It's difficult if not impossible to report on an event in which one is actually present, so I'm just going to highlight certain quotes from the above-listed men (and yes, they/we we're all men, the subject of some embarrassment when health care advocate Darden Rice challenged the panel to explain why there were no women on the dais. None of us had a coherent answer, as we were asked by the Tiger Bay folks to participate.) I can say I don't think I embarrassed myself, but that's the last time I'll mention my participation here.
For the purposes of this story, when we talk about "new media," we're referring to the source you're reading right now: blogs and the web, as well as social media like Twitter and Facebook.
When talking about the benefits of working for a newspaper, Jeff Houck said the downside is "We're printed on trees. I think it's easier for us to make a jump to new media than it is for new media to adapt to the way we do things."
Eric Deggans admitted the obvious: The advantage of working for a big paper like the Times is sheer resources. No other media outlet in the Bay area has as many reporters on staff. Also, he added, those resources include the lawyers that allow the paper to sue for access to information not accessible any other way, as well as protect them from lawsuits.
When discussing the most egregious situations in politics this year, WTSP's Noah Pransky gave praise to the Times Pulitzer-winning PolitiFact for being able to fact-check some of the false ads that come across the transom from both sides of the aisle. He hopes the readership for that fact-checking site grows because "educating voters to the things they see on TV is the only way they'll write them off when they see a completely false ad or something that's so out of touch that really it's shaping the elections more than the truth."
Jeff Houck said he has stopped following folks on both the left and right who friend him on Facebook and "decide they're going to preach their politics to me."
Deggans said the most egregious thing he's seen this year was an ad aired by Newt Gingrich called "The Moment," in which he used footage of himself attacking Fox News' Juan Williams during a debate in South Carolina in January. The exchange featured Gingrich blasting Barack Obama as being the "food stamp president," and then ranting about how poor people need to stop being poor and just get a job.
Deggans called it "Exhibit A of how politicians play on prejudice and racism and code words to divide us."
During the question-and-answer session, St. Pete City Councilman Karl Nurse asked Peter Schorsch and Noah Pransky if new media were leading to a more educated public, or a more opinionated one?
Schorsch, a huge proponent of new media, said it was absolutely the former.
"People talk about politics 400 percent more since 9/11. ...we may not like the (political) extremes, but if you look at what's happening across the world, we are connecting to the people in Egypt and what happened in Tikrit Square and what happened in all of the Middle Eastern countries. All of this social media is building to a point. We are talking about domestic issues that we have never talked about before. Debt, deficit. We are talking about bonds...that's happening because the volume of the national dialogue has increased."
Pransky said opinions were okay, especially when they were educated ones.
Largo Mayor Pat Gerard asked who can be trusted these days, with so many local media outlets being reduced in size. Deggans said, "Trust yourself," explaining that the new media environment allows consumers to watch local reporters by using Facebook and Twitter to check with other contacts about the accuracy of a particular story.
Peter Schorsch took a few shots at "traditional media" throughout the luncheon, getting pushback from the Times' Romano at times, who said that his paper still has over 400,000 subscribers on Sunday. After Schorsch boasted about how two web-only entities, The Huffington Post and Politico, received Pulitzers while the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal did not, Romano said that both those websites were major news organizations, "much like newspapers, just on the Internet and not in print...there is nobody who has the ability to cover local politics, local issues, local crime, things that people care about than newspapers."
St. Pete City Councilman Bill Dudley asked if morality were still in play with new vs. traditional media, talking about misinformation getting printed.
Eric Deggans broke it down thusly: Bloggers want attention and traditional reporters want impact. "We want to write stories that get people buzzing, and change things, and lose people their jobs, or whatever....bloggers want that impact, too. But they also need buzz and attention and clicks."
When talking about the integrity of bloggers, Peter Schorsch took a shot at Times publisher Paul Tash. "Does anybody in this room think people down in First Avenue South [the home of the Times] or at the Parker Center [where the Tribune is located] don't have an agenda in their own right? Does anybody believe that Paul Tash [doesn't have] his own agenda in his own right? Yes, we all have our agenda. And the reason why St. Petersblog works, as opposed to other blogs, is I've been doing this for four years, and I've built up a little trust. But let's be honest, we all have our own agenda, whether we're a newspaper, television station or blog," eliciting applause from the 100-plus folks at the St. Pete Yacht Club.
On Wednesday afternoon, some of the most distinguished reporters and media people in Tampa Bay discussed the good and bad about today's media landscape nationally and in the Bay area at a Suncoast Tiger Bay forum in St. Petersburg.
They included the King of All Media locally, Tampa Bay Times media critic Eric Deggans, who when he isn't blogging or reporting for the Times, gives commentary to a host of national media outlets, including NPR and CNN.
The man described as one of the most prominent political bloggers in the country by no less than the Washington Post, St.Petersblog'sPeter Schorsch.
John Romano, who has excelled as metro columnist at the Times succeeding Howard Troxler.
Noah Pransky, the charismatic investigative reporter for 10 News.
Jeff Houck, the extremely entertaining food critic and blogger with the Tampa Tribune.
Since 1988, CL Tampa Bay has served as the free, independent voice of Tampa Bay, and we want to keep it that way.
Becoming a CL Tampa Bay Supporter for as little as $5 a month allows us to continue offering readers access to our coverage of local news, food, nightlife, events, and culture with no paywalls.