I must not have been too outraged lately because I haven’t posted in awhile. And I’m not outraged today. Just kind of sad. You see, my old newspaper, the St. Petersburg Times, one of the best newspapers in the country, recently bought a building. Well, the name anyway. It’s the St. Pete Times Forum, formerly the Ice Palace, home to the Tampa Bay Lightning pro hockey team. Yes, Dorothy, there’s hockey in Florida. And yes, now a newspaper owns the name to a sports and entertainment arena. Sort of like the HBO Oz Center. (But in the real Oz, there were no prisons. They just dropped houses on the bad people. Or threw water on them until they melted away.)
Too bad we can’t throw some water on this deal and make it go away. I remember how disappointed the Times was when the Tampa Tribune got prime real estate on the ice at the Florida Suncoast Dome, now, Tropicana Field, when the Lightning played there. This new deal smacks as one-upmanship.
Well, Florida is prone to hurricanes. Maybe a big wind will lift the “St. Pete Times Forum” out of Tampa and drop it somewhere in St. Pete. I think we can all guess where.