Will the Tampa Bay Times survive COVID?

In the form it had before this week, the answer increasingly appears to be "no."

Tuesday, the paper announced it was cutting to just two days a week in print version, so dire was its dropoff in advertising.

At the same time, it announced one puzzler and one grasping at straws that I've called out before.

The puzzler? It's going to produce a non-printed print edition every day. In other words, the copy desks will be building a regular old newspaper, it just won't be printed. The only reason to justify this is that the Times may have multiple online subscription models and that one of them is based specifically on a PDF-ed e-edition.

It announced it was placing some people on furlough and reducing work hours for others. Why wouldn't you do even more of this with the copy desk, as painful as it would be to them?

The grasping at straws? It's going to put a weekly puzzle book in the Sunday edition.

Nope, nope, nope. Won't help you. At least, unlike the Dallas Snooze, the once-known-as St. Petersburg Times is doing it on a weekly basis, not monthly.

As for the post-COVID world?

My guess is that it will never get back to a full seven-day print version. One option would be going down the road of Advance's papers, and selling only those Wednesday and Sunday papers in stores, while making both like the old "bulldog" weekender editions. Print subscribers would still get the full seven days, but stores just those two.

Another option, of course, is canning the Monday edition for everybody in print. That said, sports fans might miss weekend wrap-ups. Alternative? Can Tuesday. Or Tuesday and Thursday, even.

That said? Since the puzzle books won't save you, you — and other regional seven-days — as you get the increased online subscriptions, will have to at some point raise subscription rates if you never go back to your previous print schedule.

As for this particular paper? Can it and the Tampa Tribune survive as two papers in the Florida Bay Area much longer???

Related question: How symptomatic is this of other regional seven-days? If we consider the whole Florida Bay to be one media market, Fort Wayne and Salt Lake City still have dueling print papers. I'm excluding NYC and LA. Is Dallas-Fort Worth one market? Could the likelihood of something getting at least closer to a JOA betwen the Snooze and StartleGram be closer?