By: Joe Strupp The Tampa Tribune played the drunk driving arrest of its executive editor, Janet Weaver, on Page One today, while its nearby rival, the St. Petersburg Times, offered a smaller, inside story.
Weaver, 43, was arrested early Tuesday morning while driving home from dinner. Her paper posted a Web story just hours after her 5:30 a.m. release Tuesday. She told E&P Tuesday she would not be involved in planning any aspects of today's paper, but hoped it would be covered on Page One to allow for complete transparency.
"It was the appropriate place to play the story," Weaver said today after the Tribune print edition came out, with the arrest story and her mug shot in the lower, left-hand corner. "It would take an exceptional public figure to put a first time DUI on the front page, but we wanted to have full disclosure."
Larry Fletcher, Tribune deputy managing editor, said Weaver was not involved in the planning for today's edition. "She left the news meeting and told us to make the call," he said. "We went through a real deliberative process. We went through comparative type stories. What if it were the mayor? What if it were the governor? We thought the news value would put it more on the metro [section] front, but we wanted to be transparent and hold ourselves maybe a little more accountable."
Weaver supported the decision, saying, "I suspected that was where they were going to go. I think the story was on the money."
Across the bay, at the Times, editors placed a shorter story on the arrest inside that paper's metro section, with a Web story listed down within the general Tampa Bay news page. Times editors did not immediately return calls for comment.
Weaver said she had not decided if she would write further about the incident, such as with a column or editor's note. "It has been kind of a whirlwind," she said. "I'm sure I will write about it at some point."
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