Youth Among the Oldsters

If they were looking for a relaxed and lazy vacation, the 26 students who signed on for summer jobs at the St. Petersburg Times soon got a new slant on the months ahead. Not for them the nearby beaches; not for them such time-killing chores as toting copy, answering phones or writing the myriad obits that the retirement haven inevitably requires. On his first day, Marc Rosenbaum, a Colgate freshman-to-be, found himself on the rewrite desk. "I'm not even sure what I'm doing," he gasped as the deadline rushed up. But he did fine. And so did the others.

The students may have been surprised by their own activity; the Times was not. No replacements are hired for vacationing staffers, and it is expected that the trainees will fill in. Every summer the entire crew--which may include anyone from a next-fall high school senior on up--is scattered through all phases of the paper. Wherever they work, they soon learn that they are attending one of the most productive and practical journalism schools in the country.

Age & Skill. Occasionally they all come together for a full day of lectures on the various aspects of newspapering. They are relatively well paid ($76 a week to start), and at the end of the summer most of them also get a bonus (from $100 to $2,000) to help handle the cost of their education. Not many of them come back to the Times permanently, but a hefty 50% stay in journalism. Which is all that Times Publisher-Editor Nelson Poynter is after. "I just think it's worthwhile perpetuating the breed," he says.

His preference for youth extends to the paper's regular staff as well. Poynter himself is 62, and his executive editor, Don Baldwin, is 48. But after them, the editorial brass are all relative youngsters--a 25-year-old city editor, a 30-year-old sports editor, a 24-year-old telegraph editor. Last month the paper got a new managing editor, Bob Haiman, 30. The Times needed a new managing editor because the old one, Cort Anderson, 30, had been chosen for a top Cowles editorial slot on a new paper being considered for Suffolk County, L.I.

Credit the Boss. St. Pete Timesmen cover a geriatric city, but they need their youth to keep up with the paper's tradition of aggressive, investigative reporting. The paper won a 1964 Pulitzer Prize for its scandal-packed report on a Florida turnpike boondoggle; most recently, it took out after Governor Haydon Burns with stories attacking him for nepotism and doing questionable favors for an insurance man. The Times's crusade helped defeat Burns's re-election bid in the May primary.

Generally liberal in a conservative town, the Times is so widely read that when a substitute takes over a delivery route, he is simply told to fling a copy onto every porch. That way he only makes an 8% error, for 92% of St. Petersburg households take the Times.

"A publication is so individualistic that complete control should be concentrated in one individual," says Times Publisher Poynter. And he is as good as his word. A benevolent boss, "he doesn't have a yacht or a mistress," says one employee. "He has only the Times." He also has the Congressional Quarterly in Washington, D.C., but his primary interest is the moneymaking, family-owned Florida paper. Out of the profits, he willingly pays his staff top dollars, offers good retirement and profit-sharing programs. The result is equally willing workers. There is only one union--the stereotypers. And there is not a time clock in the shop.

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