Tampa Bay Times keeps publishing despite a Milton crane collapse cutting off access to newsroom
It’s a reflection of the news industry and the modern work world that Tampa Bay Times editor Mark Katches seems more relaxed than you might expect after a crane pushed by Hurricane Milton’s winds tore a hole in the building where his newsroom is located.
“It hasn’t had any impact on our operations,” Katches said in an interview Friday.
The crane collapse in downtown St. Petersburg is one of the most visible symbols of Milton’s damage, so much so that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis held a news conference at the scene on Friday.
The Times Publishing Co. owned the damaged building but sold it in 2016, and the news organization is now one of several tenants there. The building was closed when Milton breached late Tuesday and early Wednesday, in part because it had no backup generators, so no one working for the Times or anyone else was injured, the editor said.
The Times is the largest newspaper serving the more than 3.3 million people living in Tampa-St. Petersburg area.
Most of the Times journalists covering the hurricane were working remotely Tuesday evening, or at a hub set up for a handful of editors in the community of Wesley Chapel, about 25 miles outside of Tampa.
Katches said he is unsure when newsroom employees will be allowed back into the building. One hopeful factor is that the newsroom is on the opposite side of the building from where the crane fell, he said.
“I’m afraid we’re going to find a lot of broken equipment” as a result of water damage, Katches said.
Newsroom employees became accustomed to working remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic. “This is a newspaper that won two Pulitzer Prizes when we couldn’t be in a building to meet,” he said.
He doesn’t expect a return to a newsroom in the near future. Still, he said he hoped the newspaper would eventually secure a space where everyone could work together again.
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David Bauder writes about media for the AP. Follow him up http://x.com/dbauder.