted against Jimmy Carter when he won and for him when he lost.

Q: What was it like growing up in South Bend, Indiana?

It was a small-city experience. I went to public schools. My folks were school teachers. I had an all-American childhood. I was an Eagle Scout.

Q: How did you meet your wife?

I was city editor here in 1983 when the paper's irrepressible social columnist, a woman named Mary Evertz, demanded to know what I was doing on one Saturday night. When I couldn't come up with a good answer, she insisted that I escort this young woman to a party. It was a blind date that both parties approached reluctantly. Six months later we were married. In August, it will be 21 years.

Q: Your parents were teachers. Your wife is a teacher ...

I've done very well to get myself around first-rate teachers. That's one of the ways I think about Andy (Barnes) - as a first-rate teacher.

Q: How about yourself?

I leave that to others to decide. I try. If someone said I was a great teacher, that would be an enormous compliment.

Q: Are there any changes that the Tampa Bay community might expect from the St. Pete Times under a new leader?

I think people can expect to see that the newspaper will continue to push for a more coherent and united Tampa Bay region. At the same time, it recognizes and honors the local communities and the particular interests within them. I think the Tampa Bay area can expect that the St. Pete Times will still be a force for good, because this is our only home and we have a tremendous stake in its future success. We don't have anywhere else to go.

Q: What kind of a chief executive do you want to be?

I hope people will see me as somebody who gives a damn about my company, about the journalism we do, about the difference it makes and about the kind of place that Tampa Bay can be.

Q: You have watched the Tampa Bay area since the 1970s. What are some of the positive changes you've seen?

This is simply a much richer, vibrant, more interesting area than it was when I first arrived. The sports teams - the Devil Rays, the Lightning and the Bucs - are, in many respects, ornaments on the quality of life here. But they are important indicators of the kind of growth and development that the bay area's had.

I think that there has been a much greater sense of connection among the parts of the Tampa Bay area and the emergence of a regional identity, which I think is important and positive.

Q: Any negatives?

Certainly some challenges. We're going to have to deal with the consequences of our own success, principally in creating the schools, the roads, the water resources that we need to keep this engine humming. We also have to successfully renegotiate what's the essential deal of life on the Suncoast. Initially it was a cheap place to retire. But as the region has grown and matured and gotten more diverse, you see that is not the deal any longer.

Q: Any last thoughts?

I feel enormously privileged to be coming into this role with responsibility for an organization that has meant so much to its community and in my own life. I feel a deep sense of gratitude, both to Gene (Patterson) and to Andy, not only for sponsoring me, but for setting such a high standard for leadership.

But I feel a particularly keen obligation now to Nelson Poynter, that little guy in a bow tie who gave away his life's work because he believed in an idea. And now I've become the steward of that idea. I will almost certainly be the last chairman of the St. Pete Times with a personal memory of Nelson Poynter. Through some terrific intermediaries, he now entrusts that idea to someone he knew as a 21-year-old college kid. That's pretty amazing.