The Tampa Bay Times sets a $175,000 target for the weekly fundraiser each year

Four years ago, Tampa Bay Times reporter Zachary T. Sampson began digging to understand why manatees are dying in large numbers in Florida waters.

Reporting was tediously troublesome. Sampson slowly slipped away while working on other stories. In mid-2022 he was joined by experienced investigator Bethany Burns and later a fresh data specialist Shreya Vutalle, who graduated from university.

Walking around the vast documentation and large databases, they embarked on a mammoth project that detailed with extraordinary accuracy and clarity how contaminated waterways put the state’s mild giants at risk.

Sampson, Vuttaluru and Barnes have found that one in four waterways across the state is dangerously contaminated. It led to the main food source for sea grass decimation (89,000 acres) of manatees. Without food, the epicenter of the Indian River lagoon crisis would have become a cemetery. A tragic and avoidable catastrophe.

Journalism costumes have never tried to investigate pollution throughout Florida to this extent. It took more than a year to bring this powerful and important story to readers to a full-time focus from a reporter who works for editor Rebecca Woolington.

Florida news outlets rarely devote such time and energy to a single project. There’s no one else, so we do it regularly.

And because that’s essential.

That is our mission. Our commitment. Our calling.

And we cannot do it alone.

As news business models evolve, philanthropy plays a bigger and bigger role in funding independent local journalism.

We have launched our annual “It’s Your Times” fundraising campaign.

We began raising funds in 2019 through grants and donations. Since then, we have received more than $3 million. That’s an impressive number. But that represents a part of our annual news budget. The amount of money spent on journalism is much less than when we had subscribers, print ads and more staff that were printed a few years ago. But it’s enough to produce the clever, dog journalism that the times are known for. Because we make it a priority.

Consider some of the results. In 2021, we demonstrated how the Tampa Company systematically poisoned its own workforce and surrounding communities. It took Worlington, Corey Johnson and Eli Murray more than two years to complete the project. Last year, Rebecca Leepson and Tegan Simonton detailed how corporate real estate conglomerates have accumulated tens of thousands of rental homes across the state. Reports lasted almost a year. Two years before Hurricane Helen, Sampson teamed up with Langston Taylor to foresee how vulnerable our area had been to rush. The report lasted for over a year.

Not all investigations take time. Max Chesness and Emily L. Mahoney have broken the story about how the state wanted to turn a precious park into a pickleball court, golf course or hotel. They tracked Chesnes’ first scoop with a tenacious watchdog report. Many of them were made public within a month. Our Joint Times/Heraldo Tallahassee Bureau dials up near the daily coverage of Hope in Florida’s Saga, detailing how $10 million in state funding fueled the Casey DeSantis Pet project and funded the governor’s priority initiative political campaign.

But when important stories take time, we promise to do what it takes.

That costs money.

“It’s Your Times” started casually four years ago. We have overturned each of our fundraising targets over the past three years. We are committed to pouring support and generosity in our community. Last year, around 900 contributors pledged between $5 and $25,000.

This year’s goal: $175,000.

When we meet our goal, we pay 3 journalists in 80 newsrooms.

It’s ambitious. But so are our journalistic aspirations. I know the wells of potential stories run deep.

With your help, we are determined to uncover these stories.