The Tampa Bay Times’ new marketing agency may not be total pay-to-play, but it’s a rich move from holier-than-thou legacy media

The Times Publishing Company, publisher of the Tampa Bay Times, has started a new full-service media and marketing agency, Launch Point, it says will leverage modern strategy to help clients grow “while supporting the long-term sustainability of independent local journalism.”

To be clear, I fully understand the challenges facing today’s media climate and the difficulty in identifying revenue sources that can cover overhead, staff salaries, legal fees and the many other expenses of running a major media organization. The money dried up a long time ago, and creative approaches have abounded since.

But the Times’ latest revenue-generating endeavor smacks of hypocrisy. The same outlet whose leaders and reporters have for years accused Florida Politics of being pay-to-play is now doing essentially what it has lamented for the better part of the past two decades.

But this isn’t about Florida Politics. It’s about the Tampa Bay Times, the paper that prides itself on being a watchdog ensuring accountability for the powerful. How can a publishing company court marketing clients — such as the businesses and developers it covers — while also covering them objectively?

I’m not alleging direct pay-to-play, but I am urging Times readers to consider whether a paper that relies on marketing its sources can apply a critical lens to those same sources when the need arises.

No doubt the dogged reporters covering newsmakers, government policies, campaigns and elections will apply the same professional journalistic lens on which they were trained. But the news relies heavily on editorial decisions — the choices that determine which stories get covered, which get killed and what angle is worth pursuing.

Adding a marketing agency into the mix, simply put, thins the wall between revenue generation and news coverage.

Think of it this way. If you ask a barber whether you need a haircut, the answer is almost always going to be yes. The Tampa Bay Times has made itself the barber, and it will no doubt tell its new marketing clients they need a haircut. That haircut just so happens to be advertising in the Tampa Bay Times.

And Times leadership is saying the quiet part out loud.

“This is a critical investment in ensuring that trusted local journalism is around for the next 100 years,” Times Publishing Company Chair and CEO Conan Gallaty said in a statement announcing the new endeavor. “A strong, modern marketing organization creates the revenue engine that allows us to continue serving our communities with the reporting they rely on. Launch Point is not separate from that mission. It is essential to it.”

He’s not wrong. For years, the Times has been bleeding resources just to keep the lights on. There have been numerous layoffs and forced furloughs.

But consider Gallaty’s own words. They’re packaged in the kind of pretty bow Launch Point will no doubt pitch as a benefit to prospective clients. Unwrap the package, though, and what you’ll find is an admission that the Times can’t keep pace in this economy without creative revenue strategies that defy the paper’s own long-standing standards of objectivity.

What’s more, the man defending the need for a new revenue stream is making bank. IRS forms filed for 2022 and 2023 show Gallaty earned $409,602 in 2023. To put that into perspective, the median income in St. Petersburg, where the Times is headquartered, is about $75,000, according to Census.gov.

Making that number even more shocking, his pay was on an upward trajectory far outpacing inflation at the time. Gallaty’s income rose about 14% from 2022 to 2023, a $51,000 bump. No doubt there are people working for the Times who earned in a whole year what Gallaty received in a single pay raise.

In this case, “the emperor has no clothes” has turned into the emperor starting his own clothing line.

It will be interesting to see whether this endeavor works out for the Times. After all, the paper is also now selling new “web and digital experience” services despite its own website being essentially useless. The site is cluttered, near impossible to navigate, and an overall chore. How is Launch Point going to fix a client’s digital experience when it can’t even fix its own?

Nevertheless, I applaud the Times for thinking outside the box. I hope it’s able to maintain journalistic integrity despite shacking up with the newsmakers and sources the paper seeks to hold accountable.

What I expect, though, is something far different. I don’t want to hear another word from the Times about what it perceives as shady business practices. The publishing company has built itself a glass house, and it had better not start throwing stones.