The Tampa Bay Times starts a monthly 'book club' for news stories

Tampa Bay Times journalist Lauren Peace is a fan of her local bookshop, Book and Bottle, a “bookstore with wine and a wine shop with books” (and coffee!). At one of the store’s book club events, Peace had a lightbulb moment. “The business is packed, and people across all demographics are sitting there in conversation,” she recalled. “I’m like, ‘wow, wouldn’t it be great if we could apply this model to news?’”

Starting last month, the Tampa Bay Times partnered with Book and Bottle to offer monthly “article clubs” in the St. Pete store on Sunday evenings. Peace, an enterprise equity reporter, moderates conversations about a Tampa Bay Times story among its author and community members. The idea is not just to discuss the story’s substance, but to give readers a behind-the-scenes look at the reporting process and decision-making that shape the published article.

Peace sees the club as an opportunity to demystify how reporting works and bring people together to talk about local issues, “with the hope of ultimately hooking people who are already readers” — and who already have some habit of paying for writing. She wants to figure out how to translate the “buy local” enthusiasm and loyalty people feel for the bookstore to their local newspaper. The events are free to attend, but “hopefully, we’ll convert some people [to subscribe to the Tampa Bay Times] in the process.”

Peace emphasized that this event is a low-lift experiment that she’ll refine through trial and error, and credited the Times and her editor for being willing to let her run with an idea without wrapping it in red tape. She pitched the article club last fall, after hosting a more formal panel discussion at Book and Bottle about her reporting on domestic violence. “I’m kind of making this up as I go,” she said. For instance, while she’d considered moderating discussions of both local and national news, she’s seen enough early success with the former that she’s leaning toward sticking to a local focus. And no money changes hands between the bookstore and the newspaper; the Times simply uses Book and Bottle’s space for the monthly event.

The Tampa Bay Times does plenty of events “that take a lot of time and preparation and are resource-intensive…this is not that, and not everything has to be that,” Peace said. She encouraged other newsrooms to embrace that spirit of quick-turn experimentation.

“Media organizations have already relied on their readers coming to them,” Peace said. “There’s been this idea of, like, ‘we are the beacons of information and truth and the readers will come,’ and that’s just so no longer the case.” She sees events like the article club as one way to get out in front of potential audiences and show them what journalism is, and why it matters.

“If we want to continue to exist, and to do the important work that we do every day, we have to justify our existence to the people in our communities,” she added. “We have to get better at telling our own story and breaking down the walls between ‘institution on the hill’ and who we really are.”

Photo of the Tampa Bay Times February article club at Book and Bottle courtesy of Lauren Peace. Attendees are pictured discussing opening ice breakers in small groups ahead of the broader conversation.