Remembering the wild, crazy and hard-working Tampa Tribune biz desk

The Tampa Bay Times announced Tuesday that it had acquired the Tampa Tribune and was closing the competing newspaper.

Talking Biz News asked former Tribune business news desk staffers about their time at the paper. Here are some of those.

David Szymanski, business reporter and assistant business editor, 1985 to 1997:

I enjoyed working on the business news desk at The Tampa Tribune for a number of reasons. The top one was that as a reporter, I worked with highly self-motivated reporters. We were all trying to break local news and beat the competition, The St. Pete Times. And day in and day out, we did. It was energizing working in that atmosphere. It made you work harder. That same group had a great sense of humor, so we had fun while doing it.

The cast of reporters started to change, but the newcomers had the same drive. It was like being on a basketball team where everyone wanted to kill the opposition. It made you want to kill them, too.

When I became an editor, it was never really the same. My job shifted to planning, layout and working with other reporters, as the previous reporters left town and moved on. I enjoyed the new reporters, but in a different way. It was more of a teacher-student, or boss-staff member relationship. We had some young, aggressive reporters that did excellent work.

I had two editors. The second, Steve Matthews, could edit your story carefully and always improve it. You briefly sat side  by side and he would explain the changes. Steve proved that you could be a polite person and still be very good at what you did in the news business. Steve would encourage me to work until the final deadline to break a story and would celebrate when we did. He was part cheerleader, part editor, part teacher. I did not like working for some editors. That was not true of Steve.

We had no Internet, no Bloomberg, no PCs, no cell phones, no email when we started. It was about the telephone, coffees, lunches, meetings, sources and relationships. We covered local companies, not personal finance. I agreed with that. We covered where people worked. Other publications handled personal finance.

I’m a teacher now and enjoy it. But I also miss those days.

Shannon Behnken, real estate reporter, 2000 to 2011:

The Tampa Tribune business desk will always live on in my heart. I moved to that desk and started my role as the real estate beat writer in 2004. It was my first business reporting job, and I was terrified. But a talented group of journalists welcomed me and taught me the ropes.

The competition against a larger staff across the Bay made journalism even more exciting and scoops even more thrilling. I will forever be grateful and proud for the relationships, the lessons and the role I played in Mother Trib’s rich history

Gary Haber, business reporter, 1999 to 2005:

I  was very  proud to have been part of the Trib’s business section. We didn’t have the resources of our competitor across the Bay, but we scooped them plenty of days and always gave them a run for their money. The proof is that my biz section colleagues went on to some of America’s best newspapers — the Washington Post,  Boston Globe, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Rocky Mountain News and Detroit Free Press.

We’ll miss you, Mother Trib.

Scott Bernard Nelson, personal finance editor, July 1998 to March 2000:

I felt like, in some ways, I came in during a golden age in business journalism at the Trib. Bernie Kohn was business editor and Ray Locker was senior editor, and these were two guys who weren’t content with the status quo. They weren’t willing to be second to the St. Pete Times in the market. They were hungry and competitive. Bernie set about building on a good staff with a whole series of aggressive hires, and was looking for stories with regional and national impact. It was a fun time, and we honestly believed we could become one of the great regional papers in America.

We also had a hell of a lot of fun. Roland Klose was assistant business editor, and he was the staff sergeant to Bernie’s major — and he kept it a loose bunch. Reporters like Janet Forgrieve, Jean Gruss, Dave Simanoff, John Reinan, Cherie Jacobs, Ted Jackovics, Rexford Henderson and Gary Haber taught me how to be a newspaperman. This was my first newspaper job, after all. I’ll always be thankful.

Stephanie Tripp, real estate reporter, 1986 to 1993:

When I reflect on my time as a business writer for the Tribune a couple of things come to mind. First, the calibre of my colleagues and was outstanding, and everyone was committed to making our business coverage some of the best in the nation. I was recruited by [business editor] Jim Kennedy and started in early December 1986, just a few weeks shy of my 23rd birthday and right before the St. Petersburg Times announced its intentions to make a serious push into Hillsborough County. I was hired to cover commercial real estate and economic development.

Two memories emerge from those early days. First, I ended up with the assignment — on New Year’s Eve, no less — to write the story about the Times’s announcement. It was late in the day, and our publisher, Red Pittman, had already gone home, but not before talking to someone from the Times. I was frantically trying to reach him, realizing how embarrassing it would be for us to be scooped on a quote from our own publisher. I finally looked him up in a city directory (remember those?) and realized that his next door neighbor was a spokesman for Tampa Electric Co. I called the neighbor, and he graciously agreed to bang on Pittman’s door for me. I think he had been in the shower. When he finally came to the phone, he was really apologetic for being out of touch. “Oh, bless your heart,” he told me in that Virginia gentleman’s drawl so many people loved to imitate.

The second recollection comes from a few weeks later when Bernice Stengle, a veteran reporter on my beat who had moved over to cover banking and was in the process of introducing me to her sources and helping me become acclimated, resigned to become the real estate writer with the Times — my direct competitor.

The news was a real blow to Kennedy, who had been her mentor, and lots of fellow writers and reporters who had been around a lot longer than I had were upset by the news. I was, of course, secretly terrified because this really experienced reporter who I thought was going to be a mentor was actually going to be competing with me for stories in the midst of this full-on circulation war that had broken out. Still, I kept me mouth shut during the meeting when Jim announced what was happening because I was new and everyone had bigger problems, etc.

A little while after the meeting ended, though, Jim took me aside and he gave me this amazing pep talk and laid out all the reasons why he hired me even though I was so young and how much promise he thought I had, etc. I will never forget how much that meant to me. He had this incredible ability to read people and to understand how to motivate them. Around that same time, I remember him me don’t worry about being as good as the Times.

He said what we really should be paying attention to was the Wall Street Journal, and he had a point, at least in those days, anyway. I worked with a lot of wonderful people in those years — you knew many of them yourself — and I’m sure you would agree that the Tribune’s best in those days were some of the finest journalists you could fine anywhere.

Adam Levy, banking reporter, 1990 to 1992:

There was simply no place like the Tampa Tribune. I won’t even go outside the business department, though there was incredible talent (Neil King, Shailagh Murray, etc.).

The talent was so intense inside the business department — fighting for space, against you and everyone else. But, irregardless of the internal competition I’ll never forget the teamwork, the us-against-them mentality, helping each other out and working together against the competition. I remember [business editor] Steve Matthews sitting with me and editing a story late on a Friday about a bank seizure to make it really shine — taking the extra time to make it great. I remember Suzy Siegel on the features desk helping me with a lead for a Sunday story on a banker who needed a job, one victim of the banking collapse.

What a spirit that place had. The publisher flicking ashes in my coffee cup while he encouraged me not to ease up on the biggest bank in the state.  And, then, THEN, well, let’s NOT remember the many, many midday drinking/cigar smoking sessions which preceded many of our finest stories.

It was old school, brass-knuckle journalism. And it was hard work. The competition had deeper pockets and better pedigreed reporters and editors. But I never had more fun getting to work and trying to beat their asses (and, more often than not, succeeding).

Kevin Shinkle, transportation reporter, 1990 to 1993:

A few days before I left the Trib’s St. Pete City Hall beat for my new gig on the business desk, Brian O’Donnell took me around the airport and the Port of Tampa to explain my new beat (and his old one.) After, he asked me if I had to get back to St. Pete. Not really, I said. Good, he said. And away we went to join the other misfits on the business desk for lunch at an Italian restaurant in Ybor City. Carmine’s, I think. I remember a big brick of baked ziti, a lot of beer and cigars after. Nobody paid a lot of attention to me, but I couldn’t help but think that these were my people.

That was the start of an 18-month or so stretch that ranks up there as one of the most memorable and crazy of my career. The amount of talent on our side of the building resulted in one scoop after another (and launched many of us into long and distinguished careers in business journalism.) It also resulted in more laughs than I can count. There were the paper wad wars. There was ‘Got a minute?” There was the incomparable Frank “I’m not Cuban” Ruiz going back into his shell. There was Roush and Adam Levy and Z-man. There was Mickie Valente, Stephanie Tripp, Lisa Blackman and (future Pulitzer winner) Sarah Cohen, along with Galen Meyer, Dave Rettig, Travis Mayfield and Leigh Hogan. And the ringleader of this gang of magnificent bastards was Steve Matthews, a young business editor who quietly tolerated us, while giving us the freedom to do our jobs and the encouragement to be great.

Many of us couldn’t wait to get out of there and on to bigger and better things. We were an impatient bunch to be sure. But, man, was it fun.

Cheryl Jackson, insurance and health care reporter, 1993 to 1998:

It was a great team I joined to cover insurance in the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew. I realized what a strong mentor I had in tech reporter Frank Ruiz when he just showed up to sit in on an introductory meeting I was having with property and casualty players.

I also appreciated Ruiz’ early 90s advice: “If they’re not on the Internet, don’t trust ’em”; a really smart leader in business editor Steve Matthews; and assistant  biz editor Galen Meyer’s occasional “sunset alerts” so that we could head to the windows and appreciate.

Wayne Garcia, economic development reporter, 1991 to 1992:

I covered economic development in the Business section of the Tampa Tribune in 1991-1992, and it was extremely competitive with the Times. The Tribune was the leading business voice, so we had access to the top economic movers in the region. We regularly broke stories first and had a wider, more business-focused effort than the competition. And it was fun. We schmoozed business sources over cigars and Cuban coffee, uniquely Tampa. Many of my colleagues on the desk went on to careers with national business publications (BusinessWeek, Bloomberg). It was one of the favorite times of my career, even though it was out of the norm with my focus on local politics and investigative reporting.

Galen Meyer, assistant business editor, 1984 to 1994:

What a hard-working, scoop-digging and fun-loving crew of characters in the business section we had at the height of the Tribune’s expansion and ambitions.

Every day was a scrap to scoop the Times. The craziest was when we published a full page piece by Jeff Smith on the Bass brothers’ attempt to wrest a piece of the Poynter Institute — on the day the Times’ long-time publisher retired.

And every day was just nuts. When someone called editor Bill Shelton and asked if we had a small business editor, Bill’s tongue-in-cheek reply about our diminutive business editor Andy [Taylor] was “Yes, but he doesn’t like to talk about it.” You could always tell publisher Doyle Harvill had been in your no-smoking office by the cigarette butts in your coffee cup or plants.

Adam Levy, Kevin Shinkle, Mary Lou Jansen, Chris Roush, Frank Ruiz, Cheryl Jackson, David Syzmanski, Stephanie Tripp, Wayne Garcia, Brian O’Donnell, Noam Neusner, Michele Leder, Mickie Valente, Clay Zeigler and many more.

A bunch of us, including business editor Steve Matthews, joined Bloomberg in the early days or went to other publications. Some went into law or academia or business. But I still marvel at the group we had and mourn the long decline and loss of the Tribune.

Dale Hokrein, assistant business editor and business editor, 2004 to 2011:

When I first came on the business desk as an assistant business editor in 2004, the paper was trying to figure out how to converge its news report with WFLA while competing against the St. Petersburg Times. At the time, we had a full staff: 10 reporters and three editors.

I remember the reporters, like Ted Jackovics, Mike Sasso, Rich Mullins, Shannon Behnken and others, were fiercely competitive. We tended to think of ourselves as the blue collar newspaper, compared to the Times, which had deeper resources. But we effectively ramped up reporting on real estate, sports business, and statewide insurance issues in the mid 2000s, and did some great, award-winning work.

One of my favorite memories, and my baptism by fire, was my first editing assignment: to work with a reporter on a profile of a Tampa mover and shaker. The reporter filed the story and it came in at over 200 column inches. It took me three weeks of wrangling, cajoling, persuading to get the writer to trim it in half. I think it finally ran at 80 inches after senior editors were satisfied–two months later. Whew.

Another one: Mullins was writing about the owners of the Tampa Bay Lightning hockey team and the speculation that they may be looking to change the arena’s naming rights sponsor. The St. Petersburg Times had the naming rights then, and so we wrote a story about the possibility of a change. One of the owners, Oren Koules, was so angry about the story that he called me up, and berated us for doing the story. At the end of the conversation, it got dark when he threatened my life over the phone. Now when the producer of the “Saw” franchise of horror films threatens you, it gives you a little shiver in your liver. Thankfully it blew over, and now the team is owned by another investor.

Over the years, and through a series of layoffs, the Trib had gotten down to about four reporters. At the end of 2011, I was laid off, along with 165 other employees. But I still keep up with many Tribbers to share stories.

It was fun to be in one of the last two-paper towns, doing battle around the bay. I’ll miss those days. But I’ll mostly miss the people, who kept their humor through round after round of layoffs to put out the best paper they could. Everyone was willing to step into the gap and keep moving in the midst of constant uncertainty. My hat’s off to those who manned their posts.

Jim Kennedy, business editor, 1984 to 1987:

This is certainly a sad ending to a proud competition, but nothing can diminish the power that competition generated in its heyday, propelling so many of us through long and diverse careers in the media business. I remember coming in as a bureau chief in Polk and surrounding counties and chasing stories that would make the “Florida man” meme of today look tame.

Within a year, I was part of a team sent to Central America to report on the refugee crisis created by the Salvadoran civil war. We ran a huge tabloid special edition to feature the project, with no advertising. A year after that, I found myself creating a new business section and hiring a 20-plus people to kick the Times’ you-know-what in that category.

Along the way, I had the privilege to work with some of the best people I have ever worked with through 40 years in the news business. They, like me, are no doubt still drawing energy from those amazing days. Cheers to all the Tribune alumni and to our shared legacy.

Charles Gasparino, business reporter, 1989 to 1990:

The “Tampa Trib” as it was know back in the day hired me right out of grad school as a general assignment reporter. Pretty hectic time in my life: as i said i just left school (University of Missouri). My mom had moved to Florida (nearby Clearwater) after my dad died, and my brother was considering going to med school in the state, so getting a job there was perfect for the family.

Florida has always been a great news state: development, murders, drugs gangs, the mob and the real sleazy side of wall street, example, penny stocks brokerages. Most of that occurred closer to and in Miami, but by the late 1980s when i got to Tampa these stories had moved north and I was right in the middle of it.

My best stories involved how short sellers targeted and began attacking a local company (I believe the name was Silk Greenhouse) and how a Florida lottery winner was ripped off by a local investor who had fallen on hard times. I also covered the controversy surrounding workers’ compensation and how high premiums were screwing small businesses.

I left after about eight months after my mom died; it was a gut-wrenching decision because I was starting to make my mark inside the paper, but I missed home and I wanted to cover Wall Street (I had a background in finance and econ) and the junk bond market was imploding. The story I believed was in New York not central Florida.

I say the decision was gut-wrenching because at that time the Tampa Trib was a big paper; huge circulation and a power in the state. I was going to work at a trade rag and a startup and quite frankly covering rip offs and investment scams aren’t bad.

I remember at my going away party, the biz editor John Andreas toasting me: “Here’s to Chuck Gasparino who is making the biggest mistake of his life!” For a while after I left I thought he was right. I went from being a reporter who covered all these great stories at a big paper to just another guy at a trade rag trying to get asshole Wall Street guys to pick up the phone and take his call.

But I stuck it out in NY; made my breaks worked hard and by 1995 I was at my then-dream job at the Wall Street Journal. In other words, leaving the Tampa Trib was one of the best decisions of my life.

Neil King, now global economics editor, Wall Street Journal:

The Tampa Tribune when I was there in the early 1990s was a rough-hewn and wildly ambitious paper that was doing its best to take over all of Central Florida. It had bureaus (and regional sections) across a vast swath of the state, and had much more gusto and grit than the hoity St. Pete Times, which finally devoured and killed it.

We covered cops and mass shootings and serial killers and corruption, and so did the St. Pete Times, though in a much more genteel and, let’s say, introspective way. (During my time there the St. Pete Times actually dispatched several reporters to do a yearlong investigative project on….The St. Pete Times! It came out in a separate section under the heading, “The Tower of Power.”

The gags from across the bay must have been audible from that tower.) At the Trib, the head office was filled with swashbuckling editors and true characters–Doyle Harvill, Bill Skutt, Dan McLaughlin and so many others–who were crusty old-time news folks in ways you rarely find now. Those were the days when you could still smoke in the news room, and Harvill was known to make the rounds flicking his ashes into trash cans and complimenting women on their attire. I covered courts and cops and general assignment in the wilds of Pasco County, where it seemed every serial killer made a pit stop before heading further south.

Later I made it down to the metro desk and covered city hall and Mayor Sandy Freedman. Many of us went on to reporting careers in far-flung places — Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America — but for me, those couple years at the Tampa Tribune still supply the bulk of my “get-a-load-of-this” journalism stories. The Trib at its height was a paper-on-the-go in a state that was the feistiest place in the country for competitive journalism.

It’s sad to see it die.

Sarah Cohen, business reporter, 1993 to 1994:

Steve Matthews took me on with no experience and taught me how to cover a beat – not sure how many other places would take that risk. I’m grateful for that and for the friends I made there.