Do you have Tampa Bay spirit?

The Tampa Bay Partnership seeks people with Tampa Bay pride.

The partnership, a regional economic development organization, launched Together, Tampa Bay Shines Oct. 4. The idea, partnership spokeswoman Betty Carlin says, is to provide a positive voice to counter what some leaders consider a negative wave of news that has emitted out of the Tampa area.

“It's not intended as a marketing campaign to put a Pollyanna spin on what our region is facing,” Carlin tells Coffee Talk. “But a lot of our leaders were concerned that people were only hearing about the negative news.”

The program includes an interactive Facebook page, and will soon have its own website, www.tampabayshines.com. The goal is to have people, both in the business community and beyond, post their Tampa passions, from videos to factoids to where they eat their favorite sandwiches. Says Carlin: “We want to re-energize folks and give them a reason to celebrate the region.”

There wasn't a specific news story that led to Tampa Bay Shines, which is essentially a broader continuation of a campaign the partnership ran from 2003 to 2008, Carlin says. Still, the region took a beating in some local publications earlier this year when a Brookings Institute report ranked the city poorly in several nationwide recession recovery surveys.