By The Crow’s Nest Staff
The Crow’s Nest, a fixture on the St. Petersburg campus for decades, would be merged with the student newspaper at USF Tampa under recommendations from a subcommittee helping plan the consolidation of the USF system.
If the recommendations are adopted, there would be one newspaper – name to be determined – with a section for each campus.
Each section could retain its current name – The Crow’s Nest in St. Petersburg, The Oracle in Tampa – and have its own editors, but the joint operation’s advertising and “paper completion” (a term that is not defined) would be overseen by one university administrative office.
The recommendations also call for exploration of abandoning the print products of the two newspapers in favor of an online publication.
The recommendations are the work of a subcommittee led by Danielle McDonald, an assistant vice president and dean of students on the Tampa campus, and Dwayne Isaacs, who as director of student life and engagement in St. Petersburg oversees the business side – but not the editorial product – of The Crow’s Nest.
Isaacs, who assumed his position last year, did not consult with Crow’s Nest editors or their adviser before embracing the recommendations. The newspaper learned of them from the editor-in-chief of The Oracle, who said he had been briefed by McDonald.
In an interview Tuesday, Isaacs acknowledged that he and the subcommittee should have consulted Crow’s Nest editors sooner. He stressed that the recommendations are preliminary and that the subcommittee welcomes input from editors.
“All the committee (members are) reviewing these recommendations, taking them back to their different constituents and asking folks to respond to them, review them or provide their own, like I did,” Isaacs said.
In a statement, Crow’s Nest editor-in-chief Whitney Elfstrom and adviser Rob Hooker criticized the proposal and the way it was sprung on the staff.
“The Crow’s Nest has been serving the St. Petersburg campus since its modest beginnings as a mimeographed publication in 1969,” they said.
“In passing the consolidation plan, the Legislature stressed that each campus in the USF system – St. Petersburg, Tampa and Sarasota-Manatee – would retain its unique identity, with its own leadership and special characteristics.
“A campus of nearly 5,000 students needs its own newspaper, not some lumpy casserole jointly prepared with student editors 35 miles away in Tampa.
“We strongly oppose this proposal and the way it was cooked up in secret.”
The newspaper recommendations come from the student involvement subcommittee, which is composed of student life administrators and the student government presidents at the three campuses of the USF system.
Isaacs said subcommittee members are exploring ways to unify the three campuses and encourage more collaboration across the system.
“That is the direction we were thinking of: How can we unify the newspapers in a sense of they’re all working collaboratively?” Isaacs said. “If we’re going to unify all these other areas, then let’s not leave the student publications out of that.”
Among the issues that are under study are students’ activities and service fees – which vary from campus to campus – and how three student governments should be organized.
The proposal to merge the St. Petersburg and Tampa newspapers arose belatedly in the subcommittee’s deliberations, Isaacs said.
Now that he knows the editors and adviser at The Crow’s Nest oppose the plan, Isaacs said, he will forward their thoughts to the subcommittee and personally oppose any merger.
Regional Chancellor Martin Tadlock said Saturday he was unaware of the recommendation to merge the student newspapers.
Although the St. Petersburg campus was a satellite of the much larger Tampa campus for many years, the two campuses have always had separate newspapers. The Sarasota-Manatee campus does not have a newspaper.
The Oracle was founded in 1966, a year after the Tampa campus opened. Its print edition, which has a circulation of 6,000, is published two days a week, with an online edition that is updated regularly.
The Crow’s Nest traces its history to 1969, four years after the first students began classes in St. Petersburg. The Bay Campus Bulletin was a mimeographed product that served the tiny branch campus on 11.8 acres jutting out into Bayboro Harbor.
The modest paper was renamed The Crow’s Nest in 1970 and adopted a newspaper format in 1993, according to campus historian James Anthony Schnur.
The Crow’s Nest prints 800 copies each week, with frequent updates on its website.
The paper’s annual budget comes from student activities and service fees and is allocated each year by Student Government, which also oversees the budgets of the Harborside Activities Board and other campus organizations.
The paper’s 2018-2019 budget of $51,572 covers the cost of paper, printing and salaries for a staff of 12 plus Hooker, the adviser. Hooker, a part-time adjunct instructor and former editor at the Tampa Bay Times, makes suggestions and conducts a weekly critique of the paper, but the student editors make the final decisions.
Over the years, The Crow’s Nest has occasionally drawn the ire of university administrators.
When the University Student Center opened six years ago, the paper published stories that raised questions about the way the building was being financed.
Nearly two years after the campus’ top academic administrator was suddenly fired for reasons that were shrouded in secrecy, the paper disclosed in November 2016 that he had propositioned a female professor and made sexually offensive remarks. It also published key documents in the case.
When Regional Chancellor Sophia Wisniewska was ousted last fall for the way she handled preparations for Hurricane Irma, the paper disclosed the particulars of the ouster and explored the rocky relationship between St. Petersburg and USF system President Judy Genshaft.
And when secretive state legislators suddenly moved last spring to abolish St. Petersburg’s independent accreditation, the paper gave a platform to the senior professors, campus retirees and their allies in the community who cried foul.
The Tampa campus of USF opened in 1965, and for decades its administrators dominated the small branch campus in St. Petersburg.
Many professors and staff chafed under the rule of Tampa, however, and the St. Petersburg campus was granted separate accreditation in 2006.
The freedom helped trigger growth in St. Petersburg’s numbers, prestige and swagger, and the Legislature’s abrupt decision last spring to rescind the separate accreditation and consolidate the three USF campuses into one landed like a bomb in St. Petersburg.
A 17-member task force was created to help plan for consolidation, which takes effect on July 1, 2020, but much of the planning is going on – behind the scenes – in an array of committees, subcommittees and work groups, like the one recommending a merger of the two student newspapers.
Some senior faculty on the St. Petersburg campus and their allies in Pinellas County government and business warned last spring that Tampa would squash St. Petersburg in the consolidation process.
As consolidation decisions loom, there are increasing grumbles that the warning was prescient.
The Tampa Bay Times has criticized the pro-Tampa tilt of recommendations from an outside consultant, and last week the president and CEO of the St. Petersburg Area Chamber of Commerce voiced concerns about the pace and increasing uncertainty of the consolidation deliberations.
Header photo: Emily Wunderlich | The Crow’s Nest
