But he did bring it off. And in doing so, Barnes secured the Poynter Institute\u2019s ownership of the Times and his own legacy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Barnes died Thursday at the age of 86. The cause of death was not disclosed. He leaves behind a wife, Molly, and three children, Chris, Ben and Elizabeth. The family is planning memorial arrangements.\u00a0<\/p>\n
During the more than 50 years Barnes worked in journalism, he helped lead the Times, now the Tampa Bay Times, to multiple Pulitzer Prizes and greatly expanded and modernized the Poynter Institute. But perhaps his most significant contribution was shepherding the institute through an attempted hostile takeover of the Times, ensuring that the paper would remain independently owned.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe effort not only preserved the paper\u2019s independence and local control, but helped solidify the very concept of non-profit ownership that is a vital component of today\u2019s news landscape,\u201d said Neil Brown, the current president and chairman of the Poynter Institute.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Barnes joined the Times in 1973, recruited away from The Washington Post by the legendary journalist Eugene Patterson. There, he worked his way up, becoming editor and president of the Times in 1984 and later the CEO of Times Publishing Co. and chair of the Poynter Institute in 1988. In climbing the ranks, Barnes was following in the footsteps of his mentor, Patterson, who in turn had succeeded Nelson Poynter.<\/p>\n
Before his death, Poynter had envisioned an ownership structure that would protect the Times from suffering the same fate as newspapers owned by large, corporate chains. As a result, he created the institute \u2014 then known as the Modern Media Institute \u2014 and willed his majority stake of Times Publishing to the organization upon his death in 1978.<\/p>\n
For 10 years, Poynter\u2019s dream was preserved. But in 1988, Texan financier Robert Bass jeopardized that dream when he called Barnes to inform him that he\u2019d purchased the 40% of Times voting stock that had wound up in the hands of Poynter\u2019s nieces.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The news was so shocking that the rival Tampa Tribune scooped it before the Times had a chance to publish its own story. Over the next two years, Bass fought to gain control of the Times, at one point suing over the company\u2019s decision to reinvest the money it earned into the paper and the Poynter Institute instead of paying out bigger dividends.<\/p>\n
That period, Barnes later recounted, turned his hair white. But he never wavered in his decision to fight the takeover, even when he was told that selling the paper would make him very wealthy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIn facing the Bass challenge, we knew from the first we must never do anything that might make it seem we would sell the Times. We didn\u2019t hire investment bankers, though many said we should. We never allowed ourselves to speak publicly about the dollar value of the company,\u201d Barnes later wrote in an op-ed<\/a>. \u201cWe were determined not to be in play. For us, there simply was no alternative to preserving the independence of the newspaper.\u201d<\/p>\n It was a scary moment for the Times because it was the first challenge to the company\u2019s \u201csense of impregnable independence,\u201d said Paul Tash, who would later succeed Barnes as head of the Times, Times Publishing and the Poynter Institute. But Barnes led with \u201ccalm and resolve,\u201d believing that a solution would come if they worked hard enough to find one \u2014 a mindset Tash would later seek to emulate when he led the Times and the Poynter Institute through the Great Recession and the COVID-19 pandemic.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThat is something about Barnes that was always impressive,\u201d Tash said. \u201cHis view was, if we don\u2019t see a solution here, it\u2019s just because we haven\u2019t thought hard enough yet. We have to keep thinking and we\u2019ll find a way.\u201d<\/p>\n
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