The Old Subscribers

On their park benches in the sunny harbor on Florida's Gulf Coast, residents of St. Petersburg watched for a sign of fall. One day last week it came: the obituary space in the St. Petersburg Times (circ. 100,225) rose from the summer normal of two columns to five.

Times subscribers knew what this meant: the annual migration to St. Petersburg had begun. A mecca for retired oldsters--nearly one of four St. Petersburg residents is over 65, against a national average of one in twelve--the city is also a winter shelter for 75,000 chilled Northerners. Most of the newcomers are as far along in years as the steady customers in Central Avenue's blood-pressure shops (50-c- a reading) and the softball players on the St. Petersburg Pels and Gulls (age range: 50 to 75). As the visitors arrive, the need for additional obituary space goes up proportionately.

Hockey Scores & Tuna Fish. St. Petersburg's retired oldtimers know exactly what they want in a newspaper, and it is up to the Times to give it to them. Each day, the paper devotes several columns to bridge, checkers, baseball, club meetings, roque and shuffleboard. The casualty list from a Vermont train wreck will be carried in full; hockey scores from Canada appear regularly; the opening of a new bridge in Philadelphia may not make Pittsburgh papers, but it is likely to appear in the St. Petersburg Times, whose old subscribers come from all over the U.S. and Canada and demand such coverage.

The Times's readers are exacting. From sobering experience, the Times's Executive Editor Thomas C. Harris, 51, has learned that the green benches lining Central Avenue are crowded with retired authorities from every imaginable-field, all vigilant to catch the Times in error. Running a filler item on annual steel production in the U.S., the Times misquoted a single digit; five readers called in triumphantly with the correction. When an ad erroneously quoted a can of tuna at 7-c- instead of 17-c-, penny-watching pensioners bought 6,960 cans in six hours; the store billed the Times $696 for the mistake.

"You Think Twice." Since brevity is not a virtue of the Times's letters-to-the-editor writers, the paper has ruled that 300 words is the maximum printable length--and many aged readers suspiciously count every word, call in to protest the slightest overage. In past years, the morning Times was apt to be careless about punctual deliveries, but oldsters tend to be early risers, and now the paper reaches every subscriber's doorstep before 6 a.m.

Catering to the particular tastes of its elderly and omnivorous readers is an obligation that President and Editor Nelson P. Poynter, whose family has owned this old-gold mine for years, is happy to discharge. Indeed, the oldsters have had a healthy effect on the paper itself. "They make you think twice before generalizing," said a Times staffer : "They really read the newspaper. They not only have the time, they have the informed interest. They're a challenge." Meeting that challenge has helped rank the St. Petersburg Times among the South's most solid newspapers.

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