Courtesy of David Shedden, Nelson Poynter Memorial Library
By Crow’s Nest Staff
The modern era of The Crow’s Nest began with a bad pun and some impertinent questions.
For years, the campus newspaper was small in size and ambition, an 8.5-by- 7-inch publication that was reproduced in the campus activities office.
That changed on Aug. 25, 1993, when the paper became a biweekly tabloid. It was printed off campus and directed by an adviser and an editor-in-chief who both had professional newspaper experience.
The lead story on Page 1 described how the former home of C. Perry Snell, a prominent early developer of St. Petersburg, had been moved – very carefully – to the site on campus where it sits today.
The headline was a wincer: “See Snell by the seashore.”
While some of the content that fall was rather stale, the editorials and commentary had some pop.
Sometimes there was an edgy front-page column titled “Scuttlebutt” that usually began with two words – “Impertinent questions.”
The short questions it posed were not exactly earthshaking. For example:
Would someone please spackle over the peep holes in the toilet stall walls of the men’s room on the second floor of the library?
In an editorial, the editors addressed what would become a Crow’s Nest theme over the years: The noise and potential danger coming from the campus’ next-door neighbor, Albert Whitted Airport.
“Being a student at (the) Bayboro (campus) is like trying to learn in a foxhole, only without the mortars … One day some liquored-up Waldo wanna-be is going to push the stick down when he meant to pull it up, and there’s going to be a large hole in the side of Coquina Hal
