A Sacred Trust: Nelson Poynter and the St. Petersburg Times »

This book is nevertheless as objective as biography can be. The author has interwoven Poynter's life and death not only with the tempestuous and highly relevant history of his own family but also with the major themes in the newspaper's evolution, and he locates all of these in the context of national and state history and of journalistic development.

Publishers Weekly

Poynter (1903-1978) was raised in an Indiana newspaper-owning family, attended the state's university and Yale and worked for a number of papers before becoming owner of the St. Petersburg Times in 1938. As University of Florida journalism professor Pierce shows, Poynter blended principles and pragmatism to become a tough idealist. A liberal, he retained his usually Democratic political loyalties in the midst of ultraconservative St. Petersburg. As a newspaper owner, he was an innovator, introducing departmentalization in areas like business, religion and zoned editions. He practiced his credo that participation in the media is a trust and privilege with obligations, and under him the Times won Pulitzer Prizes in 1964 and 1967. Although padded with excessive information about tangential individuals, this biography does justice to a significant contributor to 20th-century journalism. Photos. (Dec.)