In the shadows of a world-renowned multimedia newsroom laboratory, lurks the scrappy and pragmatic SPTimes.com. Although only the shimmering Tampa Bay separates the two competing organizations, they are oceans apart in the way they operate and publish their news Web sites.
 
SPTimes.com, the Internet arm of the St. Petersburg Times, owned by the venerable Poynter Institute, is largely a "shovelware" site, where print journalism is transferred from the newspaper to the Web site. Breaking news and some complementary video provided by local TV partner WTSP-Channel 10 provide the online-only content for the site.

Four journalists from the print side -- plus 14 technical and business-side workers -- staff SPTimes.com in a nondescript office space only a few floors above the newsroom. Four print editors in the print newsroom post newspaper content online, including breaking news.

	Both Read and Dupont agree statistics from Media Metrix and NetRatings are not accurate, and in no way parallel their own server log numbers.

Unlike the SPTimes.com's site, TBO.com has become the example of the ultimate multimedia news operations, with integrated facilities among TV, newspaper and online journalism, as well as regular multimedia news and feature packages integrating video, audio, text and Flash animation, often the product of collaboration among multiple media journalists. The operation, featuring a "super desk" with representatives from the Tampa Tribune, WFLA-TV and TBO.com, is housed in a 4- story, 2-year-old building. The integrated operation has won the accolades of visitors from around the world, particularly the design, which features the multimedia nerve center on the second floor of the 4-story atrium, giving journalists the ability to carry on conversations with journalists from the Tribune newspaper on the 3rd Floor, or from WFLA on the 2nd Floor.

In the past three years, the SPTimes.com has become a clear competitor with TBO.com, owned by Media General, which is teamed with Media General's WFLA Channel 8 and the Tampa Tribune in the much-hailed media integration. In December 1998, Ron Dupont, Jr. was recruited from the innovative community- focused news site, the Charlotte (Florida) Sun-Herald, to lead the head-to-head competition with TBO as general manager.

"They have been good for the last two or three years," C. Kirk Read, general manager for TBO.com, said of SPTimes.com. "But we benefited from a head start."

Dupont's and Read's competition has been civil, they both attest. Both agree competition has been good especially for the most important stakeholder: the user.
 
 
"Competition makes my company better than it would be without it. At the end of the day, a competitive market is much better for the customer," Read said. "(St. Petersburg Times is) a very strong company, which makes the competition even better. That keeps raising the bar. It's important to meet the challenge."

Dupont, in a separate OJR interview, agrees. "We're better for (TBO) being here. Competition is always wonderful. I would rather be competitive and a great product than a fat sloppy product without competition. I love competition," Dupont said.

Like many new sites, the most contested battleground between SPTimes.com and TBO.com is breaking news, the No. 1 area of user traffic for both sites.

"What sets us apart online, is we have far more breaking news," Dupont said. "When news is breaking, we check if they have it," Dupont said.

"Our largest source of traffic to tbo.com is breaking news, then weather," Read said. "For breaking news, I look to see if they have a story and a breaking angle. I feel like we've done a good job (with breaking news)."

"Sometimes two minutes can do it, sometimes we beat them by a half an hour, sometimes they beat us. I hate that feeling," Dupont said.

"TampaBay.com is a great URL, that's to their advantage," Read said. At the moment, TampaBay.com is the online entertainment guide for the St. Pete Times. A redesign is in the works, to be rolled out in 2003, that will better integrate the SPTimes.com and TampaBay.com URLs, and will also make the news and commerce databases run more efficiently online.

Branding is another battle zone between the sites. TBO's logo is plastered on newspaper and billboard advertising and on the Web site. Meanwhile, SPTimes.com's TampaBay.com is an easy URL to recall.

Apparently both Dupont and Read lust after their competitors' branding efforts, and both indicate that branding speaks volumes to Tampa Bay area online news consumers. "I think TBO does a lot of great things?They do a great job at branding," Dupont said.

SPTimes.com's TV partner, WTSP, posts breaking news video on the site quickly, "enhancing our own breaking news coverage." The video appears in a pop-up window on SPTimes.com from WTSP's server, so the TV station's URL gets the pageviews and gets the TV station sell ads on the pop-up window and commercials on the online feeds, Dupont said. Dupont is happy with the partnership. WTSP is not owned by the St. Petersburg Times.

	TBO.com Kirk Read "They (SPTimes.com) have been good for the last two or three years. But we benefited from a head start."

 
While TBO.com has been held out as the gold standard of multimedia integration on news sites, SPTimes.com's Dupont is not convinced that his competitors are more successful with their multimedia tactics.

"The Trib has a lot going for it," Dupont said. "But we kick their butt on video even though w e don't have a multimedia operation." SPTimes.com has partnered with WTSP-Channel 10, which provides them video in the morning, afternoon and evening. Meanwhile, one of TBO.com's three partners is WFLA-Channel 8, which provides regular video feeds, and is represented on their integrated "super desk" in the middle of TBO.com newsroom.

In late February 2002, SPTimes.com and WTSP streamed video for the first time, and were pleased with the results, after a rocky technology delay. The streaming video was of the press conference introducing the Tampa Bay Buccaneer's new coach.

"We had a few scares leading up to the conference. Twice, the servers had to be rebooted because the feed crawled. The second reboot caused us to cut in to the press conference about two minutes late. But after the second reboot, the system ran smoothly. We did have to slow down the connection speed from basically 56k to 33k but we think that's more related to the second-hand server that was being used," Dupont said in a posting to the Online News listserv. "I only have initial stats but it looks like we topped out at several hundred people watching the broadcast at its peak."

Dupont wants to improve the relationship between the newsroom and SPTimes.com. "We will do that by education (to print staffers)," Dupont said. "We attend all of the news meetings. Communication is 90% of all problems. It has to get better."

One area of constant communication with print news coordinators is breaking news and their "Midday Update." The update contains breaking news and teasers to the next day's printed newspaper, and is the single-most looked-at page on the site, Dupont said. Adding the update a year ago was the turning point to increased traffic on the site, he said.

Meanwhile, SPTimes.com attempts to set themselves apart from TBO.com by emphasizing community involvement and content. While weather is the second most accessed category of information on TBO, the second-place finisher for SPTimes.com is their popular Internet classes primer. SPTimes.com experienced a setback in their popular program, in which members of the community can attend how-to classes on Internet information access on beginning, intermediate and advanced levels: management made a decision late last year to suspend the classes, saying that the economy is to blame. Dupont said "just over six figures" was spent annually holding dozens of community Internet sessions in auditoriums for more than 9,000 people to date.

"While the classes were wildly successful, we were shelling out a lot of money for this. We had to make a decision. I was heartbroken. It's at the heart and the core of community, community, community," Dupont said.

Traffic figures are a point of disagreement. Both Read and Dupont agree statistics from Media Metrix and NetRatings are not accurate, and in no way parallel their own server log numbers. Both are vying for both traffic and reach in the 10-county Tampa Bay region. Each site also competes with the likes of AOL and Digital Cities for traffic and ultimately, advertising revenue.

Media Metrix, for example, reported 511,000 for TBO.com and 335,000 for SPTimes.com for December 2001. However, no traffic was reported for TampaTrib.com, TampaBay.com or WFLA.com. Media Metrix requires a minimum of 85,000 unique users to visit a site before it is "counted."

"It's fun having a competitor across the Bay. Sure, we'd like to claim we're the big boy on the block -- but neither can they ... we're neck in neck (in traffic) every month," Dupont said.

Staff resources are a point of competition. TBO.com has 14 content and 15 sales- side staffers, while SPTimes.com has four editorial and 14 business and technical employees.

The sites' public (TBO.com) and private (SPTimes.com) business structures also drive important differences in the way their businesses are run.

"For us, everything you do has to have a plan because we are a public company. You may not have to make decisions about the future commitment to a profit margin (as a private company). Profit is not necessarily what drives their company," Read said.

But Dupont is setting out to be profitable by next year. "It's possible we'll turn the corner in October," he said. Revenue comes from classified ads that have been upsold for online, commerce revenue from their vertical Web sites, including Wheelfinder.com, Mondojobs.com and Homeofmine.com.