![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Roy-Peter-Clark-300x266.jpg\")
<\/p>\nWhen the punishing winds of Hurricane Milton dislodged a construction crane and sent it crashing into a neighboring building in October, 2024, several prominent downtown businesses were left homeless.<\/p>\n
Among those shut out of 490 First Ave. South was the venerable Tampa Bay Times, which had produced newspapers there since 1988. These \u201cnew\u201d offices were adjacent to the Times\u2019 historical (circa 1921) home.<\/p>\n
With the building pronounced uninhabitable, Times journalists did research, conducted interviews and wrote stories from home or other remote locations, a practice which had begun, more or less, during the Covid-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n
But there remained no centralized location. No newsroom to call home.<\/p>\n
Some, including the executive staff, found temporary digs at the Poynter Institute, the journalism school and research center founded by longtime Times publisher Nelson Poynter (as the Modern Media Institute) in the late 1970s. The Poynter Institute actually owns the newspaper.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have some people who prefer to do most of their work from home, or from a place that gives them privacy and the ability to concentrate heavily on their work,\u201d said Times Chairman and CEO Conan Gallaty. \u201cAnd we have some people who show up every single day, and actually prefer to be around others and have that sense of camaraderie and physical location that helps them do their best work.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since the arrival of the internet, the idea of ironclad newspaper deadlines \u2013 and the manic energy of newsrooms in films like The Front Page and All the President\u2019s Men \u2013 is somewhat archaic.<\/p>\n
Gallaty, who joined the Times in 2018, admitted that the newsroom then \u201chad less of a constant buzz, the noise, huddling around desks swapping ideas and thoughts, because so much of the communication was done electronically. Even the teams that worked together would simply message each other. So that sense of being in the same place has definitely changed.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven so, I think there is osmosis that is given when people can see each other, and have that chance to connect, when that kind of electronic communication just doesn\u2019t suffice.\u201d<\/p>\n
With the terms agreed upon, and the contract signed, work has begun in earnest to transform the Gene Patterson Library, and several nearby rooms, into the Tampa Bay Times newsroom, 2026-style.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s significantly smaller than the space that we had at the old building,\u201d said Gallaty, \u201cbut truth be told we had more space than we really needed.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Roy Peter Clark in his Poynter Institute office. Photo provided.<\/p>\n
Writing coach Roy Peter Clark, who was the first person hired (by Nelson Poynter himself) in 1977, willingly gave up his office, an ancillary library room, so that it could be used as part of the new communal workspace.<\/p>\n
The internationally-known Clark, who\u2019s authored a number of go-to books on writing, hasn\u2019t been a full-time employee at Poynter for a while, although he still regularly teaches and conducts seminars and workshops.<\/p>\n
In 2024, he said, the writing on the wall came from Old Man Milton.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen that happened, a lot of us said \u2018Look, our colleagues in the newsroom are orphans \u2013 we can make space.\u2019 So they began looking at pieces of the Institute that could be reconstituted temporarily,\u201d Clark recalled.<\/p>\n
Months of negotiations and planning followed. Clark, who donated his office collection of more than 1,000 books to the new facility, began boxing up his stuff in September. \u201cGaze, if you will, upon the ruins of a once great civilization,\u201d he captioned an empty-office photo on Facebook.<\/p>\n
Clark is only leaving Poynter in theory. \u201cThere are some small offices available,\u201d he said, \u201cand they asked me if I wanted one. And I said, you know what? As I\u2019m closing in on my 50th anniversary as the Taj Mahal of know-it-all, I think I don\u2019t want an office for myself any more.<\/p>\n
\u201cI said however, given that I still want to work \u2013 and I do a lot of my writing at home, like a lot of other people \u2013 I said I would like wandering rights. And they knew exactly what I meant. It\u2019s the way I like to work, whether it\u2019s the coffee shop or someplace else.\u201d<\/p>\n
He\u2019ll still be there, coaching and mentoring. And \u201cwandering,\u201d offering advice, cracking jokes and helping out when necessary.<\/p>\n
Kind of like the newsroom culture of old.<\/p>\n
\u201cI devoted my life and career to this place, and they\u2019ve allowed me to have a good, productive, creative life. Where I\u2019ve been able to do my best work, and re-invent myself. And to work with really good colleagues. And we need it now more than ever.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When the punishing winds of Hurricane Milton dislodged a construction crane and sent it crashing into a neighboring…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5468,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-33746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33746"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33746\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}