The Tampa Bay Times is getting a newsroom, 2026-style

When 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.

Among those shut out of 490 First Ave. South was the venerable Tampa Bay Times, which had produced newspapers there since 1988. These “new” offices were adjacent to the Times’ historical (circa 1921) home.

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.

But there remained no centralized location. No newsroom to call home.

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.

“We 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,” said Times Chairman and CEO Conan Gallaty. “And 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.”

Since the arrival of the internet, the idea of ironclad newspaper deadlines – and the manic energy of newsrooms in films like The Front Page and All the President’s Men – is somewhat archaic.

Gallaty, who joined the Times in 2018, admitted that the newsroom then “had 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.

“Even 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’t suffice.”

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.

“It’s significantly smaller than the space that we had at the old building,” said Gallaty, “but truth be told we had more space than we really needed.”

Roy Peter Clark in his Poynter Institute office. Photo provided.

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.

The internationally-known Clark, who’s authored a number of go-to books on writing, hasn’t been a full-time employee at Poynter for a while, although he still regularly teaches and conducts seminars and workshops.

In 2024, he said, the writing on the wall came from Old Man Milton.

“When that happened, a lot of us said ‘Look, our colleagues in the newsroom are orphans – we can make space.’ So they began looking at pieces of the Institute that could be reconstituted temporarily,” Clark recalled.

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. “Gaze, if you will, upon the ruins of a once great civilization,” he captioned an empty-office photo on Facebook.

Clark is only leaving Poynter in theory. “There are some small offices available,” he said, “and they asked me if I wanted one. And I said, you know what? As I’m closing in on my 50^th anniversary as the Taj Mahal of know-it-all, I think I don’t want an office for myself any more.

“I said however, given that I still want to work – and I do a lot of my writing at home, like a lot of other people – I said I would like wandering rights. And they knew exactly what I meant. It’s the way I like to work, whether it’s the coffee shop or someplace else.”

He’ll still be there, coaching and mentoring. And “wandering,” offering advice, cracking jokes and helping out when necessary.

Kind of like the newsroom culture of old.

“I devoted my life and career to this place, and they’ve allowed me to have a good, productive, creative life. Where I’ve 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.”

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