Tampa Bay Times sets a $175,000 target for annual weeklong fundraiser

Yahoo

11-05-2025

Four years ago, Tampa Bay Times reporter Zachary T. Sampson began digging to understand why manatees were dying in droves in Florida waters.
The reporting was painstakingly laborious. Sampson chipped away bit by bit while he tackled other stories. In mid-2022, he was joined by seasoned investigator Bethany Barnes and later Shreya Vuttaluru, a data specialist fresh out of college.
Wading through voluminous documents and massive databases, they embarked on a mammoth project that detailed with exceptional precision and clarity how contaminated waterways imperiled the state's gentle giants.
Sampson, Vuttaluru and Barnes found that nearly 1-in-4 waterways across the state had become dangerously polluted. That led to the decimation of seagrass — 89,000 acres of it — the main source of food for manatees. Without food, the epicenter of the crisis in the Indian River Lagoon became a graveyard. A tragic, avoidable catastrophe.
No journalism outfit has ever attempted to examine pollution across Florida to this extent. It took more than a year of full-time focus from our reporters working under their editor, Rebecca Woolington, to bring this powerful and important story to readers.
Few, if any, news outlets in Florida will devote that kind of time and energy to a single project. We do it with regularity because no one else will.
And because it's essential.
It's our mission. Our commitment. Our calling.
And we can't do it alone.
As the business model for news evolves, philanthropy plays a bigger and bigger role to help fund independent, local journalism.
We have launched our annual weeklong 'It's Your Times' fundraising campaign.
We began raising money in 2019 through grants and donations. Since then, we've received in excess of $3 million. It's an impressive number. But it represents a fraction of our annual news budget. The amount we spend on journalism is considerably less than it was just a few short years ago when we had more print subscribers, more print advertising and more staff. But it is still enough to produce the kind of smart, dogged journalism that the Times is known for. Because we make it a priority.
Consider some of the outcomes. In 2021, we showed how a Tampa company had systematically poisoned its own workforce and the surrounding community. It took Woolington, Corey Johnson and Eli Murray more than two years to complete the project. Last year, Rebecca Liebson and Teghan Simonton detailed how corporate real estate conglomerates had amassed tens of thousands of rental homes across the state — changing the complexion of the housing market. The reporting spanned nearly a full year. Two years before Hurricane Helene, Sampson teamed with Langston Taylor on a series that foreshadowed how vulnerable our region has become to storm surge. The reporting lasted well over a year.
Not every investigation takes that long. Max Chesnes and Emily L. Mahoney broke the story about how the state wanted to turn precious parklands into pickleball courts, golf courses and hotels. They followed up Chesnes' initial scoop with tenacious watchdog reporting — much of it published within a month. Our joint Times/Herald Tallahassee bureau has been dialing up near daily coverage on the Hope Florida saga, detailing how $10 million of state funds fueled a Casey DeSantis pet project, and, in turn, helped fund political campaigns of the governor's priority initiatives.
But if an important story takes time, we are committed to do what it takes.
That costs money.
'It's Your Times' started modestly four years ago. We've eclipsed fundraising targets each of the last three years. We are heartened by the outpouring of support and our community's generosity. Last year, about 900 contributors made a pledge, ranging from $5 to $25,000.
This year's target: $175,000.
Hitting our goal would pay the salaries of three journalists in our 80-person newsroom.
It's ambitious. But so are our journalistic aspirations. We know the well of potential stories runs deep.
With your help, we are determined to bring these stories to light.