Radioactivity Thursday 10 26 17
Good morning, welcome to WMNF’s Radioactivity. I’m Rob Lorei. Coming up— an interview with the new president of the Poynter Institute. Mainstream news organizations are going through hard times—especially in the last 20 years. Circulation of print newspapers is down. The viewership is down for the 6PM newscasts on local TV. 35 years ago the Tampa Bay area (including Tampa, St, Petersburg, Sarasota, Bradenton Lakeland and Clearwater) was served by 8 daily newspapers. Now there are only four dailies. Of the remaining papers The Tampa Bay Times is the largest. Its average daily circulation is 245,000 making it the 13th largest paper in the country. And it is unusual among newspapers—the Times is a for profit entity and is owned by a non-profit organization- The Poynter Institute for Media Studies (https://www.poynter.org/) —located in St. Petersburg. Poynter describes itself as “a global leader in journalism. It is the world’s leading instructor, innovator, convener and resource for anyone who aspires to engage and inform citizens in 21st Century democracies.”
The new president of Poynter is Neil Brown, who until last month was the Editor and Vice President of the Tampa Bay Times. He’s a graduate of the University of Iowa; had been the managing editor at Congressional Quarterly; he joined the St. Petersburg Times in 1993 and in 2010 he became the top editor of the Times.
He joins us now
