A decade ago, the St. Petersburg Times became the Tampa Bay Times

On January 1, 2012, the St. Petersburg Times became the Tampa Bay Times. The move would not just open a new chapter for the newspaper. It initiated a shift in the entire region.

“We’re really seeing greater cohesion and integration in the various parts of Tampa Bay now, but back then Tampa and St. Pete were actually rivals and very different,” said Paul Tash, chairman and CEO of the Tampa Bay Times. “There was no regional sense of community like there is today.”

In 2019 the Greater Tampa Chamber of Commerce adopted a new name – the Tampa Bay Chamber. It was no coincidence that this happened after the newspaper changed its name, said Bob Rohrlack, president and CEO of the Tampa Bay Chamber.

“The newspaper has really been at the forefront in recognizing the regional growth that is coming together,” he said. “Most people said ‘wow’ but the second thought was ‘this really makes sense’. ”

The West Hillsborough Times began publishing in Dunedin in 1884. [ UNKNOWN | St. Petersburg Times ]

It wasn’t the first time the newspaper’s name has changed. The newspaper began in a Dunedin pharmacy in 1884 as the West Hillsborough Times. At that time, St. Petersburg and Pinellas Counties had not yet been established, and the peninsula was in fact part of a larger Hillsborough County.

The newspaper moved to what is now St. Petersburg in 1892 and became the St. Petersburg Times in 1898. She should lead a political initiative to split off Pinellas as a new county, Tash said.

“It’s a huge irony, exactly 100 years old,” Tash recalled. “On January 1, 1912, Pinellas County becomes a county of its own at the behest of the St. Petersburg Times.”

In the 1980s, the same newspaper that was pushing for its own county to begin expanding into Hillsborough. It had become clear that St. Petersburg, on behalf of the newspaper, was a resistance for readers across the bay.

“We felt like we weren’t there or we were coming from somewhere else,” said Tash.

Tampa has seen and is still experiencing an economic boom. Local media were aware of the power on behalf of the city, said Tampa Bay Times news editor Dennis Joyce.

“If you wanted to be the newspaper of this market, you want Tampa on your behalf,” said Joyce, who previously worked for the Tampa Tribune. “There is no way around that.”

The Times’ main local competitor, the Tribune, took preventive action to prevent potential assault by its rival. The Tribune had published an afternoon newspaper, the Tampa Times, by 1982 and added a trademark to the Tampa Bay Times. Since you have to use a brand to keep it, they put the Tampa Bay Times in small type in their weekend entertainment department.

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Explore all of your optionsAn edition of the Tampa Tribune Friday Extra shows the use of the trademarked term “Tampa Bay Times” in 2000. The Tribune stopped using that term in 2001. [ Tampa Tribune archives ]

Fast forward to the summer of 2001 when the Tampa Tribune redesigned its pages. Tash flipped through the paper and noticed that the Tampa Bay Times label had disappeared from the Friday Extra section.

“It takes three years without the trademark to be used before the trademark is considered abandoned,” he said. “So we watched and waited.”

Tash knew that if the Tribune remembered why they’d used the term in the first place – or realized they weren’t using it anymore – they could easily incorporate it back into the design.

“All it takes is some use to start the clock again,” he said.

But it no longer appeared in print. In the fall of 2004, the St. Petersburg Times launched a free weekly tabloid aimed at younger audiences. The plan, which was kept secret until the last moment, was to call it tbt *, which stands for Tampa Bay Times.

A committee meeting in advance of the change of name from St. Petersburg Times to Tampa Bay Times on January 1, 2012. [ DEANS, ATOYIA | Times ]

The Tampa Tribune did nothing and tbt * was successful. In the spring of 2006, the newspaper decided to print the tabloid five times a week – with the Tampa Bay Times as an emphasis.

Shortly before the Daily Tabloid launched, the company that owned the Tampa Tribune filed a trademark lawsuit in the US District Court in Tampa, asking the St. Petersburg Times to pay damages and suspend its Tampa Bay Times plan. The Tribune said it was too close to the Tampa Times, which they hadn’t given up on. Ultimately, Judge James S. Moody issued an injunction to prevent the Times from using the Tampa Bay Times as its main name, but allowed the newspaper to continue using tbt *.

The daily tabloid launched and the St. Petersburg Times sued the company that owned the Tribune. In the fall of 2006, both parties entered the mediation and agreed that the St. Petersburg Times would not use the Tampa Bay Times in a more prominent way than it already did for the next five years. After that there would be no usage restrictions.

“We knew we had an opportunity to change, but the St. Pete Times was a long-standing brand,” said Tash.

St. Petersburg’s Scott Angelina removes the St. Petersburg Times sign from the newspaper’s Clearwater office in preparation for the Times’ name change to the Tampa Bay Times on Jan. 1, 2012. [ CLIFFORD, DOUGLAS R. | Times (2012) ]

Before the change, it was mostly just local sports teams – like the Tampa Bay Rays, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and Tampa Bay Lightning – who carried the regional name. A branding advisor has been hired to run focus groups and tests to help with the transition. They warned that there could be resistance from people on both sides of the bay. And indeed there were objections. Reader comments include:

“There’s no place called Tampa Bay.”

“Tampa Bay is a body of water.”

“The only things in Tampa Bay are fish and bridges.”

Nonetheless, on January 1, 2012, the name change was official. For the most part, Tash said, people got warm to it. When the Times acquired the Tampa Tribune in 2016, it became the only daily newspaper on the market.

The last front page published under the name of the St. Petersburg Times on December 31, 2011. [ Times ]

Since then, other organizations in the region have also adopted the regional name.

The Tampa Bay Chamber turned to the Times as an example and requested information about the survey the newspaper was conducting.

Other groups have moved in that direction, from the Tampa Bay Economic Development Council to Port Tampa Bay.

“It is a natural evolutionary step in recognition that this region is getting bigger and stronger together, only more diverse as we grow in this way,” said Rohrlack.

The post A decade ago, the St. Petersburg Times became the Tampa Bay Times first appeared on Daily Florida Press.