A pair of 18-wheel rigs waited outside the former printing plant of The Tampa Tribune on a recent afternoon. Workers were busy dismantling machinery and hauling it away, preparing for the building’s demolition. Nearby, in what had been the newsroom, file folders, reporters’ notebooks and other detritus lay scattered on the floor, evidence of a hasty retreat.
The Tribune, whose motto was “Life. Printed Daily,” was abruptly shut down on May 3 after having covered this city and its environs for 123 years. The reasons for its demise were familiar: precipitous drops in advertising, the rush of readers to the web, the fallout of the economic recession. But this particular case felt a little more personal — and left the journalists who found themselves suddenly out of work with the sense that they had been betrayed.
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