Prophet motive:
The real war over St. Stanislaus is about dollars, not doctrine
by Don Corrigan
The story of the excommunication of the church board and pastor of St. Stanislaus Catholic Church, just before Christmas Eve, was covered nationally on radio, television and in daily newspapers.
The "nation's newspaper," USA Today, told the story of St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke's actions against the parish, as did the conservative Wall Street Journal. The financial daily noted that Burke handed out "religion's most extreme punishment, akin to spiritual ostracism."
WSJ observed that the St. Louis Archdiocese has spent more than $9 million in sex abuse case claims and legal costs.
It noted that parishioners across the country, not unlike those of St. Stanislaus, are fighting to prevent dioceses from "tapping parish properties as a source of cash. At stake are real estate, bank accounts and religious artwork valued at millions of dollars."
At stake in the St. Stanislaus case are a landmark church and its property that have been valued at more than $9 million with another $2 million in trust funds, stocks and bonds that have been managed by the parish board.
The battle between Burke and St. Stanislaus, located at 1413 N. 20th St. in St. Louis, stems from an old agreement that gave the Polish church control of parish property. Burke wants that understanding scrapped and the property and funds ceded to the St. Louis Archdiocese.
Retaliating against St. Stanislaus' refusal to comply with his demands, Burke permanently removed the church's priest in July 2005. The board responded by arranging for the services of a new priest, the Rev. Marek Bozek.
Burke made the excommunication of the board and Bozek in the Archdiocese Catholic weekly, The Review, Dec. 16. In a lengthy explanation, he said the board and its new pastor had created a schism, "a premeditated and most grave act of disobedience to the authority of the Roman Pontiff and bishops in communion with them."
Ironically, numbers attending the celebration of Christmas services by Bozek equaled or exceeded those attending services officiated by Archbishop Burke himself.
Roger Krasnicki of Sappington, a legal consultant to St. Stanislaus and a longtime church member, said that the church received more than 800 calls of support from area Catholics, many who showed up for the services. The Polish church parish itself has about 450 members.
Large Christmas and New Year's crowds showed up, despite Burke's warning that the "faithful who approach a schismatic priest for the reception of sacraments, except in the case of danger of death, commit a mortal sin."
Responding to Burke
Richard Bach of Crestwood, the spokesperson for the Concerned Parishioners of St. Stanislaus Kostka, said parishioners are upset at local news media reports that make them appear as "rebellious" or "evil." Bach called the actions against the church an "atrocity" against the parishioners of St. Stanislaus.
"The Archbishop of St. Louis, Raymond Burke, has embarrassed every Roman Catholic in the world by his actions," Bach said. "He has issued, through the media and a press release, public excommunication of the St. Stanislaus 6 (Board of Directors) and Rev. Mark Bozek.
"In addition to this atrocity to the Roman Catholic Faith, Archbishop Burke continues to perpetuate lies through the Archdiocese newspaper, The Review," Bach said.
Bach and St. Stanislaus officials have used the Internet and e-mail to make the local press aware of Burke's charges against them, and their responses to charges of schism leveled by Burke in The Review. A small sampling of such give-and-take:
Burke: "Those who commit the ecclesiastical crime of schism incur automatically the penalty of excommunication."
Bach: "Let us here remember Copernicus, Galileo, Joan of Arc, Padre Pio, as well as others that were in this situation because the local ordinary discovered he was not Christ. May I also mention that Hitler was not excommunicated even though he was Catholic and was violating doctrine!"
Burke: "Faithful who approach a schismatic priest for the reception of the sacraments, except in the case of danger of death, commit a mortal sin. All of the faithful of the archdiocese should guard against any participation in the attempt to celebrate the sacraments or sacramental at St. Stanislaus Kostka Church. Also, they should caution visitors and others who are unaware of the status of St. Stanislaus Kostka Parish …"
Bach: "All this would be pertinent if the suspension and the excommunication would have been for sexual abuse of children, murder or some other crime against God. Archbishop Burke suspended Rev. Bozek (indirectly) for his desire to intervene in the matter of St. Stanislaus Kostka. Archbishop Burke then excommunicated the board of directors and Rev. Bozek for providing for the parishioner's souls."
Burke: "Finally, since the civil legal control of St. Stanislaus Kostka Parish belongs exclusively to the members of the board of directors of the civil corporation and they have chosen to lead the members of the parish into schism, I will be obliged to suppress St. Stanislaus Kostka Parish. It is not possible for St. Stanislaus Kostka Parish to remain a parish of the Archdiocese of St. Louis and, at the same time, to operate completely independently of the Apostolic See and the Archdiocese of St. Louis."
Bach: "The parishioners made their decisions by vote. No one twisted or coerced them. They have told the board that they want to go in this direction. The 'Parish' is the group of individuals that form St. Stanislaus Kostka. They will not go away, nor agree to the closure of the parish."
Bach blamed the impasse between Burke and St. Stanislaus on the Archbishop's refusal to commit to keeping the church open if it is ceded to the Archdiocese. He said Burke has a track record of closing churches and selling church real estate.
Defending Burke
With all of the unflattering news media coverage of the St. Stanislaus controversy, a new St. Louis group called "Defenders of Archbishop Burke" has been formed. Also, a pro-Burke blog has been established, "Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam."
The new blog is described as a site dedicated to promoting and defending the Catholic faith, in union with Christ and his church and in union with the Holy Father, the Bishop of Rome, the successor of St. Peter.
Bach calls the new "Defenders of Archbishop Burke" a source for more division within the church, and "a hateful and hurtful personal attack upon the innocent parishioners of St. Stanislaus." He cited a proverb, "To persecute the unfortunate is like throwing stones on one fallen into a well."
Regarding the new Catholic blog, Bach said St. Stanislaus defenders will not hesitate to get involved in discussions on the blog, even at the risk of more schism talk and excommunication threats. Indeed, the to-and-fro on the Catholic blog is interesting, if below the radar screen for most St. Louis Catholics.
A sampling of the blog exchanges:
Pro-St. Stanislaus: "My elderly grandmother who lives in the Archdiocese, when asked what she thinks of the Archbishop, replied: 'Why, he's tyrannical.' She also expressed sorrow for the 'good people' of St. Stan's."
Pro-Burke: "Shame on your elderly grandmother. Your loyalties are misplaced. Please cease being stupid."
Pro-St. Stanislaus: "Pride … it's the sin of Archbishop Burke. Oh, let's not forget greed as well."
Pro-Burke: "It's obvious that you don't know the man … Do you not know that you are continually violating the Eighth Commandment? Do you think that your comments about Archbishop Burke are NOT offensive to God? Come in out of the darkness … Repent and seek forgiveness …"
Pro-St. Stanislaus: "I have met him (Burke) more than a few times. Please stop disrespecting the Lord, Mary and everyone else in our faith with your callous attempts at theatrics and drama for this stage. Make the faith mean something … (instead of) closing more churches and pushing more people away from Christ."
Pro-Burke: "It is truly unfortunate that 'tough love' and 'fraternal correction' are seen by you as hate … You should thank God you were not near St. Paul in the 1st Century … Why don't you go before the Blessed Sacrament for an hour or two, every day, and ask God to open your eyes and enlighten your mind? Ask him to help you reject that poison of schism and disobedience which you clutch so tightly in your arms."
Pro-St. Stanislaus: "Oh, I would have absolutely no problem with St. Paul or Christ himself. You, on the other hand, would have been with the Pharisees at all times, judging everyone according to man's laws … We continue to pray for Archbishop Burke … but the current hierarchy and homage that we are to pay to, it is not Christ's work, but the Devil's greed ... "
Where from here?
While layperson groups spar with each other over the St. Stanislaus controversy and the Catholic bloggers battle on "Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam," Roger Krasnicki of St. Stanislaus remains surprisingly upbeat. He said the parish looks for help from the Vatican.
"I am a member of the church, my mother and grandmother have been member of St. Stanislaus," said Krasnicki. "We lived in harmony with the Archdiocese for 120 years. We really didn't have trouble until this new Archbishop Burke came along.
"We are going to receive the sacraments from our new pastor," added Krasnicki. "This Archbishop is not going to tell us we're committing a mortal sin. It's just a gross misjudgment on his part to threaten us with mortal sin because we won't hand over the church to him."
Krasnicki said it is wrong to say the church separated from the Archdiocese in a schism. He said the Archdiocese broke with St. Stanislaus when it took away the parish priest.
"Archbishop Burke's action just closes one door and opens another," said Krasnicki. "We are filing an appeal on his actions to Rome. The seal on the excommunication has not been attached by the Vatican. By the Canon Law of the Catholic Church, that needs to happen for this to be final."
Priests, parishioners, papers criticize bishop of Belleville
By Don Corrigan
Not all the controversy in the Catholic Church is on the St. Louis side of the Mississippi River. On the east side of the river is Belleville, Ill., where Bishop Edward K. Braxton of the Belleville Diocese has been drawing negative ink ever since he took over for the charismatic Bishop Wilton Gregory.
Gregory left Belleville and was installed in the Atlanta Archdiocese in January 2005. Braxton was appointed as the bishop of Belleville's sprawling southern Illinois diocese on March 15 by Pope John Paul II, who was on his deathbed.
Braxton's authoritarian leadership style and lack of response to the concerns of priests and parishes have inspired letters of complaint to the Belleville News-Democrat, as well as articles hinting of rebellion by the priests in the Belleville Diocese.
The Belleville daily has reported on the ire of the laity, as they learn of Braxton's extravagant lifestyle and expenditures on his residence, at the same time that churches are being consolidated and the services of a dwindling number of priests are stretched among parishes.
A group of priests has convened recently, including a meeting in early February, to share concerns about management of the Belleville Diocese. A statement signed by 24 of the 72 active priests protested an arrogant leadership style, a lack of communication and decisions made without consultation.
The priests aren't the only ones who Braxton is ignoring. A lengthy article in the Jan. 13 National Catholic Reporter on the crisis in the Belleville Diocese noted that neither Braxton, nor the vicar general, Jack McEvilly, were returning calls.
An editorial accompanied the critical article in the National Catholic Reporter, which noted the silence of the Diocese hierarchy, while lauding the priests for their efforts at addressing local church problems.
The National Catholic Reporter declared in its editorial: "Since Bishop (Edward) Kenneth Braxton has been unavailable for comment on the issues and seems largely unavailable to his priests, there is little to go on but the word of those who have become so public in protesting what they say is the bishop's imperial style of leadership ...
"These are not irresponsible priests. We believe they would not engage in frivolous complaints. Several monsignors have gone on the record to talk about conditions in the diocese. If the steady stream of communication we receive is any indication, the situation in Belleville is not unlike that in many other dioceses where priests feel as if they have no voice, no access and little to say about their role as ministers or administrators."
Cable's menu isn't always appealing
By Don Corrigan
Cable TV companies across the country consistently brag about their 500 channels of program fare, while most subscribers wish they could reduce the options to the several dozen channels they might actually watch.
Is it really necessary to have all those jewelry auction, televangelist and hip-hop music channels that are a major part of our cable TV fare?
Who actually signed us up for this massive wasteland of screened nonsense that we must surf by to get to the sports and news channels that we actually care about?
"I think we use no more than 20 cable channels at my house," said Mayor Jim Hobbs of Sunset Hills, a suburb southwest of St. Louis. "We watch the news channels, the sports channels and the History Channel. The kids are all grown and gone, so a lot of stuff is just not watched.
"I would like to see the cable company offer some choice-a selection of what is actually used," Hobbs said. "I would like to see the economics of that discussed at our city's next cable franchise renewal meeting."
FCC (Federal Communications Commission) Chairman Kevin Martin would like to come to the rescue on this cable conundrum. Martin said late last year that he thinks cable companies should stop forcing people to subscribe to bunches of channels. Instead, Martin thinks the industry should give cable consumers á la carte options.
Martin, FCC chairman since last spring, contends that á la carte pricing could lower surging cable bills. Martin also believes á la carte would allow parents much more control over programming they find offensive for younger viewers.
In a recent Senate forum on the issue of indecency and television media, Martin cited a new FCC report that "concludes that purchasing cable programming in a more á la carte manner, in fact, could be economically feasible and in consumers' best interests."
The "á la carte ideas" Martin has cooked up at the FCC have cable TV officials steaming, including some based at the regional headquarters of Charter Communications in Des Peres. Charter is the major player in cable television in the bi-state region.
Charter cable responds
"In terms of á la carte, this has really all bubbled up because of concerns about children viewing objectionable material on cable," said Dave Andersen, vice president for communications for Charter. "It is our contention that the tools are already in place to protect young people, whether it's a V-chip or a setting on the digital set-top box. Consumers already have a choice on this."
Andersen said the cable company is looking at new bundles of channels to sell as a package, such as a family package. Andersen argued that á la carte channel subscriptions would be more costly in the long run because of the technology and bureaucracy required.
Both programmers and advertisers would have major objections to an á la carte system, with the result that it would actually drive up consumer costs if put in place, according to Andersen.
"It's like a restaurant offering a cheap All-American breakfast," Andersen said. "You can actually get the full breakfast cheap and choose to eat what you want. Whereas, if you have everybody selecting this and that, it gets to the point that people have to pay more for less."
Sharifah Williams, public relations manager for the local Charter office, said programmers want as much access to audience as possible, and will lower costs accordingly. She said narrowing the potential audience with á la carte selection can only drive costs up, which would be passed along in subscription fees.
David Honig, executive director of Washington, D.C.'s Minority Media and Telecommunications Council, argues that "á la carte" would diminish our intellectual and cultural life delivered via cable.
Honig argues that under á la carte, new channels featuring gospel music, international culture or African-American movies would never get off the ground. Without the daily exposure that comes with channel surfing, it would take such new channels decades to attract the millions of loyal viewers they'd need to recoup the costs of producing high-quality programming for a national audience.
Washington, D.C., issue
A 2004 FCC study indicated that the average cable household watches 17 channels when 88 are available. Under a proposed á la carte system, households would have to subscribe to a basic tier that includes regular broadcast. Beyond that, they could reject controversial channels such as MTV or Comedy Central and pay only for the channels that they want.
The FCC could push Congress to take action on an á la carte initiative this session. The initiative could draw Capitol Hill attention as Congress debates new legislation involving indecency and the media. "This is pretty much a Washington matter to my knowledge," Andersen said. "We are not hearing much about it at the local level. We have franchise renewal agreements with every community that we serve. Those renewals come frequently and regularly."
In the St. Louis area, most city council and board meetings have not attracted large numbers of consumers when cable franchise renewals have been on the agenda. At most, the meetings have attracted a scattering of complaints about installation or cable repair service problems or subscription fee hikes. Area mayors contacted for this story said they would like the á la carte cable subscription idea to be on the city meeting agenda next time the cable franchise agreement is up for renewal.
Kirkwood Mayor Mike Swoboda said á la carte is "an idea whose time has come." He said if cable companies have the technology to offer so many channels, they ought to also have the technology to permit catering to individual household needs.
"The next time we are at cable franchise renewal, all the options should be on the table," Swoboda said. "There needs to be much more of a conversation going on between the consumers and the provider. I hope the council chamber is packed full when this comes up for discussion again."
Bert Gates, mayor of Shrewsbury, which borders the city of St. Louis, agreed with other mayors that an á la carte cable channel subscription program would best serve customers.
"I do think it would give our citizens a better selection system for what they want to pay for," Gates said. "Our franchise agreement doesn't come before the city until 2008, but we talk to the Charter representative periodically. I think this option should be on the table."
Don Corrigan is a professor in the School of Communications at Webster University and also edits three weekly newspapers.
Commentary:
Gossip about celebrities isn't journalism
by Joe Pollack
The wide net of celebrity watching, which catches all fish in its wake, even has extended to The New York Times. The "new" St. Louis Post-Dispatch built a home in that pit some years ago. Both newspapers are busily making absurd, overblown efforts to be mod, to be hip, to be youth-oriented, not quite to the level of wearing bling, but sometimes coming close.
If giant corporate ownerships were not so interested in huge returns (20 percent and up) on their investments, they'd take less profit and eventually make more money because they could do what they do best-put clear, precise, well-written words on paper and throw it on a doorstep with some semblance of accuracy.
Instead, they focus on celebrities and gossip.
Celebrities are famous, one thinks, because they are written about in gossip columns and talked about on the Internet. They are people with little skill or talent. They are often, though not exclusively, women. They don't work, because being on television or in movies, or going to parties, is not working.
They tend toward a large amount of physical beauty and, in the case of women, usually show a great deal of cleavage. They tend to be rich, usually by receiving large amounts of money because of the death of someone near and dear, or a divorce from someone nearer and dearer, or a major-league trust fund.
Some of them have press agents, others crash parties and hang out in bars or go to parties where press agents invite celebrities, therefore extending the cult to at least one more round.
They love to be talked about on television, or in blogs, and their ever-growing urge for ever-growing space and time in the media spotlight is causing some media organizations to get so wrapped up in what is noisy that they forget about what is newsy.
Even The Times seemed as excited about Ana Marie Cox as if she were important, or a good writer, or both. Her recent novel (her first novel, by the way) earned review space in both the daily Times, where Janet Maslin hated it, and in the Sunday Book Review, where Christopher Buckley called it "brisk, smart, smutty, knowing and very well written." High praise, some might reason.
She even was considered important enough to rate a feature story that started on page 1A and, just to complete her total conquest of The Times, she may have written an op-ed piece for the newspaper. At least it had her name on it, so one probably can give her credit for authorship. For good measure, she also had a byline on a book review a few weeks later.
The Post's Harry Levins reviewed her book and wrote, "The jargon, the cliques, the gossip, the in-group focus, even the sex-it all sounds like high school at its worst," and in case of any confusion, he added, "Leave 'Dog Days' on the shelf. Next to the Clearasil."
Cox used to run a gossipy Washington blog called Wonkette, and along the way, in what passes as a scoop in the world of celebrity journalism, she exposed Jessica Cutler, a member of a Sen. Mike Wine's staff, as the author of Washingtonienne, a provocative online diary of a senatorial staff member, complete with fashion details, dirt and reports on liaisons of various types. Now that she has written a book, she'll probably be seen with Jay Leno, David Letterman, Matt Lauer and Katie Couric and other television hosts and hostesses, possibly including Mizzou's own Elizabeth Vargas, now an ABC anchor.
The Times even has instituted a gossip column that runs daily, and it's usually fun. The writer-or writers-don't consider himself or herself important, or take the entire business of celebrities very seriously. The Post, on the other hand, approaches gossip with panting desire, like that shown by Odie the dog in "Garfield" comics.
And in typical examples of sloppy editing, misspelling and dumb mistakes (it's not necessary to get started on those), the Post often runs the same gossip notes several times, sometimes the same day, sometimes on successive days, perhaps to see if we're really reading.
Sadly, we true newspaper junkies still are. Any gossip, or "personality" piece that runs on page 2A and is associated with sports usually appears in one of the gee-Mom-look-how-funny-I-am columns on page 2 of the sports section. If it's associated with entertainment, look for it in the Everyday section. It appears that the Post wants us to realize the editors don't miss very much. Or maybe editors don't read any section but their own. Or maybe they just don't read the newspaper.
The sports department is similarly guilty. Post-game quotes by athletes are re-hashed and repeated for several days, sometimes in feature stories longer than game stories. The Ben Roethlisberger-Jerome Bettis conversation of a year ago, complete with tears and what seemed like deathbed promises, got extended repetition after the Steelers throttled the Broncos for the AFC championship.
And the quotes, of course, are provided to all media, a fact that was a bone of contention in some of my dealings with the NFL, when I was the PR director for the Big Red. Back in the late 1960s, as the league expanded and its media relations evolved to a higher form of life, the concept of the home team sending a minion, or an intern, to the locker room to gather post-game quotes from players and coaches was gaining favor, loudly supported by writers who were able to skip the difficult, sweaty, time-consuming duty of traveling from press box to locker room and back.
I resisted loudly, not because minions were unavailable, but because I felt strongly (and still do) that going to the locker room and talking to athletes were part of the writer's job. On larger papers, several staffers covered a game, one to think about it, analyze it and write about it, the others to get in the face of players in sweaty jockstraps and collect quotes, usually meaningless ones, as exemplified in the suggestions offered by Kevin Costner to Tim Robbins in "Bull Durham."
As a matter of fact, we called the locker-room duty "jockstrapping."
I wonder what they call it at parties and along the press-corps ghetto known as "the red carpet."
Joe Pollack is a former St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist.
Review:
A pot of gold: Joseph Pulitzer, Jr. and the Post-Dispatch
by Roy Malone
A biography of Joseph Pulitzer, Jr.-the third in a family line to run the St. Louis Post-Dispatch-portrays him as unflagging in his mission to continue the family's liberal journalistic tradition until his death in 1993.
It also tells how the three Pulitzers' lack of closeness to their sons affected the newspaper dynasty even up to the sale of the 127-year-old company last year.
The book, titled "No Ordinary Joe," was written by Daniel W. Pfaff, an emeritus journalism professor at Penn State University. He previously wrote a biography of Joseph Pulitzer II, who died in 1955.
The book is a tribute to JPJr., or Joe (sometimes referred to as JPIII). It sheds light on the personal side of the man many considered to be a rich, liberal, stuffed-shirt snob. During his 38-year tenure, the Post survived competition from the St. Louis Globe-Democrat and declining circulation and advertising. There was also a nasty family fight that threatened a hostile takeover of the company.
In Pfaff's view, Joe's main concerns were that the Post remain independent, live up to the journalistic tenets in the 1907 platform statement by the founder, Joseph Pulitzer I, and that the paper not go under on his watch.
"I was not trained by my father to liquidate this company," Joe said during the dispute in 1986 when family members demanded more money from their shares. "I will not trade my heritage for a pot of gold."
He was among a dying breed of strong-willed leaders of St. Louis-based companies. Others in his generation were August Busch, Jr. and James McDonnell.
Joe and his second wife, Emily, authorized the biography just before he died. Pfaff said he was grateful to her for opening Joe's papers to him. This indebtedness might explain why Pfaff went so easy on Emily when many have criticized her for her role in selling the company, contrary to Joe's wishes. When Joe died he left her his 43 percent majority of the voting stock. Emily got more than $400 million for it at the sale.
Most of the book was written before the sale was announced a year ago. The buyer was Lee Enterprises, a chain of small newspapers headquartered in Davenport, Iowa. The sale price was a whopping $1.46 billion for Pulitzer Inc.'s 14 daily newspapers, 65 weekly newspapers, shoppers and other niche publications.
Pfaff added a lengthy epilogue to cover the sale, but the ending became ironic. The book is a tale of Joe's successful efforts in trying to save the Pulitzer tradition of independence, but then, it's gone.
We are left to surmise that Emily, a former museum curator, was more interested in her newly built museum than in the newspaper (she took little active part). Fair enough. Joe's money is her money now, and before his death they had planned the museum. But, what about his heritage, which he surely had entrusted to her?
Emily, Joe's half-brother Michael, who was chairman, and a Pulitzer cousin, David Moore, controlled the voting stock. They said the reason for the sale was because there were no Pulitzers available in the next generation to take over the company.
The once heir apparent
With the dynasty ended, one wonders why Joe's son, Joseph Pulitzer IV, known as Jay, didn't ascend to the corner office. He worked at the paper for 19 years but left two years after his dad died. He moved to Wyoming, was paid as a consultant for 10 years and was out of the will when it came to his dad's stock.
Pfaff devotes two chapters to Jay, a Harvard grad, and makes it clear that he was given ample opportunity to succeed at the paper but his progress had "stalled." He was described as friendly but naïve. He dressed poorly, had a drinking problem, was called stubborn by superiors and thought he had a birthright to run the company. He was promoted to vice president for administration, but was not considered reliable or having leadership ability.
The Pulitzers liked to talk about the "thread of continuity" in their journalism. It dated to 1878 when the first Joseph Pulitzer started the Post. He went in for sensationalism and exposing corruption. He also cared about the downtrodden. He became owner of the New York World and became a giant in journalism-yellow journalism-and super wealthy. He established the Columbia University School of Journalism and the Pulitzer Prizes.
Pulitzer installed sons Ralph and Herbert at the World, which foundered and was sold in 1931. He thought less of his oldest son, Joseph II, and banished him to the St. Louis paper for training and where he would cause less harm. He also cut Joseph II's share of dividends from his newspapers from 60 to 10 percent.
After his father's death in 1911, Joseph II built the Post into one of the country's most respected newspapers, with reasoned discourse, crusades and no sensationalism. The paper won five Pulitzer prizes for news reporting in a 15-year period under JPII, but none since.
Joe was born in 1913 and had all the benefits of wealth-prep school, summer vacations at the family estate in Maine, Harvard, money to buy anything. He later described his youth as "fun but empty." His mother died in a car accident when he was 11 and he felt her loss deeply, Pfaff writes. His father, an avid hunter, wrote to a camp counselor that Joe "has many effeminate mannerisms … and needs to be roughened up." JPII urged Joe to take up manly pursuits such as football and boxing, but to no avail. Joe developed an appreciation for the artistic and in his senior year at Harvard was buying paintings. After a few years he had six Picassos.
Joe was 17 when his half-brother Michael was born. Michael recalled that his dad "never did anything that other fathers did" and they were distant.
"My memory of him is very hazy, an autocrat and a very powerful man who was always behind closed doors," Michael said. "Ed Dwyer really raised me."
Dwyer was the family chauffeur and caretaker who would take Michael to the movies and other places. "Wealthy families did not have much contact with their children," Michael said.
JPII didn't care for Joe's art collecting and questioned his desire to enter the newspaper business, telling him he'd need to have a tough hide. Joe, years later, said he felt obligated to carry out "the third generation thing." He apprenticed at reporting and then served in Naval Intelligence during World War II.
Joe considered a career in the art world, such as museum director, but returned to the paper after the war. He admired his dad, but also had a fear of displeasing him, Pfaff reports. The paper was among the top four in the nation and a 10 percent annual profit was considered appropriate. Joe worked all departments in preparation for taking over. JPII died in 1955 but a memorandum showed he was considering looking outside the paper for an editor because he "was concerned as to whether Joe was competent to carry on."
Joe takes over
Joe did carry on, making sure the paper took a thoughtful, informed and forward-looking approach to matters of the day. He started an arts section, was against the Vietnam War and took liberal stances on race relations and women's issues (although the Post was slow in hiring women reporters). Joe avoided joining civic or social groups so as to avoid conflicts of interest. This contributed to his image among his detractors as being a shy, effete intellectual who ran the "commie rag" newspaper.
In financial or personal matters he often preferred keeping things secret, such as when the Post entered into a Joint Operating Agreement with the Globe in 1959, after the Newhouse chain bought it. In 1983, when the Globe had overtaken the Post in daily circulation, Newhouse shut it down in return for sharing profits and losses with the Post. In the meantime, the Pulitzer company was buying up television stations to help boost profits.
In 1986, Pulitzer heirs, including Joe's own sister Kate Davis Quesada, demanded more return on their shares. Joe misjudged the situation and resisted the heirs, causing them to find an outside suitor willing to try a hostile takeover. The matter was reconciled but resulted in the company having to go to public ownership to pay the heirs. That meant satisfying stockholder demands for higher profits.
Michael Pulitzer had been sent by Joe to run the Pulitzer-owned Arizona Daily Star in Tucson. Joe didn't want him interfering at the Post.
"There can only be one editor of a newspaper," Michael said Joe once told him.
Pfaff disclosed that Joe had admonished Michael about his drinking problem, which was severe enough to cause Michael to seek treatment.
As Joe's son, Jay, was growing up, he had no close bond with his father. He was an only child and was raised mainly by a nanny. When she was let go, he was so unhappy his parents had to hire her back. He recalls his father shaving and wanting to know about his homework: "I'd be interrogated while he was shaving."
His mother died when he was 18 and a freshman at Harvard. He would say later: "My life would have been completely different if she had lived."
Jay was rebellious and independent. At 21 he was married and a father.
Jay thought he didn't want to become the fourth Pulitzer to run the company, but changed his mind. After a reporting apprenticeship at a paper in Oregon, he joined the Post. He was groomed for leadership by Joe's executives, but never made it.
"I don't think either one of us wanted to work closely together," Jay said of his relationship with his dad.
Joe remarried in 1973; he was 60 and Emily 39. In private gatherings he was an old-world dilettante who was charming and witty. His staffers saw little of him, but thought of him as paternalistic.
"As long as this paper is making money, we're going to favor unions," he said.
Joe tried to hire an outsider as editor but was not successful. He gave up the title of editor and publisher in 1986, naming Nick Penniman as publisher and Bill Woo, as editor. Woo had been editorial page editor and staffers said Joe always treated him as a son. Joe became chairman. Two years later, Michael became chief executive of the company.
Joe died of cancer in 1993. In a eulogy, Woo said he gave us "a worthy goal, a mission so dignified and so encompassing and so lofty that not one of us could ever say it was done."
The St. Louis American, a black-owned paper, said Joe was often the target of bitter and unwarranted criticism, but stayed with his convictions.
It added: "Mr. Pulitzer, a liberal aristocrat, helped enrich and improve the quality of life for many. He then helped moderate some of the harsh excesses that were heaped on the less privileged and less powerful."
Stormy times after Joe
Michael became chairman and it took him several years to weed out Joe's people in management, including Penniman and Woo. He hired a consulting firm to help executives figure out ways to change the company. This included having several of them sit on the floor of a hotel room and play with Legos to help them "refine their skills in areas such as problem-solving … and thinking unconventionally."
The changes wreaked havoc in the newsroom, with editors being hired and then fired. One was Michael's hire, Cole Campbell, who restructured the news staff and preached "public journalism," a half-baked idea about how journalists should become part of a community's decision-making process rather than be watchdogs. Michael defended it, saying, "The Post platform is a platform for public journalism."
In 1999 Robert Woodworth was hired as president of the company and he set about selling the television stations, buying the chain of Journal newspapers, paying off Newhouse to get out of the partnership and increasing profits. It was all a prelude to getting the company in shape for a sale.
Executives who had worked under Joe said he would never have approved the sale of the paper. Woo said: "It was his birthright. Selling it for a mess of pottage? It would have killed him."
Pfaff concluded, "There was no pressing need for Pulitzer to be sold in 2005 … the company as a whole was financially sound. It earned $106 million in 2003, a profit of nearly 25 percent."
Mario Gabelli, who controlled 40 percent of Pulitzer's non-voting stock, said it is so costly for a small company to be publicly owned that it is likely to sell out.
"You either have to grow or take your company private again," he said.
Roy Malone, a long-time reporter, is retired from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Early Edition:
Follow the money
by Ed Bishop
Twenty-seven news stories appeared in the front section of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Sunday, Feb. 5. Two of the stories carried the bylines of Post reporters. The rest came from wire services-AP, Knight Ridder, The New York Times and so on. This isn't unusual. Most Sundays the front section of the Post is filled with wire-service stories.
Nobody at the Post, not a single person, can vouch for the content of these wire-service reports. There's no fact checking, no follow-up calls. No one at the Post talked to any of the sources in these articles. The stories were just clipped and pasted into the newspaper.
In other words, each Sunday (the day with the highest circulation) the front section of the Post (where tens of thousands of people get much of their national and international news) is nothing more than a reprint of the work of other publications and wire services. Post employees cannot personally attest to the veracity of any of the information in these stories.
Still, most of these wire services have excellent reputations. The Associated Press, for example, is known for being factual and fair. It rarely screws up. And many newspapers depend on wire services.
But not that long ago, the Post was forced to apologize for carrying New York Times pieces that were not only wrong but virtual propaganda. During the run-up to the American invasion of Iraq, The Times ran story after story with supposedly unimpeachable off-the-record sources who asserted that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and that Iraq had ties to Al Qaeda. The Post clipped those stories and ran them as if they were true. Later, it was discovered that Judith Miller, the Times reporter who wrote most of the articles, was simply passing along information from people inside the Bush White House. She was eventually forced to resign.
I'm not blaming the Post for creating the smoke and mirrors that led many Americans to believe the invasion of Iraq was justified. I'm just pointing out that the Post prints a lot of stuff it can't vouch for.
So imagine my surprise when I received the letters to the editor from Post reporters that you can read on page 5. In the letters, former Guild President Tim O'Neil and reporters Bill Smith and Todd Frankel, along with Post retiree E. F. Porter, accused SJR contributor Roy Malone of using too many off-the-record sources, and of simply passing along barstool grousing, in his December article about Arnie Robbins, the new Post editor. Porter added that I had done such a poor job of editing Malone's piece that I needed replacing. None of the writers pointed out any factual errors in Malone's story.
The letters seemed surreal to me. The men who wrote them work (or worked) for a newspaper that routinely publishes stories of national importance that the Post can't directly account for. At least Malone talked to his sources, all of whom were known to him personally.
But I'm not saying the letter writers didn't make some good points, nor am I saying that they aren't sincere and professional journalists. Nor do I mean to imply that the letter writers have any direct responsibility for the Post's use of wire-service stories.
What I am saying is that I'd like to see Guild members fight as hard for the reputation of a fellow reporter, Carolyn Tuft, as they do for the reputation of their boss-who, I might add, does bear direct responsibility for reprinting hundreds and hundreds of news articles he can't vouch for.
With such a rush by some Post employees to defend their boss, I'm not surprised other reporters and retirees want to go off the record when they talk about the inner workings of the Post newsroom and the people who populate it.
Letters:
Not over beers
SJR:
Roy Malone's article in your December/January issue ("Arnie Robbins takes the helm in stormy times") does not live up to the standards of good journalism. Mr. Malone may hold whatever opinion he chooses of Mr. Robbins or the newspaper's decision to promote him to editor. Our objection is to the way in which he justifies his thesis by weaving his article around seven quotations or paraphrased comments, all of them negatives in nature and all from unidentified current or former St. Louis Post-Dispatch employees.
Comments like those may be acceptable while grousing over beers at the Missouri Grill, but they do not serve as the foundation for a profile piece. A reporter may hear many such comments in the course of research, but still has a duty to persuade the speakers to go on the record, or, failing that, to corroborate opinions with examples and facts. It does not appear Mr. Malone did either.
Bill Smith,
Tim O'Neil,
Todd Frankel
Lesson in news
SJR:
In accordance with the hallowed doctrine that everyone, even an editor, needs an editor, I herewith respectfully submit that SJR could use another editor, perhaps several. SJR serves a much too useful purpose in this community to allow itself to be blemished by the kind of omissions and solecisms that often creep in.
Let me offer some examples.
In Roy Malone's fascinating account in your most recent issue of the regime change at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch newsroom, we get some cheerful generalities from Arnie Robbins, the new editor, but nothing substantive about his views of what is news-if he has any. Did Roy ask him? What was Robbins' response? Can we look forward to more front-page articles on such earth-shaking issues as the heartbreak of underarm wetness, or can we hope for something more like the first draft of history?
Nor, apparently, did Roy cross-examine Robbins on the Carolyn Tuft matter. Has Robbins enough experience in the business to know that de minimus errors, regrettable as they are, are endemic to newspaper reporting-which is why newspapers run corrections? Does Robbins realize that if a reporter were suspended for every wee mistake, there wouldn't be enough of them left in the city room to put out the paper? Is he man enough to admit that the Post simply allowed itself to be browbeaten by Joyce Meyer's lawyers, and disgraced in the eyes of the staff and many of its readers?
Now Roy is a tough reporter-I know him pretty well-and I'm sure he's not afraid to ask such questions. Robbins' responses, even his evasions, would have been instructive.
My other complaints-of a more technical nature-relate to the large number of anonymous attributions if Roy's article. I counted eight of them.
One: Who was the editor who told Roy that Robbins is without much conviction?
Two: Who was the shrewd pussycat who noted that Robbins' ability to please both Cole Campbell and Ellen Soeteber evinces a great amount of cunning? (Of course, Robbins' cunning may been directed mainly to pleasing Terry Egger, and evidently with some success. It is not uncommon among executives in Egger's position to want genial but empty-headed sycophants as their lieutenants.)
Three: Which retiree suggested that Lee Enterprises would put the Post on iron rations in order to retire its debt?
Four: Who was the quick wit who noted that taking the Pulitzer Publishing Co. public both saved it and killed it? (Actually, one could argue, the onset of the terminal illness of the Post was coincident with the death of the second Joseph Pulitzer way back in the mid-1950s. When I came to work there a few years later, a well-developed nose-which mine was not-could pick up the stink of death. While the third Joe's heart was usually in the right place, neither his head nor stomach was suited for the rough-and-tumble of newspapering. His principal preoccupation was contemporary art and unlike, say, Katie Graham, he never seemed to understand the need to hire a well-educated ruffian to run the paper for him.)
Five: Who was the writer who was denied the right to withhold his or her byline-an unqualified, explicit, precious and unequivocal right under the union contract to which the company has put its hand and seal? Soeteber must be a perfect imbecile to try a stunt like that. I've never met the lady, but she sounds, from all I've heard and read, irrational, excitable, impetuous and despotic, like the Queen of Hearts, crying, "Guards, seize them! Off with their heads!"
Six: Who was the staffer who was charged with lese majesté for making a suggestion to Mary Junck?
Seven: Who said "Ellen terrorizes people?"
Eight: Who was willing to grant that Robbins may surprise us?
Now, there are often good and sufficient reasons for masking the identity of a source. But it should be an iron rule of journalism that when one does so, one not only provides the readers the qualifications of the source, (which Roy, in most cases, did) but gives the reason for the source's anonymity. We all know the boilerplate language: "who asked that her name be disclosed" or "spoke on the condition of anonymity" and so forth.
But that boilerplate doesn't go far enough. The reader deserves to know why the source wants to keep his or her identity a mystery. Is it fear of retaliations by an employer, or simply-as is often the case-not wanting to be known as a whiner or a sorehead? Whatever the reason, it is only good reporting to let the reader know.
I wonder, furthermore, if anonymity was really necessary, or even asked for, in every instance cited supra? Does a retiree, presumably beyond the reach of the terrible swift sword of retribution, really care whether his or her name is used? And the identity of the person who pulled his or her byline is by now on the border of being a matter of public record, so why be coy about it?
Stanley Walker, city editor of the old New York Herald-Tribune in the 1920s and author of a book on the craft of newspapering-that is as fresh and useful today as when it was published in 1934-had a rule that deserves to be burned into the brain of every reporter and editor: "Leave no reasonable question unanswered."
A codicil to which could be, "If that reasonable question cannot be answered by deadline, explain why." Here again we have boilerplate language: "It could not be immediately determined …" or "Senator Gaspain could not be reached for comment."
The phrases are clichés, to be sure, and further enfeebled by their passive voice, but they impart a modicum of information and accordingly are preferable to leaving the reader bewildered.
There is a principle underlying what I've tried to set forth here, which is that one has a solemn obligation to be considerate of one's readers.
They are, after all, our masters.
Let me close with a confession: Every one of the sins of which I have accused poor Roy I have committed at one time or another myself. And more often than not, owing to the inattention, ignorance or sloth of my editors, they have found their way into print. Which is why I suggest SJR needs more editors.
E.F. Porter
Money, money
SJR:
Holding my breath while reading Barrett Bergfeld's "By any other name: Intelligent Design and evolution" (December 2005/January 2006), I was waiting for a punch line that never came. The same goes double for Daniel Hellinger's "Left out: How conservatives are trying to control speech on college campuses." Neither piece got to the bottom of it. Paraphrasing the now classic tagline from Bill Clinton's presidential election campaign, "It's the money, stupid!"
As far as Intelligent Design goes, the Discovery Institute (home to anti-Darwin and anti-evolution "scholars") has pumped about $3.6 million in fellowships of $5,000 to $60,000 per year into 50 researchers since its "science" center was founded in 1996. The backers are from the same conservative group that funds David Horowitz's Center for the Study of Popular Culture (CPSC), now trying to legislate speech on "liberal" college campuses.
Horowitz had roped rich conservative foundations into giving him multi-million dollar grants for fighting what he calls "liberalism." Most of CPSC's money comes from the Olin Foundation ($1,935,000), Bradley Foundation ($10,550,500) and the Sarah Scaife Foundation ($3,950,000). This is according to Media Transparency, reporting that Horowitz already received $18,925,500 from these and similarly minded organizations. One of Horowitz's grants reportedly provides him with an annual salary of $179,913 plus $11,838 in benefits for furthering the agenda.
Meanwhile, the Discovery Institute finances a "broadly theistic understanding of nature." They've targeted public schools for insertion of Intelligent Design to leverage their backers' aim to nudge America towards a theocratic state. It complements the aims spearheaded by Horowitz on behalf of Scaife, Olin, Bradley, et al.
Not satisfied with owning the three branches of the U.S. government, rich conservatives are expanding into America's public school and college classrooms. It is Horowitz's job to spearhead efforts for penetrating "liberal" colleges. If both the monied Discovery Institute and also Center for the Study of Popular Culture get their way then the demise of Thomas Jefferson's liberal American democracy will accelerate and be replaced by classical tyranny.
Frederick Sweet
Politics & Media:
A word's worth
by Terry Jones
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote, "Though the mills of God grind slowly … with exactness grinds he all." So too with scholarly milling. Though the 2004 elections are 15 months in the rearview mirror, the thorough analyses are just now appearing.
Several excellent contributions by a mix of political scientists and non-academic survey researchers are in a special issue of Public Opinion Quarterly published last month. Here are some of the key findings.
Voter turnout spiked in 2004, rising from 105.4 million in 2000 to 122.3 million. What caused the increase? In particular, how much credit should be assigned to greater grassroots mobilization, represented by the Republican Party's 72-Hour Program and 527 groups like America Coming Together?
A team of Yale University political scientists has parsed the results. Of the 17 million rise, about 4 million was simply more eligible voters. Of the remaining 13 million, about one-third can be attributed to direct voter contact and two-thirds to heightened interest.
According to the American National Election Study, the gold standard survey for voting behavior scholars, the proportion replying that they "cared a good deal" who won rose 9 percent from its 2000 mark. Beyond that, although turnout went up more in competitive states, it also rose in states where the outcome was not in doubt.
Publicly conducted polls are becoming an increasing part of the media coverage of the electoral saga. Kathleen Francovic, CBS News' survey director, reports that the phrases "polls say" or "polls show" appeared almost three times as often in major papers and on electronic news outlets in 2000 and 2004 as they did in 1992.
Arcane methodological issues like cell-phone-only households and diminishing cooperation rates, once discussed only at the American Association of Public Opinion Researchers annual meetings, now are becoming the subject of mass media stories and campaign spinning. For example, a full-page ad in the Sept. 28, 2004, New York Times charged the Gallup Poll with favoring George W. Bush because its method for determining likely voters allegedly gave him an unfair advantage.
Which questions polls ask can influence how the campaign unfolds. Kathleen Hall Jamieson, one of the nation's leading media scholars, demonstrates how a June 2004 Los Angeles Times survey reframed some of the discussion about Bush. One of the questions was whether the trait "stubborn" applied more to Bush or to Sen. John Kerry.
Where did the newspaper pick up "stubborn" as relevant? Not from past scholarly research on the presidency, none of which had shown that stubbornness-or the lack of it-was one of the features many voters examined in making their presidential choice.
Turns out that internal Democratic polling, conducted in spring 2004, was testing ways to turn Bush's "strong leadership" image from a virtue into a shortcoming. Transforming "strong" to "stubborn" seemed a promising approach. Both Kerry and his campaign operatives started to use the word to describe the incumbent.
That might have led the LA Times to include the item in its survey, thereby giving even more credibility to the Kerry "let's-label-him-stubborn" strategy. If so, it worked. The respondents replied, 58 percent to 16 percent, that "stubborn" applied more to Bush than to Kerry. That result was included in the second paragraph of the Associated Press story on the poll, an article that appeared in papers including the Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune and Miami Herald.
Taking advantage of the National Annenberg Election Survey, which Jamieson directed and which was conducted daily from October 2003 to November 2004, she and her colleagues found that the proportion thinking Bush is stubborn jumped significantly the week after the poll, especially among frequent newspaper readers. In short, influencing which questions polls ask has not only become a campaign tactic but it is an approach that can work.
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Both national and local reporters frequently misunderstand the margin of error in sample surveys. Take the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's Jan. 22, story on its poll of 800 likely voters in Missouri. The trial heat for the 2008 governor's race featured incumbent Republican Matt Blunt and prospective challenger Democrat Jay Nixon. The results were Nixon 51 percent, Blunt 43 percent.
At the 95 percent-confidence level, this poll's sampling error is plus-or-minus 3.5 percent. Since Nixon's 51 percent minus 3.5 percent equals 47.5 percent and Blunt's 43 percent plus 3.5 percent is 46.5 percent, the Post interpretation was that Nixon's lead "was just outside of the margin of error rate of 3.5 percentage points for each number."
This reading incorrectly assumes that any result within plus-or-minus 3.5 points of the poll result is equally likely, that-graphically-the margin of error is a rectangle extending 3.5 points in either direction from either 51 percent or 43 percent. That's wrong. The sampling error distribution is a normal (i.e., bell-shaped) curve with its peak at the poll number (51 percent for Nixon, 43 percent for Blunt) and then sloping downward on either side. The next most likely findings, for Nixon, would be 52 percent or 50 percent, then the next most (but lower chances) likely 53 percent or 49 percent, and so forth. Given Nixon's 8 percent lead with a sample size of 800, the chance that a poll would yield that result if Blunt were indeed tied with Nixon or ahead of him is less than one in a thousand. Saying this is "just outside the margin of error" characterizes the race as being closer than it is.
Terry Jones is professor of political science at UM-St. Louis.
Off the Record:
Re-run
Cliff Froelich, who left the St. Louis Film Festival three years ago to become arts and entertainment editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, has left the newspaper to return to the Film Festival. No reasons were made public, but Post-watchers assume it was a result of the many cuts and changes in personnel that made it impossible to do the job the way he thought it should be done. The first attempt at finding a temporary replacement went up in flames after only one day. The search continues.
-Joe Pollack
We're No. 2
Everyone knows that newspapers run corrections, and someone actually takes the time to count them. A statistical survey about corrections and clarifications from News Research showed that the Boston Globe led all competitors in 2005 with 1,018 corrections and clarifications. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch was second with 947, up 15 from 2004. The Charlotte Observer, New Orleans Times-Picayune and Orlando Sentinel completed the top five. The Post figure was a rise from 832 in 2004, 819 in 2003. Interestingly, no figures were compiled for the nation's largest newspapers like USA Today, The New York Times, the New York Daily News, the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune.
-Joe Pollack
Point of view
Here are headlines from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and The New York Times from Dec. 6, dealing with the same story.
The leads, from the AP in the Post and from a pair of staff writers at The Times, covered the same information-a judge had dismissed one charge against Rep. Tom DeLay but had kept two more serious charges against him. The writers described the dismissal first, then the retention of the other charges.
Both stories played in the same location, the top right-hand column of page 1A, the traditional home to the day's main story. The Post headline, "Judge Rejects 1 of 3 Charges Against DeLay," echoed the author of the story, giving the dismissal more importance. The Times, however, turned the emphasis of the story with a headline saying, "Judge Lets Stand 2 of 3 Charges Faced by DeLay."
This, by the way, is not meant to indicate that one newspaper was right and the other wrong in its approach to the news. It just shows that copy editors, given the same facts, may have differing opinions on what is most important in a story.
-Joe Pollack
Channels:
Channel 5 goes high definition
by Tripp Frohlichstein
KSDK (Channel 5) scheduled its High Definition (HDTV) local broadcasts to begin Feb. 6. The studio segments of the broadcast are in high definition, though most news stories are not. High definition cameras are to be used for some stories in the field, however.
The sports department sent a high definition camera to the Kirkwood Ice Rink in late January to get speed skating footage to be used during the Olympics, since J.P. Kepka of St. Louis is on the U.S. Olympic team.
The station unveiled a new set to coincide with the new format's launch.
Besides a sharper picture, HDTV has a different aspect ratio than regular television. At a 16-by-9 ratio, HDTV is wider than the normal 4-by-3 ratio.
The station promises that everyone will see the difference.
"All of our local news and local programming will be broadcast in HD," said Lynn Beall, president and general manager of KSDK in a press release. "Everything will be shot in a 16-by-9 widescreen format-but regardless of what kind of set you have, everyone will enjoy a higher quality in pictures and sound! This represents a significant investment in our community and a commitment to our audience to bring them the best in audio and video delivery."
The station says Emmy-award-winning Production Design Group, based out of New York City, designed the new set specifically for Channel 5. PDG designs sets for network and cable shows and has won numerous awards for its work on NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams, as well as MSNBC and ESPN.
Channel 5's new set is two stories tall and includes an integrated interview set, reporter stand-up areas and a completely new Weather Plus weather center. Many wide screen video monitors are incorporated into the new set as well as state-of-the-art lighting, a camera boom and Sony HD studio robotic cameras. The "Show Me St. Louis'" window set is also included in the redesign.
The graphic design was also scheduled to be changed as the station adapts to the wide screen format.
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KTVI (Channel 2)'s reputation for being the station to turn to for local television news was enhanced in late January when it aired a live police chase. The chase ended with live pictures of the suspect being beaten by police. Were the police out of line? Channel 2 followed up in its newscast with a complete exploration of the topic with both sides airing their feelings.
I did not get to see much of the other stations' coverage so I can't compare them. I can say Channel 2 did a superb job of bringing the story and its ramifications to local viewers. The video even made the front page of the St. Louis Pos- Dispatch on Jan. 31.
Channel 5 had pictures of the beating from its chopper as well. KMOV (Channel 4) missed out.
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When Channel 5 sportscaster Rene Knott first showed up in St. Louis, I was concerned. He seemed forced in his delivery and was trying too hard to sound as if he had followed St. Louis sports for 20 years.
My concern is gone; Knott has changed. Not only did he shave his mustache, but he has eased up on his delivery. He now sounds comfortable when he delivers sportscasts and has honest knowledge of St. Louis sports.
I also was impressed watching him work firsthand on a story in January. Knott and veteran cameraman Eddie Thornhill visited the Kirkwood Ice Rink to do a story on an annual speed skating meet (my son Johnny is a member of the Gateway Speed skating Club). Knott's attention centered on Matt Plummer, a local skater who was the 2004 National Junior Speed skating Champion and has a legitimate shot at making the 2010 Olympics team.
Other sports reporters have done speed skating stories, but-with the exception of Channel 5's Frank Cusumano-send only a cameraperson or get what they can as quickly as possible and leave the rink. Knott and Thornhill spent quite some time at the rink learning about the sport and getting pictures. The story aired that night on Sports Plus. It gave viewers a good idea about the sport and the success St. Louisans have had as speed skaters in the Olympics. It included well-edited interviews and pictures enabling viewers to get a feel for Plummer's abilities and aspirations.
I can't say that Knott covers all his stories like this one, but if he does, sports viewers are in for a real treat.
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First, Channel 5 named Mike Owens and Leisa Zigman as its investigative team. Then, Channel 4 hired Steve Chamraz as its investigative reporter. Not to be outdone, Channel 2 hired Chris Hayes as its investigative reporter. Coming from Phoenix, Hayes won seven regional Emmy awards for investigative journalism and journalistic enterprise. He graduated from Mizzou's School of Journalism in 1993.
The onslaught of investigative wars could be good news for viewers. Let's hope the stations allow these folks to do real digging and not "surface" reporting.
Let's also hope for true local journalism-as opposed to taking a concept from another city (such as dirty restaurants) and transplanting it here. Though there is some value in those stories, there is even more value to digging into problems, corruption and injustice unique to our area.
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There was much angst when Ted Koppel left ABC's "Nightline" and the program shifted to a new format. People said it wasn't the same old "Nightline." It isn't, and it shouldn't be.
"Nightline" executives understood the loss of Koppel's skills and changed to adapt to the different talents of the current anchors.
The program still features longer stories and solid sports interviews. It continues to provide much more depth than stories on the evening news.
Take a recent "Nightline" program with John Murtha. It included a long interview with the congressman who wants our troops out of Iraq and was one of only two stories on this particular program. The other was live coverage of a mine accident. It was well done.
For the critics who complain it's not the old "Nightline:" Give it a chance. You may like what you see.
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Sinclair Broadcasting-owner of KDNL (Channel 30)-is ruffling feathers again. It refused to provide a high definition signal to Charter Communications (or satellite providers for that matter). Without an HD antenna, you couldn't see the Super Bowl in high definition.
A St. Louis Post-Dispatch column by our city's top notch sports media critic Dan Caesar quoted a spokesperson claiming that Channel 30 cared about St. Louis viewers. Poppycock. It appears to care about revenue, pure and simple. Otherwise, the station would be providing a free signal to satellite and cable providers like the other local stations do.
Most of the country got to see the Super Bowl the way it should be, with a high definition picture. But not here.
Also, as an ABC network affiliate, it still ought to be providing a local newscast.
Tripp Frohlichstein owns Media Masters and consults with business, government and non-profit organizations. He will not comment on any television coverage if it involves his clients.
Sports & Media:
The line on Linehan
by Joe Pollack
In the midst of the truly orgasmic outpouring of love that has erupted over the hiring of Scott Linehan as the new head coach of the Rams, a couple of things went missing from the media accounts I read.
Did anyone talk to Jay Zygmunt? Did he answer questions? What did he say? What kind of policy will Linehan have in terms of his assistants? Will they be allowed to speak to the media? If not, why not?
These are more than idle questions. Since Zygmunt obviously won the power struggle with Mike Martz, proven by the fact that he's still here-carrying the title of "president of football operations"-how much power does he now have, and how will he use it?
Some reporter must have talked to him, or tried. What were his responses? If he declined to speak, that's an answer in itself.
Secondly, will Linehan allow his assistants to speak to the media? When he was an assistant in Minnesota and Miami, did his head coach allow him to speak like a cogent human being? He must have been, since he was qualified to leap to the Olympian post of head coach. Was he just another blank-faced automaton?
Around the NFL these days few head coaches allow their assistants to speak to the media. And yet, at least seven NFL assistants will become head coaches for 2006. An eighth may arrive when Al Davis decides on his Oakland vacancy.
And yes, it's amazing that only head coaches are wise enough to create the clichés known as "coach-speak," the often-obscenity-strewn vocabulary that goes back to the days of Amos Alonzo Stagg and George Halas.
This is not to judge Linehan, or any of the other new head coaches, practically all of whom have been laboring in obscurity. It's odd how assistant coaches, deemed neither bright enough nor loyal enough to speak to the media, suddenly become geniuses with the ability to handle radio or television shows, create offenses and defenses, hire staffs and create instant loyalty among players, coaches, fans, front offices and the media.
It's rather reminiscent of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's Bryan Burwell, who perceptively observed how Tony LaRussa sings of family and unity from spring training to the end of the season, at which time the specter of salary cap and labor negotiations find him willing to allow family members to depart for other families, or to push them out the door to make room for another-and probably less-expensive-to-be-favored son.
Martz is one of 10 NFL coaches to leave their posts after the 2005 season. Nine either were fired or given resignations to sign; Dick Vermeil, who retired in Kansas City, is the sole exception. Herman Edwards, the talented, accessible head coach for the New York Jets, moved to the Chiefs in a similar role. New York columnists have been ripping the Jets and their owner, billionaire Woody Johnson, for allowing this to happen or, more accurately, for making it happen.
One moving-up assistant with prior head-coaching experience is Dick Jauron, once head coach at Detroit, most recently an assistant to Lovie Smith in Chicago and about to succeed Mike Mularkey in Buffalo.
Young assistants are taking over in other cities, with the 42-year-old Linehan now in St. Louis. The new hires, and their predecessors, are Rod Marinelli (Steve Mariucci) in Detroit, Mike McCarthy (Mike Sherman) in Green Bay, Gary Kubiak (Dom Capers) in Houston, Herman Edwards (Dick Vermeil) in Kansas City, Brad Childress (Mike Tice) in Minnesota, Sean Payton (Jim Haslett) in New Orleans and Eric Mangini (Edwards) in New York.
Linehan, the Rams and the media are still in honeymoon mode, and Linehan's first major hire, Jim Haslett in charge of the defense, sounds like a good one. After all, as the Saints had terrible seasons, their defense still was good enough to make the Rams look worse than usual.
As a head coach, Haslett was apparently a good communicator and a man who could keep the team together, even in the face of Katrina and natural disasters that merely exacerbated the team's internal problems. I hope that Haslett is able to talk to the media. He will be an asset to Linehan and the team.
Besides, it just sounds like fourth grade when head coaches post ridiculous rules over when and where who can talk to whom. With all the absurd talk-radio shows flooding the air waves, it is nonsense to make a large group of assistant coaches look like a group of buttoned-up, non-speaking robots. In case anyone has forgotten, most of these people are college graduates.
Which brings us back to one of the original premises: Jay Zygmunt, always last in any sort of alphabetical lineup, now is close to first in the Rams' hierarchy. Where does he stand in this muddle? Will we have more chaos next season?
And just because the president of the United States dissembles and dodges media questions, ducking and weaving like Archie Moore or Sugar Ray Robinson, the president of football operations of a mere professional football team should not get that kind of permission slip.
Joe Pollack is a former St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist.
AM/FM:
Changing line-ups
by Joe Sonderman
It's a whole new ballgame at KTRS (550 AM) in the wake of the worst bloodletting in St. Louis radio history. Nine people were fired just days before Christmas, including morning hosts Bill Wilkerson and Wendy Wiese, sports reporters Jim Holder and Randy Karraker, midday personalities Scott St. James and Meme Wolff, early afternoon host McGraw Milhaven and night host Kevin Horrigan. Veteran producer Jeannette Grider was also fired.
KTRS is also seeking a younger audience and competing with the new technology. The morning show in particular sounded old. Most of the hosts involved were identified with KMOX, and new management realized the mistake in trying to recreate the KMOX of the Hyland era.
The new hosts have quite a bit working against them. There is a tremendous backlash over the way the firings of the staff were handled. The station's poor signal is also a major hurdle. Cardinal baseball fans-KTRS' new audience-are traditionally a very conservative lot. The new hosts will also have to prove themselves with local content.
Scott Hasick and Casey Bartholomew, who held down slots in Los Angeles and Detroit, took over the morning show. They don't seem to have a good grasp on St. Louis, letting major topics like the closing of the Ford plant slip by them.
Jay Anderson, most recently a talker in Gainesville, Fla., is now hosting the 9-to-noon show with Dana Daniels. Daniels was formerly with KLOU (103.3 FM) and WRDA "Red" (104.1 FM), so she brings St. Louis knowledge to the show. It's obvious the show has problems attracting callers-the hosts seem to be filling the time with stories off the wire and Internet. Anderson and Daniels do provide an alternative to those of us weary of Rush Limbaugh.
During the Limbaugh show, KMOX (1120 AM) newscasts are shorter, and they are unlikely to break in with a traffic problem. KTRS seems to have expanded its news coverage, particularly breaking news, which includes fires, car accidents and crime. It offers traffic updates all day and doesn't do as many uninteresting Jefferson City or St. Louis city political stories.
Keith Kramer may turn out to be the most controversial new hire. The new noon to 3 p.m. host was fired from KEGL in Dallas for reporting that Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake had died in a car crash. Critics describe Kramer as a "shock jock," which he denies.
"I am older, and the show has evolved with that age 'evolution.' I have a wife and a kid now," Kramer said. "I've done some things in the past, that in the industry could be under the shock jock umbrella, sure, but things change. For a career to be successful, you have to reinvent. I have done that."
Kramer was asked if he thinks that radio is "dumbing down" in an effort to appeal to a younger audience.
"Well, as they say, perception is reality," he said. "However, I think companies are pushing toward safe more than anything. By safe, I mean shutting out local content altogether. Radio to some degree is running from satellite and iPods. Take the JACK formats. Instead of running or reacting with a knee jerk, just improve your product. If it's good, people will come. Don't over think!"
Kramer says he is aware of the heritage of KMOX, and thinks he knows just how much influence the station has in St. Louis.
"My job is to go into the studio and be as prepped as I can be," Kramer said. "Be local. Be smart. Be funny. Be witty. Not once will I think about KMOX.
"When interviewed, I told Al Brady Law that I am a 35-year old man. I love radio, but in this medium-I am underserved. Maybe I don't want to discuss a Supreme Court nominee for three hours. Now, can I? Sure, but that's not what I spend all my time on at parties at my house. People are freaking out about this. Loosen up! Relax!"
As for criticism he receives on online message boards, Kramer said, "Live by your pub. Die by your pub. Message board guys are run-down jealous people. You don't know me. You haven't even heard me as of this writing."
As for "Bloody Friday," Kramer is sympathetic, up to a point.
"I've been fired my fair share. I know how it feels. It's never good, Christmas or otherwise," he said. "I feel for those guys, Trust me! The second part is easy. Look at the ratings. Were they headed in the right direction before? Were they headed in the right direction one year ago, five years ago? The answer is plain and anyone will tell you that, no, it wasn't. I am not a psychic, but I can tell you something. If you put on compelling shows day round, people will be drawn to it.
"Scott and Casey, whom I know from Detroit, are the real deal. They are good guys who are salivating, as I am, to hurt people. I can speak for them and say, 'We want you homeless if you are our competition.' I am rabid and angry. KTRS will be just fine."
Bobby Lawrence, who became chairman of KTRS when the Cardinals acquired 50 percent of the station, was behind the changes. Lawrence brought in veteran programmer Al Brady Law to work his magic at "The Big 550."
Lawrence was the business associate of Cardinals' Chairman Bill DeWitt, and was a major factor in convincing the team to move its broadcasts from KMOX. He was once CEO of Jacor Communications, a firm many blame for the consolidation and use of pre-recorded announcer segments that has hurt the industry.
Lawrence went on to become a vice president at Clear Channel when the firms merged. At Clear Channel, he worked closely with Randy Michaels. As then-CEO of the radio division, Michaels came under fire for taking the use of voice tracking to new heights, removing much of the local content. Critics say they enriched themselves while ruining the business. It will be interesting to see just how much the mess of the massacre is tied to the Cardinals, because the media normally treats them with kid gloves.
Some are predicting quick failure for the new line-up. They say the St. Louis market is different due to the influence of KMOX. But times have changed-this generation is accustomed to an in-your-face style. They get their news from Fox and the Internet. They are bombarded with sexual humor and situations on television.
KMOX has changed a great deal with the arrival of Jay Severin and the debut of the "Two John's No Waiting" night show. Paul Harris, much to his credit, regularly discusses topics that would have sent Robert Hyland into delirium.
Robert Hyland is rightfully revered, but his KMOX would not survive today. Listening to the old tapes, it is amazing how dry the legendary Rex Davis and Bob Hardy sound today. That doesn't tarnish their legacy one bit, but stations must adapt to serve those under 35. It's going to be a big adjustment for those of us who are a bit older-stations are not that interested in listeners over 55.
But if talented people are put in place, perhaps the young people will listen. This new line-up at KTRS deserves a chance. They won't all be successful, but some of them may surprise the doubters.
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Broadcasters live and die by the numbers, and the latest are out. Here are the Arbitron Ratings Service "12+" numbers, which show total listeners over the age of 12. These numbers are not the most meaningful, as advertisers are interested in specific demographic groups, especially listeners 25-54. Though they also don't indicate how the specific shows are doing by day part, they do give us an overall picture and show some trends.
So, what can we glean from these numbers? KEZK (102.5 FM) shows a big jump, which happens every year, as the station switches to all Christmas music. KLOU (103.3 FM) had a pretty good jump following the departure of program director Al Brock. Some of those numbers may be attributable to the Rams, but that's only one day a week. The station continues to make adjustments to the music, resulting in a more up-tempo sound.
WIL (92.3 FM) showed improvement while KSD "The Bull" (93.7 FM) slid, probably due to a horrific morning show voice tracked from outside the market. Program Director Steve Geoffries has been transferred to another Clear Channel market, and on-air personality Billy Greenwood will take the reins in that position.
Between Geoffries' promotion and the official announcement, Greenwood did a great job holding down the afternoon drive while deftly handling music director duties. The status of the atrocious "Big D and Bubba" morning show is uncertain, although word is they will stay at least for a little while. Bull employees seemed embarrassed to be associated with this mess. KPNT (105.7 FM) took a big jump too in the wake of the departure of Howard Stern, after broadening its music to include some older and more familiar songs.
On the down side, KYKY (98.1 FM) is the big story. The station is nearly in a free fall. The '80s weekends sounded great. But the broad mix on WARH "The Arch" (106.5 FM) is taking away huge chunks of the KYKY and KHIT (96.2 FM) audience. The station is even sharing some titles with KLOU and appears to be nicking KSHE (95 FM). KMOX is down a point, which is not unusual once the baseball season ends. KTRS showed little movement, but this ratings book does not reflect the wholesale changes that took effect after the holiday massacre.
Joe Sonderman is a former radio and TV traffic reporter, music director and on-air personality. He also works part-time for Clear Channel-St. Louis.
Ad/PR:
Where the money goes
by Rick Stoff
It has been two decades since St. Louis had two daily newspapers, but readers, listeners and viewers have no shortage of sources of new, information and entertainment.
The region still has six television stations, about two dozen radio stations, 33 editions of the Suburban Journals, as well as the various zoned editions of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Approximately 50 other daily, weekly or monthly newspapers are listed in the Southwestern Bell Yellow Pages-four are Chinese, Hispanic, Italian and Korean.
The telephone book also lists 37 magazines, including "Disaster Recovery Journal," and 26 "publishers of periodicals," with titles such as "Sparkman Your Christian Classified Publication." Don't forget the Charter Communications cable system-its Web site lists more than 40 networks. And there are all those billboards, too.
Many of these media also operate Web sites. How many other Web sites occupy the time of local eyeballs?
Planning an advertising buy is a lot more complicated than it used to be.
"The fragmentation of the media has made it much more difficult to buy media and target your market," said Del Schwinke, director of Geile-Leon Marketing Communications in Clayton. "The old days of reach vehicles like the newspapers and TV have disappeared.
"There are only so many people in the market for your product at any given time. The shotgun approach is less effective than it used to be. Media buyers are forced to be a lot more sophisticated and do more strategic thinking. A great deal of work goes into putting together a media buy today."
Schwinke's career began with a stint in the advertising department at the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. He moved down the street to the Post after the papers merged their advertising operations.
In 1978, he said, the Globe sold about 271,000 daily papers while the weekday circulation of the Post was 252,000, totaling 523,000 papers.
"I'm still a newspaper guy and a big believer in newspapers," Schwinke said.
He recalled that the Post's circulation topped out at 370,000 in 1991.
The Post was listed at an average weekday circulation of 271,386 for the six-month period ending Sept. 30, according to Audit Bureau of Circulation numbers posted by the Newspaper Association of America. Sunday circulation was listed at 428,601.
Local newspapers remain the largest advertising media in the country. TNS Media Intelligence reported last fall that local papers handled $12.2 billion of the $70.5 billion spent on advertising in the United States for the first half of 2005. That was 17.4 percent of all ad spending.
TNS grouped advertising spending into 17 media categories. Network television came in second, with $11.7 billion in placements and a 16.6 percent share. Consumer magazines were third, at $10.5 billion and 14.9 percent.
Cable television and the Internet were the fastest growing of the leading advertising segments. Cable spending grew 15.3 percent in the first half of last year to $7.9 billion and 11.2 percent of national ad spending. Placements on Web sites grew 9.4 percent to nearly $4 billion and 5.2 percent of the market.
By comparison, advertising in local newspapers grew 1.7 percent in the first half of 2005 while network TV was up 4.3 percent. Consumer magazines grew 9.1 percent. Spot television buys declined 6.1 percent to $7.3 billion.
Local radio advertising grew 1.5 percent to $3.6 billion, 5.1 percent of national spending.
U.S. daily newspaper circulation peaked in 1984 at about 63 million. In 2004 the total was 54.6 million, according to the newspaper association. There were 1,772 daily papers in 1950, then 1,457 in 2004.
"The younger people are reading the newspaper in decreasing numbers," Schwinke said. "There are a lot more distractions, like today's cable TV package, and the young people are on the net, no question." Advertising strategy takes much more work today, but the proliferation of niche media can make it easier to reach some customers.
"TV used to be the other 'reach' vehicle, but now it is a 'target' vehicle with all of the channels that are available," Schwinke said. "Cable TV has narrow niches. That is one of the reasons that it, like direct mail, can be good if it is used effectively. They can zero in on a market."
Radio also is an excellent "target" vehicle, he said. "Radio stations have very definite audiences."
Budgeting of placements can be time-consuming. Clients may need to be told that media selections once held dear may no longer be the best choices.
"Your list is always changing. People are always coming in and out of the market. Putting all of your eggs in one basket is less likely than years ago," Schwinke said. "Spending all your money in one place can be a big mistake, and spreading yourself too thin can be another. It is up to us to be honest with people-not to call their baby ugly, but to tell them where to target their market with the most effective buy. I think of spending their money like it is mine."
Rick Stoff, a former St. Louis Globe-Democrat reporter and editor, now practices public relations through his own firm, Stoff Communications.
Radio History:
Rock 'n' Roll revealed
by Frank Absher
It seemed like it happened overnight. Sleepy, somewhat stodgy KMOX-FM suddenly came alive and set the market on its ear.
For years, KMOX-FM had been nothing more than a mellow music format originating in a huge automation system on the seventh floor at One Memorial Drive. The machinery was so voluminous it took up a whole room.
Jocks were told to do whatever they could to sound live, but the tape playback equipment would often malfunction, meaning listeners would hear announcers introducing songs, to be followed by a completely different set of records the announcer hadn't even mentioned.
Ed Scarborough had been a disc jockey in St. Louis for Pulitzer's KSD, but when he moved a few blocks east to the CBS studios at One Memorial Drive, things quickly changed. CBS corporate had designated some of its FM stations for major format changes: WCAU-FM in Philadelphia, WBBM-FM in Chicago and KMOX-FM. Scarborough's job was to create the HitRadio format and make it a success in St. Louis.
Scarborough began the transition in August 1981. KMOX-FM went from the automated mellow format to a more contemporary, live sound. Scarborough remembers the transition time, "You might have heard John Cougar Mellencamp followed by the Mamas and Papas."
An average listener may not have noticed all the tweaking that went on with the music playlist, but Scarborough worked long and hard to establish which new songs to play and which would not fit the format. He was quoted in an interview in Radio & Records as saying, "The most important factor is that the record sounds like KHTR or it doesn't get on the air."
He even credits KHTR station manager Tim Dorsey with giving him complete leeway to do whatever was necessary to succeed.
The initial air staff of Kevin McCarthy, Bob Scott, Casey Van Allen, Craig Roberts, Scarborough and weekender Mike Jeffries eased the listeners out of the mellow sound and into the high-energy HitRadio format, which placed emphasis on current music but was aimed at an adult audience rather than teens. Later Scarborough replaced himself on the air with John Frost, and Young Bobby Day was also added.
"I didn't want the listener to hear a bunch of screaming kids on the stations," Scarborough said. "I can't say enough good things about those jocks."
The transition was completed by December 1981. All the older hits had been removed from the playlist and the call letters were changed to KHTR. In a move that is virtually unheard of today, local staffers had a say in the new logo design and selection of on-air jingles.
It was a standard joke around the building that the format didn't sit particularly well with Robert Hyland, whose office was four floors below the KHTR studios. Hyland honestly didn't understand it, but he had complete faith in Scarborough's ability to make it work.
This allowed Hyland to continue to focus his attention exclusively on KMOX, which at that time was showing an average quarter-hour market share in the twenties. Combine that with KHTR's highest Arbitron share of 10.6, and the two CBS stations in St. Louis had a combined average quarter-hour audience share over 30.
Hyland didn't have to understand KHTR to appreciate its success.
Frank Absher is a St. Louis radio historian. St. Louis radio history is available online at www.stlradio.com.
Late Edition:
A global media review alternative
by Charles Klotzer
The airwaves have become the favorite haunt of younger, and not so young, generations. Many have stopped subscribing to newspapers and journals. They confine their news menu to on-line searches, with some condescending to listen to radio or television news. SJR, too, has a Web site (www.stljr.org) and is heard on KDHX (88.1 FM) at 7 p.m. every Wednesday. Editor Ed Bishop hosts the program. Planning is also in process for a television show.
These additions, we all hope, will boost awareness and involvement of local residents. They are not, of course, a replacement for the print version. Indeed, as far as this writer is concerned, skimming over a newspaper-and we do not refer only to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch but also to The New York Times-is actually much faster than scrolling through screens of copy where one usually sees only part of an article.
It takes time to check the first and last paragraph of a feature to determine whether to spend time reading all of it, after which your neck will hurt unless you have proper glasses. Moreover, a print version offers permanency and recognition, which on-line matter only matches in its retrieval function.
All of this was brought to mind by an alternative on-line service, "Mediachannel.org." The site states that it is "a not-for-profit public interest project of two internationally oriented entities, The Global Center and OneWorld Online. The Global Center, a tax-exempt, New York-based educational foundation has been recognized for the high quality of its innovative, award-winning productions on human rights and social issues." The partner, OneWorld Online, a non-profit venture of England's OneWorld Broadcasting Trust produces, "a global multinational and multilingual news service dedicated to human rights, sustainable development and the environment."
Their organizers are very ambitious. MediaChannel offers to link media organizations and outlets and to provide full access of their contents as an affiliated site. Annual membership fees are as low as $10, which includes an e-newsletter, a quarterly magazine, and other offerings.
While their presentations favor international happenings and developments, many items highlight domestic events. A recent check showed detailed coverage of President Bush's State of the Union speech, that some journalists questioned the excessive coverage of Bob Woodruff, that AT&T was sued over the NSA spy program and other topics that have made news in the American media. These reports are from hundreds of organizations that have joined MediaChannel.
What is attractive about the MediaChannel site is the collection of diverse voices and their intention not only to present these views, but also to evaluate their merits.
With fewer and fewer alternative voices heard in the mass media, the public deserves to be exposed to an array of views, of whatever persuasion, which may direct us to explore policies not under consideration by our leaders now.
Charles Klotzer is the founder of the St. Louis Journalism Review.
In SJR:
10 Years Ago
- Staffers at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch were surprised to learn that their newspaper had become a minority investor in the ownership of the St. Louis Cardinals.
- The Suburban Journals and the Post refused to run an ad for the Food Workers' Union that attacked Price Chopper grocery stores.
- Ardyth Diercks was appointed general manager of KSDK (Channel 5), replacing John Kueneke.
5 Years Ago
- The FCC suspended its Equal Employment Opportunity program following a federal court ruling upholding an earlier decision involving KFUO in St. Louis.
- Lee Clear became Clear Channel's St. Louis market manager.
- The St. Louis Business Journal began offering its employees health insurance for same-sex couples.