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A new online business and news magazine for parts of the Gulf Coast has a group of financial backers that is raising eyebrows: At least 10 local governments and public-private organizations supported by business and individual taxes.
Some of the supporter groups, including the Tampa Downtown Partnership, the city governments of Clearwater and Largo and the Tampa Bay Workforce Alliance, are used to a more combative relationship with the press. Many of these taxpayer-funded groups have small armies of paid staff who work tirelessly to get their message out.
But now, in conjunction with several private companies, these entities will be able to utilize a new messenger in a business model backers say is based on the public broadcasting approach. That model includes having outside organizations sponsor and underwrite the long-term costs of putting out the news, as opposed to charging for an advertisement in the publication.
The e-magazine, launched Nov. 17, is called 83 Degrees — named for an average temperature day in Tampa in April. The site plans to cover two-thirds of the Gulf Coast, including Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco, Manatee and Sarasota counties.
Issue Media Group, a Detroit company that runs similar Web sites in cities such as Pittsburgh and Baltimore, is the lead publisher of 83 Degrees. As it has done in other cities, the publishers claim to aim to deliver positive business news.
The goal is understandable. Daily newspaper business sections are relentlessly negative, anti-business and anti-capitalism, and plenty of business people are sick of them.
The trick is, Issue Media and its local publishers, writers and editors will be delivering news with financial support of many of the organizations it's writing about. For example, 83 Degrees' Web site lists 15 founding partners, ranging from the previously mentioned alliances and partnerships to the University of Tampa and USF to two private companies, Mosaic and AT&T Florida.
That will make establishing trust and integrity a high hurdle.
Issue Media has hired Diane Egner, a former editor and editorial page writer for the Tampa Tribune, as its local publisher. Egner also worked as content director for WUSF Public Broadcasting in Tampa.
The challenge Egner will ultimately face is whether she will be allowed to also do unflattering stories on those who are paying the freight for the site. Only time will tell that, but the potential conflict is very real.
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