Early Edition

The concept was the problem

By Ed Bishop

Although it was often poorly reported, execution wasn't the main problem with "Imagine St. Louis." The real problem was with the concept itself. It was simply a dumb idea-with two insurmountable flaws.

First, the section set a public agenda. As everyone knows, by choosing what stories to cover and, more importantly, what stories not to cover, newspaper editors set agendas. But the hundreds of stories that a daily runs every week produces a de facto system of checks and balances. One editor's news judgment is balanced by another's, the point of one day's front-page story is checked by the implications of another day's front-page story. No overarching agenda can be easily achieved because of the diversity and variation of news.

And that's the way it's supposed to be. Newspapers are not in the business of setting a public agenda. Rather, their job is to report the details of the evolving agendas that are thrown up by public discourse and activity. Sure, the newspaper can provide a forum for the community's agendas. The newspaper may even weigh in with an editorial here and there. But the public sets public agendas.

That wasn't the case with "Imagine St. Louis." Each week a single topic was selected. No matter how sensitive the St. Louis Post-Dispatch was to community issues, the very act of choosing one topic over another was setting an agenda. Too often those topics seemed elitist or, at the very least, narrow. They seemed to reflect a father-knows-best attitude toward the St. Louis metropolitan area. But, even if most readers would have agreed with the selection of topics, the very act of choosing would have been counter to good journalism because it artificially created news. Newspapers don't create news, they cover it.

The second flaw was more egregious. "Imagine St. Louis" was naïve to the point of absurdity. It was based on a simplistic notion that democracy works by having a group of well-informed citizens get together and arrive at a solution to a problem. Democracy is a lot more complicated than that. But "Imagine" carried an unwritten promise that readers could effect change simply by reading the section and then maybe come to a public meeting sponsored by the newspaper or by writing a letter to the section. On rare occasions, the section saw the world as more complicated. But it never dealt with the substructure of invested interests, power politics or cultural divides that exist in the metropolitan area. "Imagine" not only ignored the old journalistic axiom of staying detached from the fray and not offering solutions, its solutions were idealistic nonsense.

Readers understood the flaw right from the get-go. Almost every week someone wrote a letter to the section pointing out the naivete involved in that week's proposed solution. Maybe the most pointed came from a reader named Dale Taylor. He wrote:

"I would like to know who the media genius is that dreamed up the 'Imagine St. Louis' concept ... Who cares how John Q. Public feels about Kiel Opera House or Busch Stadium ... It's time to wake up and smell the coffee, Post-Dispatch. Those decisions will be made in some smoke-filled rooms influenced by hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions rather than by some goofy imagined discourse."

Amen.

The section that replaced "Imagine" on July 8 promises to go into those smoke-filled rooms and bring readers information about the substructure of our democracy. It promises to give readers a variety of issues to consider. And it promises to remain detached from issues.

In other words, it promises it won't offer solutions. It will just give us the information we need to understand and perhaps influence how those solutions are rendered.

That's exactly what newspapers are supposed to do.

Post editor's dropping of Readers' Advocate column causes widespread concern

By Charles L. Klotzer

Ellen Soeteber, the new editor of the St.Louis Post- Dispatch, has instituted a number of progressive and much needed structural reforms. Among these is the much expected dismissal of the "Imagine St.Louis" for a welcome "NewsWatch" section.

Less welcome is her elimination of the only column in which readers can voice their concerns about items published in the Post. In view of her overall approach to editing, this is a surprisingly shortsighted decision.

Carolyn Kingcade, the incumbent -now the former- Readers Advocate, expressed her reservations in her final column on July 1.

While repeating Soeteber's emphasis that the change is to move " editors responsible for putting out the paper to recognize the accessibility to readers is part of their jobs," Kingcade also voiced her doubts that this would benefit either the Post or readers.

The Readers' Advocate, writes Kingcade, is frequently ... "a last resort for the caller who had been transferred from extension to extension in search of someone who could provide an answer or listen to a comment" and "it was important to try to cut the red tape for its readers" and "it was a simple courtesy" and "the column gives a public voice and arguable more weight to readers' concerns" and " it gives readers some insight into why mistakes happen" and "it is sporting of a paper to allow itself to be criticized."

Well, we know what Kingcade thinks about dropping the column. Even if we grant that Kingcade's personal involvement as author of the column may color her views, her arguments are solid and pertinent.

Editor Soeteber's suggestion that "editors - plus the managing editor, the editorial page editor and I - will be taking the collective place of the Readers' Advocate" fails to recognize the key difference between a staffer who is not a target of criticism and an editor who is. The Readers' Advocate has no personal stake in a complaint, every targeted editor does. Defensiveness in a natural reaction and journalists, believe it or not, are human.

Selwyn Pepper, Larry Fiquette and Jim Fox, all former Readers' Advocates and now retired, consider dropping the column a big mistake. Pepper recalled the difficulty he had to check on complaints for readers, " editors are very thin skinned and sensitive and can't take criticism," he said.

"Editors tend not to be too friendly to readers, it takes up their time, they get testy, big egos are involved," says Fiquette. Fiquette happens to spend much of the year in Florida covered by the Sun-Sentinel to which he subscribes. Soeteber was the Sentinel's managing editor before joining the Post and Fiquette assumes that she transferred her policy on criticism from their to the Post.

According to Fiquette, it didn't work there either. Once when he complained to the chief political correspondent at the Sentinel about coverage, the response was disinterested and his complaint was ignored. While this was only an anecdotal reference, we share Fiquette's concern that this is typical of what readers can expect.

Years ago, when SJR checked with a reporter about a complaint (he shall remain anonymous), we were told, " I never talk to the press." Even if the irony of that statement escaped him, what chances would a "mere" reader have ?

Fox, too, was sorry to see the dismissal of the Readers' Advocate column. "There is more to the column than just news, it can include late deliveries and too much ink on the pages" all of which, he said, require sometimes lengthy follow-up, " The paper is going to be poorer for the change."

However, Pepper, Fiquette and Fox were all encouraged by Soeteber's assurance that the Post would rejoin the 40 or so other metropolitan dalies who feature columns by ombudspersons if her plan doesn't work. They were also complimentary about the many other changes introduced by the editor.

Comments are frequently made that anyone on the payroll of a medium can never be as outspoken as they may wish to be. In theory, a Readers' Advocate should come from outside the Post team, not be on the Post's payroll but have access to all Post personnel and decisions. That is unlikely to happen. Thus, whoever fills the role of Readers' Advocate is in a dependent position. How much independence a Readers' Advocate exercises depends partially on the editor and on the appointee. The position inherits an aura of independence which strengthens the authority of the incumbent.

The record at the Post and by ombudspersons at other papers show that they have made and can make solid contributions to the reputation of their papers by giving readers a forum. In some cases, they have been instrumental in voicing and affecting community and even staff concerns.

To expect editors not only to listen to a complaint, but acknowledge its merit, then to publicly correct it when they could just as easily brush it off, is either idealistic or naοve. We prefer to believe that Soeteber is idealistic, which implies the ability to acknowledge error and rectify it in time to come.

Letters

Shame on SJR

SJR: Your writer Alex Posorske began his June article, "Fired Reporter Questions RFT Integrity" by asking, "So what's going on at the Riverfront Times?" I only wish he'd had the journalistic aptitude to answer his own question.

Instead, Posorske effectively allowed fired RFT staff writer C.D. Stelzer to perform an enema on himself in print. The result was a virtual torrent of pent-up complaints about the "disgusting" story ideas and diabolical schemes allegedly foisted on Stelzer by his editors, Safir Ahmed and Roland Klose.

According to the story, these included such outrageous acts as telling Stelzer to inquire about an interview subject's alleged kleptomania. I can only imagine the horror of being forced to pose a hard question to the mop-topped Beatle Bob.

Posorske also devoted large portions of his story to the disgruntled Stelzer's conspiratorial ramblings about, among other things, a headline that never ran (by the way, the phantom head was "Septic Crank," not "Sewer Crank"), and a story on a nuclear activist that never ran.

All well and good. Stelzer and his new best friend Posorske can rant all they want about the perceived slights Stelzer endured in dealing with his editors. I suggest that if you bugged the newsroom of the Post-or any other newspaper-you would be treated to a daily smorgasbord of similar gripes. Writers and editors are famous for them.

But then your home-boy Posorske went straight-up wack on us. Specifically, he wrote that Stelzer predicts "a continued shifting away from coverage that is newsy or relevant to current events in the area."

Not only that, Posorske made it clear that he agreed wholeheartedly with Stelzer's claim that the evil corporate editors at New Times and our willing handmaidens in St. Louis plan to cut the hard news out of the paper so we can publish "wacky" stories in the style of British tabloids.

Well, bloody hell, mate. This raises the question of whether Posorske or anyone else at the St. Louis Journalism Review actually bothers to read the RFT, which, as an evil corporate editor, I do on a weekly basis.

Simply put, the claim that the RFT and New Times aren't interested in doing serious journalism about issues of importance to St. Louis is a load of crap.

Since New Times purchased the RFT in 1998, we have increased the paper's editorial salary budget by 54 percent. Resources have been made available to reporters that simply weren't there before. (Interestingly, the infusion of capital also allowed the paper to hire Stelzer, who in the glory days prior to New Times' arrival worked only as a freelancer.)

Just in the past few weeks, the RFT has published Bruce Rushton's cover story on the reckless use of no-knock raids by local police ("Who's Next?," May 23), Safir Ahmed's column raising troubling questions about the police shooting of Jerome Johnson ("Black and Blue," May 23), and hard-hitting stories about problems in the public schools that are directly impacting the well-being of students ("The Jerk," by Jeannette Batz, April 18, and "Caught in the Middle," by Laura Higgins, May 30).

Those stories all seemed pretty "newsy" to me. But since I am part of the British-tabloid conspiracy, perhaps the opinions of impartial judges might be of more interest to your readers.

The year after New Times purchased it, the RFT won first-place for general excellence in its circulation category from the prestigious Missouri Lifestyle Journalism Awards, a national contest not exactly known for honoring papers committed to "gotcha" journalism.

Numerous writers at the paper have also been honored by their peers. Rushton, who joined the paper after the New Times purchase, was a finalist this year in the national Investigative Reporters and Editors contest for his report on conditions at the TAMMS correctional facility. Just last month, Rushton won first-place in another national contest, the Gerald Loeb Awards, which named his story "Porn in the USA," about a local bank's unlikely connection to Internet pornography, the best in the nation for papers with a circulation under 150,000. The gifted Batz has racked up numerous writing awards in the past two years, including from the National Awards for Education Reporting, the Nixon Newspapers National Journalism Writing Award, and the James Beard Journalism Awards.

Posorske or anyone else who might be interested can visit our Web site-newtimes.com-for a full list of the national and regional honors received by our staff in St. Louis. There they can read the award-winning stories, and also browse other examples of RFT news and feature writing such as Batz's "The Girl Who Came from the Moon" (January 3), which tells the absorbing tale of one woman's strange odyssey through the state mental-health system. I predict it will win Jeannette her next national writing award.

As for those "wacky" stories that seem to have Posorske's and Stelzer's noses out of joint, New Times is a big fan of colorful feature writing. Life is more than city-council study sessions and meetings of the sewer board, and we expect our papers to reflect that. So, yes, in the interests of full disclosure, it is in fact true that we have asked the RFT to print more lively feature stories (though if the word "wacky" was used with the staff, I'm sure it came along with at least 10 other adjectives).

Posorske may have been too busy polishing his Pulitzer acceptance speech to have noticed, but William Stage's May 2 story about downtown icon Jimmy the Midget made for a delightful read. So did Eddie Silva's May 30 "Muse" column about the West County YMCA's decision to cancel La Cage Aux Folles because "most of it took place in a bar," and Rushton's June 7 account of X-rated film legend Marilyn Chambers's recent visit to St. Louis. Talk about your strange odysseys.

Let me also address Stelzer's claim that he was fired simply because he didn't meet the New Times writer's quota, a crushing standard that he claims "no one in the organization" meets. Sorry, but that sound you hear is not my heart starting to bleed.

It is true that New Times has a writer's quota. It is true that not every staff writer meets it every year, though some brave souls actually do manage. It is also true that in the year 2000, Stelzer was the lowest-performing staff writer at the RFT, publishing fewer stories than any other writer with the same quota.

Even if we could be persuaded to overlook the fact that Stelzer was bringing up the rear in terms of output, we could not overlook the quality of his articles, or his increasingly destructive attitude. Stelzer was repeatedly warned that his stories weren't up to New Times standards. But instead of writing better stories, he poured his energy into e-mails in which he insulted both his editors and his fellow staff writers and described himself as the only reporter on the staff who was worth a damn.

In addition to smearing his colleagues, these bizarre missives written in the days before his firing insinuated that New Times is supported mainly by advertisers linked to organized crime and that one of his editorial colleagues at the RFT may have been bought off by said crime syndicate. He called one editor a racist, another a "Wash U. brat," and suggested that he'd like to write a book blowing the lid off all the rampant corruption he was witnessing at the RFT.

I guess this was where the editors were supposed to give him a promotion and a big raise.

Finally, I should not have to explain to a publication that calls itself a journalism review that Ahmed's and Klose's decision not to discuss the details of Stelzer's firing when Posorske called them for comment at the last minute is not an excuse for the amateurish piece of claptrap that resulted. Their discretion did not justify Posorske's indiscretion. And it certainly did not relieve him of his journalistic responsibility to back up his boneheaded claims about the paper's editorial direction.

I do not believe that the RFT is perfect, or that there is no room for improvement at the paper. We expect to see continued progress in St. Louis, just as we do at all of our papers. So call us mobsters or Brit-loving bastards if you must, but think twice before you again question our integrity, or at least think.

Andy Van De Voorde

Executive Associate Editor

New Times

Half truth

SJR: About the "Rabbit Stew" letter in your June 2001 edition ...

Ron Elz was, indeed, the first "Johnny Rabbitt" on KXOK. His shortlived tenure there was followed by a shortlived hire at WIL where he repeatedly identified himself as "Johnny Rabbitt."

As director of production at KXOK, I was charged with the responsibility of scheduling round-the-clock recordings of WIL to prove to a federal judge that Mr. Elz was using the name "Johnny Rabbitt" without regard to the fact that the name "Johnny Rabbitt" was registered to KXOK under the provisions of the Trademark Act of 1946, as amended.

Mr. Elz and the management of WIL were admonished by the judge to discontinue the practice upon presentation of the tape recordings that were made of WIL under my supervision.

Richard W. Fatherley

Kansas City, Kan.

SJR: After becoming aware of the recent letter to the editor wherein one Ronald Elz claims to have been the "original Johnny Rabbitt," I was taken aback and determined to send this note to you.

As you well know, Don Pietromonaco is the Johnny Rabbitt that all St. Louisans recall, even if they do not realize it. While Mr. Elz may be the "original" Johnny Rabbitt, having donned the bunny hat sometime in "early 1962" by his own admission, he misrepresents by omission, the facts that reveal he did not create the persona that is so fondly recalled throughout the greater Midwest.

That omission is the fact that Mr. Elz was Rabbitt for hardly more than one year. This he cannot dispute. My father, Don Pietromonaco took over as Johnny Rabbitt in 1963 and crafted the image and lore that is so often recalled. Since my father did not publicize his name, Mr. Elz can lay claim to being the "first" Rabbitt, and leave out the detail that he only lasted a short number of months on KXOK, thereby leading people to believe he is the Rabbitt they remember.

To this day, as executor of his estate, I still receive occasional fan mail addressed to his long-time residence in Marina del Rey, which only can be explained by my father's having remained the Rabbitt, and voicing his sidekick Bruno J. Grunion along with other characters, throughout the remaining 1960s. (Query, where was Elz then?)

I have countless "Johnny Rabbitt Army Cards" with my father's likeness imprinted thereon, and literally thousands of photographs of him with various musical stars, celebrities and St. Louis luminaries. I also have many photographs depicting thousands of screaming fans crowding my father for his autograph.

My father never sought publicity under his real name. Therefore, residents of St. Louis may not recognize his name. However, when anyone fondly recalls KXOK and Johnny Rabbitt from mid-1963 throughout the rest of that decade, Don Pietromonaco is the Johnny Rabbitt they cherish. Unfortunately, since my father's passing, it has become easier to capitalize on the memory of Johnny Rabbitt.

To Mr. Elz all I can say is, you are right: You can't change the past, as hard as you might try.

Douglas Lyon

Attorney at Law

Hasenpfeffer

SJR: I can't summon the mercy to help a rabbitt out of a stew; but, I can provide additional recipes beyond Hasenpfeffer namely Li`evre Au Jus, even better, Lapin Farci.

Messing with people's names, adding middle initials (ask Robert R. Lynn, David D. Rogers or Steven B. Stevens about this), and in some cases creating entire new monikers, was one of my marketing hallmarks; to wit, Shad O'Shea, Charlie Cherokee, Happy Herb Holiday, Jockey John, Stinky Shafer, Jay McKay, Big Ears Bernard (the station's St. Bernard mascot), Kay of Kx-OK; and, oh yes, Johnny Rabbitt. A few people came on board with built-in names like Richard Ward Fatherley, Davey O'Donnell, and Danny Dark who became the voice of NBC-TV. Peter Martin, an original KXOK Trademark, was already on staff.

I did not, for example, create Bruno J. Grunion. Credit where credit is due. Bruno was the sole creation of Don Pietromonaco who was and shall always be the definitive Johnny Rabbitt. He took the Johnny Rabbitt image and built it to its all-time apex. Anything else, past or present, is just an imitation. People who can't forget the past should try to remember a little more clearly. Sometimes the truth hurts, but only certain people feel the pain. To paraphrase Rhett Butler, frankly my dear, I don't give a sham. This is not important in the grand scheme of things, but I am compelled to set the Rabbitt, uh, record straight.

These are the facts, just the facts, Ma'm: The nom de radio-emission, Rabbitt, the on-the-air personality name, complete with two t's, was created by me personally in December of 1960, as part of the marketing plan for WFUN, Miami. Rabbitt subsequently hit the Florida airwaves in the spring of 1961 as the voice of an Easter promotion. I should know because I was that first Rabbitt voice.

Subsequently, I was rehired by my old boss Todd Storz to create the new sound of KXOK. My contract with KXOK specified that all of my promotions and personality concepts would become the Intellectual Property of KXOK and Storz Broadcasting Company. The name Johnny Rabbitt was on the drawing board to air on KXOK pending location of a personality to play the part nearly a year before any of us ever heard of Ron Elz. Since we all know that nothing is new under the sun, it will be no surprise to thinking memorabiliaphiles that Johnny Rabbitt came about from an amalgamation of my Easter character with the then Voguish Playboy rabbit image replete with cotton-tailed Bunnies and the first name of the world's most popular new entertainer, Johnny Carson. How could we miss? Only by hiring the wrong radio actor to play the part.

Don "Stinky" Shafer was my first Kx-OK air personality to utilize a small animal as part of his logo, and the gimmick was so successful that we bought two deodorized pet skunks for Stinky to walk on leashes like dogs. It was all great fun although we never could quite get the smell off the skunks, or off Don Shafer either! An on-the-air change at KXOK caused a shuffling of shifts and opened the evening show to a new personality. A small talent search was conducted, and Ron Elz was hired on a test basis to become the voice of Kx-OK's new personality, Johnny Rabbitt, officially owned by KXOK in accordance with my Storz employment contract. The name Johnny Rabbitt was trademarked by Storz with the United States Trademark and Patent Office with my knowledge and contract permission. That trademark joined Peter Martin, and subsequently was joined by Big Ears Bernard, and other Storz-owned trademarks. Regardless, Ron Elz did not last long as The Rabbitt, and had to be discharged and replaced. In that time frame, I was elevated from program director to station operations manager, I named Ray Otis as program director, and Storz brought in the illustrious Jack Sampson as general manager. Together, we hired the man who became the definitive Johnny Rabbitt, Don Pietromonaco. Otis found him and the three of us agreed that he was the one. I indoctrinated him and he became the definitive Rabbitt character from the very first day. He promptly cleaned up the hutch (believe me, it needed cleaning badly-there were pellets everywhere) and created an on-the-air and off-the-air Johnny Rabbitt that far exceeded our feral expectations.

Competition was fierce in those days, and WIL seemed to take promotional advantage of Elz by hiring him to go on the air as Johnny Rabbitt against us.

Naturally, we filed suit and Judge Meredith in United States Federal District Court in 1964 issued a restraining order against WIL and Elz. He shook his finger at the defendants and told them that they could not use the name Johnny Rabbitt or the name of any other little furry animal. It was all great, delicious fun in those days. Whatever happened to the name Johnny Rabbitt after I left St. Louis is of no concern to me. What happened while I was pulling the strings was very much of concern; and now, you know the accurate facts. By the way, the real---the definitive Johnny Rabbitt, Don Pietromonaco, passed away a few years ago after spending some time on his yacht docked in Marina del Rey, Calif.

I absolutely cherish my time in St. Louis, which I consider to be the quintessential middle-American town. It is the true heart-of-America. With all that California has to offer, there has not been a day in my life that I have not missed the real people and that big generous town on the Mississippi.

Bud Connell

President & Executive Producer

BCTV Productions

Laguna Niguel, Calif.

Off the Record

Admit it

Radio stations that play country music "don't get no respect," not even, it seems, from their own professional association.

The Country Music Association's latest marketing slogan has backfired, and the press all over the nation has been holding it up to ridicule. With much fanfare, CMA introduced "Country. Admit it. You Love It." What sort of sentiment does this convey?

Those who were quick to fire the first volleys said it confirms the sense of inferiority felt by the genre's purveyors. They also point out the recent controversy swirling around the "new" country vs. "old" country formats; the sanitized, soulless Garth Brooks vs. the soulful musical simplicity of Willie Nelson.

One wonders how many people are willing to "admit" that they "love" today's country music. It appears the CMA may be aware of its reticence. We'll have to wait and see if its slogan works.

-Frank Absher

Recession for whom?

The economic slump of 2001, which has sent Mr. Greenspan scurrying to cut interest rates every two months, has hit news media operations locally and nationally. Ad revenues are down, while benefit cuts, layoffs and firings in newsrooms are up.

The current slowdown, which began in late summer 2000, has had a dramatic effect on the newsroom. The impact has been something less in the office of the media CEO and in the corporate boardroom.

Morton Research Inc. data, recently published in American Journalism Review, show that CEOs who control news media outlets in St. Louis have experienced something less than a bump in the road. CEO Robert W. Dechard of Belo KMOV (Channel 4) collected a total of $3,904,627 from his company in 2000. CEO P. Anthony Ridder of Knight Ridder (Belleville News Democrat) collected a total of $1,563,866 from his company.

Michael E. Pulitzer, chairman of Pulitzer (St. Louis Post-Dispatch), collected $2,664,997 from his company in 2000. The total value of his Pulitzer stock holdings is estimated at $94,378,435.

While newsroom reporters and their editors fret about cutbacks in benefits, hiring freezes and worker layoffs, it's comforting to know that at least some folks in the news biz are immune to the nasty volatility of advertising revenue.

-Don Corrigan

Rosie face

When you're the boss, you're the boss, and if you're the boss of a magazine, you put your pictures anywhere at all, in any condition you want, and you can always use the excuse you're checking your popularity.

So it is with Rosie O'Donnell, talk show host turned magazine editor. If first-issue sales, back in March, are any indication, she's a genius because Rosie, the former McCall's, sold 900,000 copies.

As people who watch her television show and read gossip columns know, she spent some time in a hospital with a staph infection. The next issue showed her, in a hospital gown and without makeup, holding up her bandaged hand (middle finger extended). She had a grim expression and the headline said, "Staph is no laugh!"

O'Donnell bumped television star Megan Mullally from the cover, and

overruled all the editors at the publication, and said, "Will it sell because I'm not picture-perfect with a big grin on my face and made up and airbrushed? It will be a test for them. I understand my audience and they like me."

But without lipstick?

Obviously a breaker of molds and an independent woman of considerable power, she also defended her action by commenting, "I never said we were going to be a conventional magazine."

Buyers will undoubtedly respond with their own take on the subject.

-Joe Pollack

Kudos to Toroian

Having spent a lot of time and space in this publication ripping the lame efforts of St. Louis Post-Dispatch radio reporter Diane Toroian, it's only fair to note good work in one of her recent efforts.

Toroian put together a fairly accurate picture of the chaos created by management decisions at KTRS. To her credit, she did not blindly print all the self-serving quotes she was handed by Tim Dorsey, nor did she spare any egos in showing the ridiculous decision of one of the fired morning personalities who worked without a signed contract, and who (she pointed out) has spent a lot of his career being fired and unemployed.

But a good radio columnist would have pointed out the fallacy perpetrated by station board member Bill Frisella. He was quoted as saying, "There may have been mistakes in the past, but there have been a lot of highs-getting the [broadcast rights to the] Blues..." To call this a "high" and to leave the statement unchallenged shows an inexcusable lack of knowledge of the situation.

As has been pointed out in this publication, executives of the St. Louis Blues were clearly unimpressed with the listenership delivered by KTRS, a station whose nighttime signal leaves much to be desired. For the first time that anyone can remember, other stations in outlying areas of the market are carrying Blues' broadcasts in an effort to recapture some of the audience lost when the play-by-play contract went to KTRS. While the station may be happy with its nighttime audience, it appears the Blues were not.

In an unrelated postscript, Toroian should use her market knowledge to tell someone at the Post that it's no longer necessary to include WXTM in its radio listings at 104.1. That station and format have been off the air since October, replaced by WMLL.

-Frank Absher

White Americans win!

The so-called St. Louis European American Rights Organization (formerly N.O.F.E.A.R.) is declaring victory with the removal of "Imagine St. Louis" from the Sunday edition of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

John Pommer, president of the group with ties to former Klansman David Duke, said European Americans can declare victory in the fight to get the Post to abandon its one-sided approach to economic, political and racial issues.

Pommer said advertising boycotts organized by the St. Louis European American Rights Organization have caused the Post to jettison its leftist "Imagine" section in favor of a "NewsWatch" section that will provide various points of view.

For too long, Pommer declares, the Post has been a strong "proponent of increased third-world immigration into the U.S., blind advocacy for Democratic Party politicians and election candidates, the virtues of multiculturalism, and a positive portrayal of miscegenation."

-Don Corrigan

Changing Times

Gail Collins, a splendid, well-focused op-ed columnist for The New York Times for the past few years, will become editor of The Times' editorial page in August, succeeding Howell Raines, who has been promoted to executive editor. Collins had been an editorial writer before taking the columnist role.

Bill Keller, who apparently finished second to Raines in the race for the title, has received his own reward. He will take over a Frank Rich-type assignment, writing a monthly, lengthy column for the op-ed page, and occasional pieces for The New York Times Magazine.

Keller reportedly cheered the new job, pointing out that he would have the same kind of freedom as Rich, but that he would not have to write about Stephen Sondheim.

-Joe Pollack

Slipping salaries

Once upon a time, when the St. Louis Post-Dispatch was a great newspaper wholly owned by Joseph Pulitzer, it not only ranked among the top 10 in the world, but also was in the top five in base salaries paid to union members.

In those halcyon days, it also was said, with far more truth than poetry, that when the Post hired a new reporter, and shocked him (unfortunately, rarely her at that time), by beginning salary discussions at a figure 30, or 40, or even more, dollars above Guild minimums, the newcomer would be told, "Son, if you're good enough to work for the Post, you're good to enough to be paid above scale."

Both rankings have skidded badly.

Today, according to a TNG-CWA compilation, the Post salary minimum for reporters and photographers with five years of experience is $1,054 per week, now 15th on U.S. minimum salary scales.

The New York Times is tops with $1,416.83, and the Boston Globe, owned by The Times, is second at $1,260.16. Three newspapers tie for third, with the Chicago Sun-Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News all at $1,227.47, with the Philly papers reaching that level in September and the Sun-Times a month later. The Wall Street Journal rounds out the top half-dozen at $1,201. The Times reporters reach top scale after two years, and it's six years to the top at The Wall Street Journal, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and San Jose Mercury-News. All others are five-year tracks.

Other newspapers in the top 14, some going to new levels in the next few months, are: Honolulu Advertiser, $1,117.27 in September; Minneapolis Star Tribune, $1,114.25; St. Paul (Minn.) Pioneer Press, $1,112.63 in September; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, $1,105; Honolulu Star-Bulletin, $1,104.49 in September; Cleveland Plain Dealer, $1,103.21; San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News, $1,080.38; Baltimore Sun, $1,069.

-Joe Pollack

Cable's flagship market

While the St. Louis area continues to shed corporate headquarters like a Persian cat drops fur in July, Charter Communications Inc. promises to keep its headquarters in the Gateway City. That promise comes on the heels of Charter's $1.77 billion acquisition of AT&T's cable systems in the city of St. Louis and 97 other communities in Missouri and Illinois.

Charter CEO Jerry Kent said St. Louis will now become "Charter's Flagship Market," a prototype for the rest of the country as to what the fast lane of the Information Highway can be. With the AT&T buyout in St. Louis, Charter's customer base increases to 505,000 in the bi-state region and grows to more than 7 million subscribers nationwide.

Now the nation's fourth largest cable conglomerate, the company is one of many controlled by billionaire Paul Allen of Microsoft fame. While the Des Peres-based Charter is now the only cable game in town, the cable firm's executives have made another promise to St. Louis-not to act like a monopoly.

Some longtime critics of Charter's cable pricing in St. Louis County might find that promise a bit dubious. Cable TV subscription costs have more than quadrupled since the county was first wired for cable about 20 years ago-not the kind of product hikes normally found in competitive industries.

-Don Corrigan

Wined and dined influence coverage

By Joe Pollack

But don't get me wrong; I love Hollywood," was the way Sidney Skolsky, a long-time syndicated Hollywood gossip writer, would close his columns.

Obviously, the insiders, huge powerhouses in the Hollywood community through the years, had some of the greatest, and most rewarding, relationships with studio executives and press agents.

Those days are mostly gone, days when Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons, the 1-2 punch of gossip writers, would receive Christmas gifts by the truckload, as studios sent massive amounts of clothes, whiskey, furniture and almost any other collectible or resalable item. Vernon Scott, a retired reporter who covered Hollywood for United Press in the 1940s and '50s, recently told The New York Times how one columnist would have studios refurnish his house every year-one room per studio.

That gold rush is mainly over. I recall some splendid junkets in my days as a film critic at the St. Lous Post-Dispatch, with trips to England, France, Vancouver and many sites around the nation (the Grand Canyon, Meteor Crater, Miami, San Francisco, New Orleans, to name a few) in addition to the regular runs to Hollywood and New York. It was a good life if you didn't mind giving up weekends in exchange for sitting through awful movies and listening to the boring people who made them, or starred in them. And they still go on. Walt Disney tossed a $5 million party in Honolulu for the premiere of "Pearl Harbor," the early leader in the Dog of the Year competition, and the Post's Joe Williams was there along with the U.S.S. Stennis, an aircraft carrier provided by the Navy.

Fun and games and nonsense, which I considered the junkets to be, are one thing. Stealing and taking money under false pretenses are another, and that has caused a major furor at the Hollywood Reporter, where editor Anita Busch, executive film editor Beth Laski and labor writer David Robb all quit in protest because the trade paper's management quashed a story exposing the paper's gossip columnist.

The columnist, George Christy, writes twice a week on Hollywood parties and other notably serious matters, but has now been placed on leave.

The three staffers quit because Robert J. Dowling, the publisher, refused to run a story by Robb, citing Christy's unethical behavior and demands on studios for limousines to screenings, free office space and other perks. The story was run later, and also brought the Screen Actors Guild, a union of actors, into an investigation of Christy apparently earning screen credits for work he did not do. The screen credits, however, allowed him to qualify for the SAG welfare program and its pension.

Christy and the producers claim that his work ended up on the cutting room floor, but that he did film the scenes.

But producers Brad Krevoy and Steve Stabler, whose films include "Dumb and Dumber," were investigated by SAG in 1993 and 1998, and returned money to the union pension fund each time because Christy and others apparently received health care for which they were not entitled. The Los Angeles Times reports that Dowling put Christy's column, "The Great Life," on "indefinite hold," but does not seem certain whether or not Christy will be paid.

The columnist said he will be paid, and that the "hold" was his idea so that he can take "a small leave of absence" and straighten out the SAG matter. It may be a situation that will spread to other studios and other reporters.

The Hollywood Reporter's Dowling did a piece for his own publication in which he wrote that "(Anita) Busch and (David) Robb had personal agendas that ultimately led to a glaring lack of objectivity in their investigation of George Christy."

This was before he decided to suspend Christy's column.

This situation has some interesting side effects. For many years, publicists tried to get stories on their employers' actors, using reporters who were in the same soft-hearted mode as sports writers. The former never wrote about events that happened off the sound stage; the latter never dealt with anything that occurred outside the stadium. And then the "chipmunks" invaded the nation's press boxes, and more acerbic reporters joined the ranks of film critics and Hollywood junketeers.

Most larger newspapers rarely accept commercial junkets these days, paying at least the air fare for their reporters who cover film or television. Governmental or military junkets may be a different story.

But it's tough-especially for magazine writers-to get a lengthy interview with a Hollywood star today unless the writer has a track record of soft and favorable stories about celebrities. Press agents seem to spend most of their time keeping clients away from the media.

The change is one of many we've seen over the last half of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st. Are they for better? For worse?

Hard to answer, but once again we realize that the only constant is change, and there undoubtedly is more ahead.

Radio History

Taking A Radio Show On the Road

By Frank Absher

In the 1930s and '40s, dueling furniture stores in St. Louis created a unique situation in programming, the true travelling radio show.

Uncle Dick Slack sponsored several shows on KMOX that featured full hillbilly bands, complete with staff comedian. The competition, Carson, Union, May, Stern had to do something on the radio to compete. They created their own hillbilly band, variously known as the Carson Cowboys and Carson's Melody Roundup. But KMOX already had all the hillbilly music it wanted, and Dick Slack wisely maintained that monopoly. Carson's had to find another broadcast outlet for its band. Itchose three different stations.

This was fine with the stations. KSD, WEW and KWK were glad to get the advertising income. WEW even ran the show Monday through Saturday, but KSD and KWK wanted only Saturday morning broadcasts. This is where the fun began.

Pat Pijut has firsthand memories of the Carson Cowboys, having performed on the show in 1942 and 1943. She was 11-years-old at the time. Her sister, who was also a regular on the program, was 18. "I had been to the radio stations and watched her on the show with my parents when I was younger. I assumed later that Grandpappy Jones [the bandleader and program emcee] had talked to my mom about me coming on the program," she said.

The performers had to do three different shows on three different stations every Saturday morning. "Those who were on the first half of the show would arrive at the Chase Hotel at about 5:30 in the morning," says Pijut. There was little rehearsal or preparation. "We would find out what song we'd be performing when we got to the KWK studios. My sister and I would go over into a corner or into another studio and go through the song a couple times. For some reason they would only let me sing hymns on KWK because I was so young."

At 6 a.m. the KWK show began and the staff who would be performing on the second half arrived-usually. As soon as the first half of the program was finished, that group of musicians would hop into a taxi and rush up Lindell to the campus of St. Louis University and the studios of WEW. There, new songs would be assigned and, if there was time, there'd be a quick rehearsal, and they were on the air again. More often, says Pijut, "we'd get there, somebody would start the theme song, and we'd be on." The first program on KWK wrapped up, the second staff would rush to WEW.

The piggyback staffing would take place again, including another rushed taxi ride up Olive to the KSD studios at the corner of 12th and Olive in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch Building. It was a long, hectic workday for the 12 or so members of the group, but when the broadcasts ended, there was a chance to pick up some extra money in outside personal appearances. Pijut says the youngsters weren't involved in those. They were, however, part of the staff on the daily broadcasts on WEW for awhile. She says her teacher at Mount Pleasant School would let her out of class a little early so she could get to the studios in time to go on the air.

For all her work, Pat made $10 a week, which was welcome income for her family in South St. Louis during the early years of World War II. But after a couple years her folks decided it was too much for the youngster.

Today she has pleasant memories of those times as one of the few remaining veterans of the furniture store radio wars.

AM/FM

Mack says The River flowing wrong direction

By Lynn Venhaus

Jason Mack has left The River's morning show (WVRV 101.1 FM) because he didn't like the new direction the programming was headed, which sounds like a clone of many other morning shows in the market.

"I really can't say too much about it," Mack said. "I disagreed with the direction of the morning show, so we agreed to end it before things got too involved."

One year ago Mack lost his afternoon drive-time gig at The Rock (97.1 FM) when Emmis Communications dismantled the format, switching it to FM talk in the Sinclair-Emmis-Bonneville megadeal. He then started at The River doing weekends, then was partnered on the morning show a few months ago. "I think Bonneville is a great company to work for," he noted.

Mack was not in favor of adding more comedy "Zoo" type material, especially with the show's good ratings for 'more music mornings.' More bits and set-up things were planned.

"I'm a firm believer in 'say something important or play a song.' Our ratings were the highest in the history of mornings on that frequency, so why mess with it? We played nine songs an hour and still had time to talk about relative things in the news/entertainment/lifestyle arena."

Mack disagreed with the cutback on music. "I don't mind interviewing people who are coming to town, but to talk to someone just to talk to someone is a waste of time to me," he said.

Mack said he decided it was time to move on and explore other options. "I am not in the business to pretend I am somebody I'm not. If I'm not happy, how can the listener feel happy about my performance? The split was mutual since my unhappiness would hurt the show."

The River line-up has remained stable the last few years, even with the ownership switch. Trish Gazall moved over from The Point (KPNT 105.7 FM) for mornings but the rest of the crew has been a solid mix of savvy veterans-Vic Porcelli, David Myers, Karess Carter, and Ken Williams.

• • •

Iowa native Mike Grimm starts July 23 as the newest member of the KMOX (1120AM) sports team. He's been hired to fill Randy Karraker's post-serving as sports reporter, anchor of afternoon sportscasts and host the station's Sports Open Line.

Grimm has been sports director at WHO Radio in Des Moines and sister station WMT in Cedar Rapids since 1993. He was named Iowa's Sportscaster of the Year by the National Sportswriters and Sportscasters Association.

"We are very excited to have someone who fits so well with KMOX. Mike is very knowledgeable about sports, follows our teams closely and understands the commitment required on a station like this," commented Tom Langmyer, KMOX director of programming and operations. "Great broadcasters are well rounded and Mike's depth has shown in his hosting of a daily news-oriented talk show, along with his sports duties."

Grimm has done play-by-play as the voice of the Hawkeyes women's basketball team and has done color for select Big Ten Iowa men's basketball games. He also worked as a program assistant on the Minnesota Twins radio broadcasts at WCCO in Minneapolis.

"The opportunity to work at America's Sports Voice is a dream I've had since I was a kid listening to Cardinals games in Eastern Iowa," Grimm said in a statement. " I've been lucky enough to cover the Hawkeyes for seven years at Iowa's two biggest AM radio stations. What a thrill it is to come to St. Louis and KMOX to fulfill my lifelong dream after planning and working so hard to get here."

• • •

They're ba-a-ck.

Lightning rods Richard "Onion" Horton and Mark Kasen have hooked up with a few other colorful and controversial folks on the live Internet radio web site, www.newblackcity.com. (You need Windows Media Player to listen.)

Other contributors include Pete Parisi, Vladimir Noskov, a.k.a. The Mad Russian, former East St. Louis Mayor Carl Officer and attorney Eric Vickers.

Maurice Scott is the sports director and former St. Louis Rams player Mike Jones is one of the investors.

The station is targeted to a black community who wants to talk issues.

The station's mission statement reads: "NewBlackCity radio concludes that if an end to racism requires a giant step towards white awareness, we may be arguing for another century. Still, the place to start is where we are at."

To that end, the black and white staff of NewBlackCity.com discusses the tough issues, the controversial issues, and even the fun issues with great irreverence and little inhibition.

The station's contributors are a mix of conservatives and liberals, and there's still that element of people who thrive on chaos and who don't mind antagonizing an audience.

Horton and Kasen, who've been a team for the better part of a decade, hope to simulcast the web site audio on a local radio frequency someday. They would like to transform KSLG (1380 AM), a station they once were on, into their pet project.

The duo met during their days at WGNU (920 AM) before KWK. They recently won a lawsuit they filed in 1998 alleging wrongdoing. A St. Louis jury decided that the pair's lawyers were at fault and sided with them. They had charged that their attorneys, Lee Platke and Stuart Berkowitz, had undermined their plans to purchase a station.

It's now up to a circuit court judge to determine whether Horton and Kasen can exercise an option to buy the station for $750,000.

• • •

The new start date for John Carney's as-yet-unnamed Sunday night

entertainment program is July 15 on KMOX Radio.

Carney said he is still putting the pieces together but envisions a segment with a TV reviewer, a movie critic, a Hollywood reporter, a technology guru, and several celebrity profiles.

"The profiles will feature interview bits with material from the artist (their songs or comedy)," he said. A few of the first scheduled are Michael Palin (Monty Python), Gene Simmons (Kiss), Tony Bennett and Jerry Seinfeld.

"Even though we won't be doing a call-in trivia show anymore, I want to have some interaction with the listeners, so we'll be playing some games," he said. "There will be song medleys that listeners will have to guess tunes. We are going to have some off-the-wall trivia questions and the new show is bringing back my favorite game, 'Break it and win.' Listeners call up and break something live over the phone. Past winners have smashed pictures of old lovers, Partridge Family records, and one guy broke the law (he went out to get his paper buck naked)-we don't encourage."

• • •

When the National Association of Broadcasters present the Marconi Radio Awards Sept. 7, only one local nominee is among the competition.

Lizz Brown, who hosts the 6 to 9 a.m. show on WGNU, has been nominated as Personality of the Year - Large Market.

Her competition includes Bill Cun-

ningham of WLW in Cincinnati, Beth McDonald and Bill Austin of KESZ in Phoenix, Armando Perez-Roura of WAQI in Miami, and Mike Rosen of KOA in Denver.

Brown, who once was an attorney in the public defender's office, isn't afraid to speak her mind on social issues.

She's been doing "The Morning Wake-Up Call" for six years.

• • •

KLOU (103.3FM) has moved the popular "Oldies Countdown" from late evening to Sunday mornings. Smash does the hosting duties for the nationally syndicated series.

• • •

While Dana Daniels recuperated from surgery, she was not MIA all that much from her midday deejay duties at KLOU, where she's also program director. She handled her shift sometimes from her home. Now there's a trooper.

Media/Politics

Danforth Foundation under-reported

By Terry Jones

Have a powerhouse idea? Something that will really make a difference? Is money all that's keeping your plan from being a success?

If the idea promises to make money, you can visit a venture capitalist.

They're prepared to back risky proposals if there is an opportunity for a boffo payoff. Once concentrated on the two coasts, St. Louis now has several. So you can shop your plan among the locals.

But what if your dream will improve society but, alas, not make a buck. You might try state or local government. Occasionally policy entrepreneurs can convince ambitious politicians that their programs can help advance the elected officials' career. That's the path Mildred Winter took with the Parents as Teachers initiative more than two decades ago. Then Governor and now Senator Christopher Bond signed on and the alliance has benefited both.

What began as a pilot project at a few Missouri sites now operates in all 50 states and has both national and local funding.

Cash-strapped governments in an anti-tax environment are tough sales, though, and the competition with entrenched interests over a fixed pie is intense. It's your idea against the highway lobby and the K-12 educational establishment and all the other capital veterans.

What's left and what have become central in sponsoring social innovations are philanthropic foundations. With no fiduciary responsibility to investors and no political binds from electorates, they are free to follow their vision about achieving a better life for the community. With millions locally and billions nationally, they have the money to make a difference.

In the St. Louis region, the Danforth Foundation is the most prominent case in point. This is especially so because, in 1997, it decided to shift its focus from K-12 schooling nationally to, in its words, "concentrate ... exclusively on the St. Louis metropolitan area ... (and) to include civic and community issues other than pre-collegiate education."

In the subsequent three years, it has committed about a quarter of a billion dollars for projects, some of which will take a decade to accomplish.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has not ignored this outpouring. Between June 1997, when Danforth announced its switch in priorities, and this June, the paper ran 61 news stories about Danforth grants for 26 different initiatives. What is disappointing about the coverage is that has been scattered and superficial.

Here are the particulars:

(1) The Foundation's role is represented passively as in "the project/initiative/program/building is funded by grants from ... and the Danforth Foundation."

With one exception (a May 29 story quoting Senior Vice President Bob Koff on the Vashon/Jeff-Vander-Lou effort), Danforth officials are not quoted about why they choose to invest in any particular project, presumably because no reporter ever bothered to ask them. These are precious civic investment funds. Where they do go-and the reasoning behind those decisions-has significant implications for the region.

(2) Almost all the projects receive just one or two stories. Only the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center and St. Louis 2004 have had five or more articles which explicitly mention the foundation's funding. For most, it's boilerplate coverage: Organization X receives funds to do Project Y.

There is seldom a follow-up to see how the dollars are being used and what difference they are making.

(3) Some grants receive no coverage. Here are $50,000-plus allocations made between June 1, 1999 and May 31, 2000, which had no news story announcing or explaining them: American Youth Foundation ($539,750), City Academy ($1,200,000), Missouri Legislative Forum ($97,514), Greenways 2004 ($300,000), Harris-Stowe State College ($1,000,000), Manchester Craftsmen Guild ($100,000), Metropolis St. Louis ($109,000), Saint Louis University ($2,500,000), St. Louis Internship Program ($159,405), and State of St. Louis Foundation ($280,600).

(4) There has been no effort to analyze the foundation's policy approach. If a governmental body had announced a $250 million plan to improve the region, the media would and should have been all over the story, asking why money was being spent on this and not on that. There has been no comparable coverage for the Danforth plan.

The foundation itself is not to blame for this weak effort. Its annual reports explicitly list the allocations and provide some rationale for them.

They would be an excellent starting point for stories about the strategies and their execution. Foundation officials, here and elsewhere, typically and understandably maintain low profiles. It's tough enough saying no to those you have invited to ask for funds. Publicizing your deep pockets would only create more rejections. But they do answer phone calls and they believe fervently in their work.

On some occasions, the Post has referred to the Danforth Foundation as a "private charity." It is neither private nor a charity. The Danforth family, to their eternal credit, have chosen to devote a substantial part of their wealth to improving the community. In return, the federal and state government have granted them and other foundations special tax advantages, making the funds quasi-public. For its part, the foundation has chosen not to make this a "100 Neediest Cases" allocation-that would be charity-but instead has challenged itself to devise strategies for creating positive change.

As the largest source of civic capital in the St. Louis region, the Danforth Foundation merits regular and systematic attention from the media. Its deeds, all well-intentioned, should neither go unrewarded nor unexamined.

Sports/Media

NBA no longer team sport

By Joe Pollack

Watching the NBA playoffs and then paying attention to the sports coverage up to the draft make me worry about the future of basketball. Does it have one? Or will it disintegrate into a decade-long one-on-one competition between ever-taller and ever-younger men?

After more than a half-century in and around sports, I have learned several things (whether they are important is a different subject). One is that the game is never over. No matter how many times the fat lady sings, or the coach is doused with Gatorade, or a trophy from Tiffany's is presented, the game is not over-there's another one tomorrow or next week or next year.

Not many people realized it at the time, but Duane Thomas, a fine Dallas Cowboys running back of many years ago, said it best one day after a Super Bowl practice. He was being interviewed by a mob of sports writers but he did not seem passionate, or even very excited by the coming event. He talked quietly about practice and the game. Finally a writer asked why he was so calm. Didn't he realize that he was about to play in the ultimate football game?

Thomas looked the writer in the eye and replied, "If this is the ultimate game, then why are they going to do it again next year?"

The more I think about it, the more convinced I become that Michael Jordan was far more than the greatest basketball player who ever lived. He may have been the game's worst nightmare, the man who changed it from five-on-five to one-on-one, who eliminated teamwork and replaced it with a contest that was an embodiment of individual skills. On one level, there's nothing wrong with that, but on another, that's not basketball, that's not the game invented by Dr. James Naismith. It was supposed to be a team sport, a non-contact sport, but Jordan turned it into a "give me the ball and get out of my way" contest, with his teammates in one corner of the court while he maneuvered against an opponent.

Oh, his teammates took occasional shots, but their primary job was to get Michael the ball and stand back so he could excel.

With no one on hand to succeed Jordan, the game moved in a slightly different direction, toward men like Shaquille O'Neal, giants who could dominate in their own way, standing close to the basket, receiving a pass that an opponent was not tall enough to intercept, then muscling their way to the hoop for an easy dunk or layup. Again, give me the ball and get out of the way.

And at the same time, smaller, quicker men found themselves with no way to dribble the ball through this human redwood forest on their way to the basket, the way the rules require. So they started picking it up and running with it, and the officials, undoubtedly influenced by team and league officials and the television networks, permitted the tactic. This style has been growing for nearly a decade. When the season starts again, probably in a week or two, watch a player drive toward the basket for a layup. He will take two, three, even four steps between his final dribble and the release of the ball, and this is especially true of a dunk. Big men do it, too. Watch them around the basket, and watch them bring a new dimension to this "non-contact sport."

The glamour of the dunk brought its own changes, and the most glamorous dunks could not be executed after just a single step, which is all the rules allow after the final dribble. Many could, but not the fancy ones.

And the fancy ones drew people, or at least they did for a while.

But it seems that these tactics are losing their spell. NBA attendance and television ratings have been stagnant or falling. New stadiums do not seem to be the answer, so now we get the march of the children. It's different from the Children's Crusade, the disaster designed by our own patron saint, King Louis IX of France, as part of the first faith-based initiative back in the Middle Ages. It won't kill thousands of children, the way Louis did, but it's bound to destroy many.

Sending these high school kids into the NBA wars is futile. Can you see an 18-year-old kid, even if he has gone to five high schools, defending against O'Neal-and giving away more than 100 pounds at the same time? And I'll wager that while these kids need good coaching, men who can help them mature as human beings as well as basketball players, they need tutors more. They need people who can teach them how to read and write, how to count their money.

I don't trust agents (I watch "Arli$$" on HBO), but I'm not among those who consider agents the root of all evil. Agents are a creation of management. They arrived to keep athletes or actors from being totally squashed by corporate power and money. Unions are the same, a creation of management. If there were such a thing as fair and honest management, in sports as in business, there would be no need for agents or unions to speak and act on behalf of the working stiff.

There seems to be another point that these Lords of Basketball have forgotten. Over the years, when young players came into the NBA, they had a history of college games, NCAA tournaments, statistics and the like, material that sports writers could weave into their stories. High school players, no matter how good they are, have no history, no background, no stories to tell.

They don't have much to say that is interesting. Oh, they can talk about buying houses for Mom, cars for themselves, jewelry for their posses, but they have no stories to tell, no experiences to relate, not even any college scholarships to endow.

The average high school athlete is not an easy interview; he may want to be helpful, but he just does not have much to say. And his team does not have a very promotable rookie.

To me, the idea of drafting high school students, just because they're tall, ahead of someone like Shane Battier, veteran of four years at Duke, ACC and NCAA tournament pressure and good coaching, is simply ludicrous. I didn't like covering high school basketball when I was a sports writer, and I did the Mississippi state high school tournament and parts of the old Normandy Christmas tournament in St. Louis some years later.

It's another great example of the follow-the-leader mentality shown by professional sports organizations, and it's a dumb way to operate.

Media/Law

Internet age strikes a blow for freelancers

By Ken Jones

The U.S. Supreme Court met the Internet Age in a June opinion that defines the rights of freelance authors in electronic versions of their articles.

In the first case squarely addressing e-commerce issues, New York Times Co. v. Tasini, the Court ruled that publishing companies violated the copyrights of freelancers when their articles were sold electronically on databases owned by companies like LEXIS-NEXIS.

The plaintiffs in the case were several writers-including Mary Kay Blakely, a professor at the University of Missouri-who claimed The New York Times, Newsday, Time Inc. and other defendants violated the federal Copyright Act when the articles were made available on the databases without compensating their authors.

To understand the basis of the ruling you almost have to be a philosophy major, since the opinion talks about the "dualities" of copyrights and how they "subsist" in more than one owner at the same time.

But here goes-the Court emphasizes in its opinion the dual nature of copyright ownership under the federal Copyright Act. In 1976 the act was amended to make clear that a freelance author retains a copyright in an article published in a newspaper, magazine or other "collective work." Previously, the act protected an author's rights only if the article was printed with a copyright notice-which most big publishers refused to do.

Practically, the 1976 amendment means that an author whose article is published in The New York Times can also sell the article to the Washington Post without permission from The Times.

At the same time the act gives the publisher a copyright in the article as it appears in the collective work, and allows the publisher "the privilege of reproducing and distributing the contribution of that particular collective work, any revision of that collective work, and any later collective work in the same series."

So while the act gives rights to both author and publisher, the obvious intent of the act is to give more protection to authors in controlling how the article is subsequently published.

The problem with the LEXIS-NEXIS database and similar electronic compendiums is that an article is not stored as part of the newspaper in which it originally appears, but is searched for and called up independently, without reference to the other articles that appear in the same edition of the newspaper.

For example, the Court's opinion pointed out that if a LEXIS-NEXIS user searches for articles written by Mary Kay Blakely, the database would return the following information: the name of the publication (e.g., The New York Times), date (Sept. 23, 1990), section (Magazine), initial page number (26), headline or title ("Remembering Jane"), and author (Mary Kay Blakely). There would be no other reference to the other articles that appeared in the Sept. 23 issue of The New York Times.

As explained by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, each article "appears as a separate, isolated story without any visible link to the other stories published in the same newspaper or magazine edition. NEXIS does not contain pictures or advertisements, and it does not reproduce the original print publication's formatting features such as headline size, page placement (e.g., above or below the fold for newspapers), or location of continuation pages."

As a result, Ginsburg says, it's impossible to swallow the publishers' argument that an online article is simply a "revision" of or a method of "reproducing" the collective work-rights granted to publishers under the act. It's simply a subsequent publication and sale of the individual article without compensation to the author.

She says the fact that "each article bears marks of its origin in a particular periodical ... suggests the article was previously part of that periodical. But the markings do not mean the article is currently reproduced or distributed as part of the periodical. The databases' reproduction and distribution of individual articles simply as individual articles would invade the core of the authors' exclusive rights under" the act.

To make the point more obvious to us mere mortals, Ginsburg draws an analogy with a library that contains hard copies of The New York Times' articles but not complete editions of the old papers. If a patron asked the librarian to retrieve all articles written by Mary Kay Blakely, the "inhumanly speedy librarian would search the storage room and provide copies of the articles" matching the request, but not the whole Sept. 23, 1990, paper in which the Blakely article appeared.

Ginsburg says: "Such a storage and retrieval system effectively overrides the authors' exclusive right to control the individual reproduction and distribution of each article."

And although the Court doesn't quite say this, the issue of fairness permeates the whole opinion: everybody is making money off the freelance article-including the big newspaper companies and the electronic databases-except the author.

The publishers' main defense in the lawsuit was one we often see in cutting-edge cases-life as we know it will end if the court sides with the plaintiffs. Specifically, they argued that "a ruling for the authors ... will punch gaping holes in the electronic record of history" because the publishers would be forced to remove thousands of freelance articles from electronic databases. And their arguments were bolstered by friend of the court briefs filed by the likes of historian Ken Burns.

But Ginsburg pooh-poohed that argument. "Notwithstanding the dire predictions from some quarters ... it hardly follows from today's decision," she said, that the articles must be removed from the databases-the parties can come to an agreement on compensating the freelance authors for electronic versions of their articles. "In any event," she concluded, "speculation about future harms is no basis for this Court to shrink authorial rights Congress established" in the Copyright Act.

We can expect that the Supreme Court will continue to weigh in on issues arising from the Internet revolution, such as privacy rights and liability for defamation via the web. And if this first Internet law case is any indication, the Court will also continue to ignore "dire predictions" and will base its decisions in sound legal reasoning and traditional rules of statutory construction.

Postmortem on Post's 'Imagine'

By Don Corrigan

In some ways, the final edition of "Imagine St. Louis" in the July 1, 2001, edition of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch was as bizarre as the first edition of "Imagine" that debuted on April 11, 1999.

The final edition of "Imagine" featured the paper's Weatherbird destroying the top-of-the-page logo of the section with a sledge hammer. A half-page photo above the fold showed Post staffers waving to readers outside the downtown headquarters.

The photo's cutline said staffers were "greeting readers via this special section." But they might as well have been bidding good riddance to the final installment of "Imagine," an ill-fated experiment in public journalism that came to represent the gobbledygook mindset of its mastermind, Cole Campbell.

Campbell tried to impose a "civic culture" on the Post during his brief tenure as editor of the St. Louis daily. It's a culture that purportedly inspires journalists to connect with readers as citizens rather than as spectators.

Through this "connectedness," readers and journalists can come together "to imagine new possibilities and outcomes for the community," according to self-appointed gurus of public journalism such as Campbell.

How ironic that in the very last edition of "Imagine," Post editorial management felt compelled to run all the phone numbers of editors and reporters, while snuffing the Readers' Advocate column. Was this action somehow a commentary on the success of "Imagine" in connecting with St. Louis readers?

In the final edition of "Imagine," Campbell's successor, Ellen Soeteber, described the birth of a new section called "NewsWatch" to replace the Campbell prodigy. She acknowledged the past disappointment of readers with Post approaches to news, and resolved to welcome suggestions from the readership.

All in all, Soeteber's claims for the new "NewsWatch" section have been quite modest compared with the fanfare that initiated St. Louisans to the "Imagine" section a little more than two years ago.

The introduction of the "Imagine St. Louis" section drew deep from the well of what former Investigative Reporters & Editors (IRE) executive director Rosemary Armao has referred to as the "cult-like language of public journalism."

Among key phrases in the public journalism lexicon are "working through problems," "atmosphere of public life," "conversations about public life," and "issue-driven conversations." Such terminology was found in abundance in the section introductions penned by Campbell and Robert Duffy, the "Imagine" editor.

Duffy's indoctrination and surrender to the "fluffspeak" of public journalism were obvious in his section introduction entitled, "One Kind of Conversation." Duffy used the term "conversation" in maddening fashion to emphasize that "Imagine" would have a conversation with its readers.

Duffy did, however, soften all this conversation with a new term for public journalism - "charrettes." Duffy said "Imagine St. Louis" would be all about charrettes. The section would provide public space for charrettes. He packed his intro piece with at least a dozen "charrettes" and "conversations." The "charrettes" in "Imagine" would help the citizenry converse and to come to "public judgment" on major community issues.

Imagine's Post-mortem

Now, the charrettes have been silenced. And after two years and three months at the helm of "Imagine," Duffy said he is returning to writing about art and architecture as he did before Campbell arrived to replace editor William Woo in August 1996.

"I essentially ran the thing," said Duffy of the now-defunct "Imagine" section. "I'm very proud of the things we did with it. But I would really rather leave it in the past. I don't want to glorify it. I don't want to apologize for it.

"Nobody pulled the rug out from under me with the section," added Duffy. "I think it became increasingly clear to us that there was a need to go in a different direction. I think it is fair to say that 'Imagine' was not very popular with the staff and they were glad to see the end coming."

When asked if newsroom hostility toward "Imagine" was, in part, due to its reputation as the brainchild of an unpopular editor, Campbell, Duffy balked.

"I wouldn't want to comment on that," said Duffy. "I think it's fair to say that a lot of people are drawing that conclusion."

Although Duffy told SJR that he wanted to put "Imagine" and the controversy surrounding the section behind him, he still could not resist singling out issues he thought the section covered well, nor could he resist explaining the philosophy behind the Sunday experiment.

"We need to think about ourselves in St. Louis as a region," said Duffy. "I think we wanted to take people by the lapels and say: 'Look, you just can't think about your suburban city or your special issue. We all need to work together as a unified community.'

"I wanted to make it clear that none of the issues we face exists in isolation," added Duffy. "It's all intertwined and regional and that's what I hoped the section would point out. I know a lot of people in leadership positions in the community were eager to respond and collaborate with the section. But as far as working some kind of civic magic, the section was certainly incapable of that."

Duffy said expectations for "Imagine St. Louis" were all out of proportion. The rhetoric of public journalism and the hype surrounding the section's introduction contributed to those inflated expectations. The section also suffered a backlash from traditional readers who were furious when "Imagine" replaced the long-standing "News Analysis" section of the Sunday Post.

"I never viewed 'Imagine' as some kind of radical, public journalism experiment," said Duffy. "I looked at it as a way to get some serious public dialogue about education, health care, transportation and the decline of the urban core. I still feel very strongly that these are issues that need to be addressed publicly."

Praise from Pew

While Duffy complains that "Imagine" should never have been tagged as some public journalism experiment, there's no question that the Pew Center for Civic Journalism viewed it in that light. Duffy treated the section in that light as well when he was interviewed for an article in Civic Catalyst, the Center's quarterly for public journalism's cheerleading squads.

In the Pew piece, "Imagine" was praised as public journalism at its best. It was said to be connecting with average citizens. It was giving regular folks a chance for a hearing. It was helping St. Louisans deliberate and come to judgment on issues facing the community.

How well did "Imagine" perform in meeting the public journalism goal of connecting with the average citizen? What topics did it address to make the reader feel like a stakeholder in the community, rather than a mere spectator?

An examination of some headlines, and a short synopsis of the material covered, would indicate the "Imagine" section often fell short of any mission to address needs and concerns of regular citizens. Even more egregious were its failures from a traditional journalistic standpoint: Headlines were rambling and pretentious. Reporting was often shoddy or non-existent. Transcripts of civic leaders' "charrettes" replaced investigation and enterprise.

•A Nov. 7, 1999, "Imagine" was headlined: "The Kiel Opera House is big, beautiful and dark. Ideas abound on what could be the highest and best use for it." The main story and accompanying stories in this issue focused on the glory of yesteryear at the opera house. All of the stories gave short shrift to the behind-the-scenes politics and business competition that have kept the opera house shuttered. None of the stories made a strong case as to why the citizenry, now mostly residing in the suburbs, should care about the fate of downtown's opera house.

• A Nov. 28, 1999, "Imagine" was headlined: "High technology is booming in our region. Entrepreneurs need money to prolong the boom. But what will it take to get them the capital?" It's doubtful that those Joe Six-Packs who still read the Post clutched this section and lamented the plight of high-tech entrepreneurs. "Catalysts" was the overwrought buzz word in this section's copy, as in finding "catalysts" with the bucks to fund future dot.com industries in St. Louis.

• A March 26, 2000, "Imagine" was headlined: "One way to revive downtown might be to build a new museum about American character." The main story focused on the brainstorm of St. Louis attorney Alan B. Bornstein, who arrived at a vision for a Smithsonian-affiliated museum in downtown St. Louis while riding his bicycle. One can only imagine the Average Joe's response to the opening paragraphs of this article: "Can you imagine a new museum downtown, with part of the Gateway Mall as its front yard? ... Might an institution such as that enrich and strengthen the cultural character of the region?"

In fairness to the Post, not all of the "Imagine" editions focused on high-tech, high culture, museums and the arts community. No less than one-half dozen "Imagines" were devoted to education-related issues, which according to recent political opinion polls, rank high among areas of public concern.

At least three of those education-related issues focused on the problem of illiteracy. A worthy topic, but its frequent appearance prompted some observers to ask if Post editors were struggling to find subjects for "Imagine." A professor from Southern Illinois University took aim at the Post's problem-solving on the illiteracy issue. She questioned the Post's wisdom in calling for volunteers to teach the illiterate how to read. She likened it to "calling candy stripers to do surgery."

Imagine a new ballpark

A Nov. 14, 1999 "Imagine" edition was headlined: "The Cardinals say they need a new ballpark soon. They're hoping fans here are more supportive than their counterparts in Minnesota." The main article noted that the Cardinals' management wants a new stadium upwards of $250 million to replace 30-year-old Busch Stadium. The Cardinals want the new stadium to have roughly the same 50,000 seats, but want to have far more premium seats with extras.

The Post sponsored a town hall forum on the new stadium issue at Charlie Gitto's Restaurant, which was chosen because of its baseball history. Only two citizens showed up. A man on the street outside paraded with a sign that said if the owners wanted a new ballpark, they should borrow money from the players to pay for it. In this attempt at a public-journalism style forum, the news people from the Post, and from a television station which came to cover the event, actually outnumbered the citizens who came to discuss the stadium issue.

Citizen letters in the stadium charrette in the following week's paper were not supportive of the Cardinals' demands for a new stadium. Some letters suggested there were far more outstanding priorities for the city. Some letters decried the idea of public tax money going to subsidize a privately owned stadium. Perhaps the most telling letter came from Dale Taylor of St. Louis.

"I would like to know who the media genius is that dreamed up the 'Imagine St. Louis' concept? Is this supposed to make us feel all warm and fuzzy when we pick up our Post? Who cares how John Q. Public feels about Kiel Opera House, or Busch Stadium, and 'how shall we put them to best use?'" asked Taylor.

"The questions you pose week after week imply that your readership have a say in the future of St. Louis. Well, it's time to wake up and smell the coffee, Post-Dispatch. Those decisions will be made in some smoke-filled rooms influenced by hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions than by some goofy imaginative discourse ... So next time you're imagining something, imagine the trees that are being cut down to support your 'exploration of the possibilities for progress and reform in the metropolitan area.' I say let's give the trees a break, and get back to news and analysis that is grounded in reality."

Taylor's admonition was hardly profound, but it was prophetic. Despite public opposition to the idea of wrecking Busch Stadium and building a new taxpayer-subsidized stadium, civic leaders worked out a backroom deal with the Cardinals and announced it with great fanfare this June. So much for "Imagine" charrettes and helping the public come to judgment on important issues.

Letter-writer Taylor exposed one of the fundamental frauds of public journalism: That a newspaper can help the citizenry come to public judgment on an issue that civic leaders will then act upon.

In the case of the Post-Dispatch's public journalism experiment with "Imagine," the fraudulence is only compounded. While goading readers to think about the stadium issue and to engage in charrettes about it, the newspaper company actually bought stock in the Cardinal organization, thereby becoming a party to the backroom dealing for a new, taxpayer-subsidized stadium.

Public journalism? Coming to public judgment? When it comes to covering the St. Louis stadium issue, perhaps "public betrayal" would be a more apt description for the Post, for "Imagine St. Louis," and the so-called journalism reform movement that inspired the Post to experiment with its Sunday paper.

Bare Improvements

By Ed Bishop

Almost anything would have been an improvement. So, the new section that replaced "Imagine St. Louis" in the Sunday, July 8, edition of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch was a step up-but just barely.

Called "NewsWatch," the section is edited by Margaret Wolf Freivogel, one of the best journalists at the Post, and SJR expects the section to improve under her leadership. But the inaugural effort was disappointing. The articles were too long-not too detailed, too long-reflecting the continuing problem of mediocre writing at the Post. And, with the exception of Diane Toroian's piece on the use of the Arch grounds, there was little news or insight in the section.

The lead article, on the patients' bill of rights, borrowed one of the worst aspects of "Imagine"-a headline that asked a rhetorical question. A rhetorical question is the laziest and least-interesting form of headline writing known to mankind. Please, Post editors, stop asking readers questions and start giving them solid, new information. What followed the headline was basically a rehash of information that has been floating around for months. A long sidebar on page B6, by Deirdre Shesgreen, on national healthcare, however, offered some new insight into the overall situation surrounding healthcare legislation. But it, too, was thin. Why not dig a little? For example, why not ask business associations why they oppose national healthcare. It has always been puzzling why businesses, especially small businesses, which have to deal with mountains of paperwork and tons of expense, oppose having the government take the bother and cost of providing healthcare to employees off their hands. I'm sure they have a good answer but what is it?

Inside, it got worse. Harry Levins' piece on boycotts was basically bait and switch. The headline and the large photograph of two African boys who were slaves on cocoa plantations promised analysis on the horrendous situation in West Africa where American candy companies have been buying cocoa beans from outfits that use slave labor. Instead, the article was about why boycotts rarely work. Actually, the article was interesting. But its link to the current situation in Africa was forced. Rather than going out and finding something new about slave labor in the cocoa fields, readers got information Levins found in a book.

Then there's Kevin Horrigan. SJR has always liked Horrigan's work. His old columns on the sports page were raw, funny, sarcastic and fun to read. His work on the radio was equally entertaining. But something's happened to Horrigan's writing. It lacks the old flair. It's dull. SJR is not suggesting that the Post replace him with more Cal Thomas or that idiot Limbaugh brother. But encourage him to take the gloves off and maybe even piss us off.

Now for the good stuff. Graphically, the section was fine. The promise of variety in the section was fulfilled. Besides the stories on the patients' bill of rights, the Arch grounds and boycotts, Kathleen Nelson wrote about the lack of corporate sponsorship for women's sports. Also, the short news items in the margins were fun.

But you know you're got problems when the letters to the editor remain the most interesting part of the section. More insightful analysis, more probing questions, more behind-the-scenes reporting, in short, more news is going to be required before NewsWatch will be what Post editors want it to be.

Confluence works to fill alternative gap

By Alex Posorske

For me it arose from the fact that I'm an anarchist. I believe in undermining authority and all elements of power that give people the ability to dominate someone else. I feel like publishing a newspaper is a good way to empower people."

Or so says Mark Quercus, one of the co-founders of a relatively new addition to that gray area of St. Louis media lingering between the established and profitable party going on at 6358 Delmar and the netherworld of sloppily produced, self-obsessed zines that one can still pick up at random locations around town.

The publication is called Confluence and, as one might pick up from Quercus' publishing rationale, the themes gravitate towards the political, with a decidedly leftist, anti-globalization gut instinct that runs an updated Marxist flag up the pole every morning.

"We deliver a radical critique of the megamachine and never hesitate to kick capitalist ass. 'We serve corporate heads on a platter. Join the feast,'" reads Confluence's masthead.

Recent cannibalistic banquets have included, among many other subjects, a critique of the World Agricultural Forum held here two months ago, an interview with a Missouri prisoner who advocates establishing the minimum wage in prisons and a review of a book focusing on the clitoris that is said to "challenge the 'male-centered, heterosexual model of sexuality.'"

Quercus said he feels Confluence's subjects are all issues that do not receive anywhere near the proper attention in the mainstream media which, being part of the establishment, has a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. With that 1960s-esque idea in mind, he and Louise McKeel started the publication in 1995.

"What's out there right now is a media dominated by corporate interests; a media that is the lap dog of corporate interests," he said. "The St. Louis Post-Dispatch or The New York Times generally report government or corporate sources. Locally we needed something that would really bring out local issues to kind of counteract a lot of the corporate propaganda that we saw out there."

To Quercus, reporters at a corporate setting like the Post are also part of the problem. After all, he said, it takes a certain kind of person to gather the drive necessary to work up the corporate ladder and arrive as a staff writer at a major daily. In his eyes that kind of person, attuned to the 40-hour work week and organizational setting, is more likely to look less critically on a corporation like Monsanto, for instance, one of the larger bogeymen in Confluence's world view.

"They have these ideological blinders on. They see the same way through the same eyeglasses (of the corporation). That just naturally leaves us out," he said. "There's a lot of other pressures on reporters- deadlines, etc. If they can get a story out on the basis of a corporate press release, why not?"

Meanwhile, he said, at Confluence everyone is writing because they want to, not because their salary or career depends on it. And instead of an editor bearing down with a deadline, Confluence is run by an editorial collective that anyone is eligible to join, provided they have written for the paper for a short period of time.

Daniel Romano, who writes for Confluence under the pen name "digger," said the Post and its staff writers are simply comfortable with the status quo and do not have the incentive to drum up stirring exposés of corporate misdeeds.

"It's more than just their advertising (revenue at risk). They're afraid to stir up the muck," he said.

Of course one could easily turn the "ideological blinders" charge around, shoving it into Confluence's face. This is clearly a publication with an ideological agenda.

For example, a recent Romano front-page story entitled "Death Penalty: Justice or Vengeance?" leaves no doubt what Confluence's answer is. No one quoted in the story comes anywhere near claiming that state sponsored executions are justice.

Romano admitted that Confluence has a clear political bent-it would be hard to deny that-but said often times he or other writers will try and get at least some part of the corporate side but find that no one will talk to them.

"Any publication is going to reflect some part of its ideology," he said. "(But) we'll go to Monsanto and they won't talk to us."

In one case, Romano said a Monsanto executive had agreed to talk to Confluence at a set time, but when the reporter arrived, the executive refused to speak at all. Instead, Romano said, any inquiries are usually directed to Monsanto's "PR hacks" who repeat the same lines that are already quoted in the dailies.

In the interest of fairness to Romano, it should be noted that in his recent front-page story on the World Agricultural Forum, the first person quoted is the chairman of the board of directors, Leonard Guarraia, as opposed to an activist speaking against the forum.

Of course whether a publication is balanced is in the end an ethical, academic question. Thomas Paine was not seeking to write balanced, inverted pyramid journalism when he put out Common Sense. The British side did not matter; what mattered was to incite the rabble against those black-hearted, red-coated bastards and actually make a difference.

Since it is probably safe to assume that those at Confluence feel more kinship with Paine than with the city editor at The New York Times, it is fair to ask how well the paper is doing in reaching the proverbial unwashed masses. Are the dirty people listening, or are Quercus, Romano and company preaching the gospel in a large empty church to a couple members of the choir still hanging around due to a lack of anything else to do on a Sunday afternoon?

"We're definitely reaching out to people beyond 'the choir,' as you say," Romano said, citing biotechnology issues as one example.

"I think we've been instrumental in establishing that in the St. Louis area there's a growing number of people who are questioning this technology," he said.

Romano pointed out that the publication came out three times a year when it started in 1995 and now comes out four times a year with 8,000 total issues printed. That number includes about 100 subscribers to the paper.

With a mischievous look in his eye, Romano also noted a Riverfront Times story on the Syndicate Trust Building on Locust Street, which has been slated for transformation into a parking lot, much to the chagrin of local activists. He pointed out that Confluence ran a story on the same issue for its Earth Day issue, with similar photos. Confluence's version came out at least two months before the RFT story.

The paper apparently also pays for itself through advertising, according to the Confluence staff. Scanning through various Confluences one sees a consistent line-up of advertisers, such as the Black Bear Bakery (an organic-type bakery on Jefferson) Subterranean Books in the U-City Loop, and KDHX (88.1 F.M.), among others.

Granted, those are not the most mainstream of all advertisers, but they are consistently giving Confluence money and cannot be completely tied to Confluence's narrow political philosophy. There is some branching out going on.

Romano sees that process continuing with the paper growing in terms of subscriptions and impact as well as reporting skills.

"I think of it not just in terms of quantity, but quality," he said. "A lot of our writers are inexperienced. I try and improve my writing. I'd really like to continue to work for quality, doing more interviews, more research, going to the sources."

Whether that growth happens or not is obviously at the mercy of a number of factors, many of which are out of Confluence's control. But whatever happens, it seems that those at Confluence will escape with at least some small satisfaction of sticking a couple of good ones to the man.

"We've made a space for people to question the status quo," Quercus said.

Media on Media

By FrankAbsher

Last laugh

Remember when WBBM-TV in Chicago cancelled its no-frills newscast and fired anchor Carol Marin? Management said the change was due to poor ratings. Now the ratings are out for the new news broadcasts, and those ratings are down when compared to the no-frills efforts. (Broadcasting & Cable 5/28)

Who knew?

Do you know who Spongebob SquarePants is? Chances are you do if you have a young child in the family. It seems Spongebob and his cohorts on the Nickelodeon cable channel are cleaning up against all the other networks in the number of young Saturday morning viewers. The network's 4.8 rating/21 share is up 17 percent from a year ago. (Broadcasting & Cable 5/28)

No excuse

Sales staffs at CBS stations got the word from the top man: Bad economy is no excuse. Mel Karmazin tossed down the gauntlet, saying, "Most of our sales managers are wimps." He took them to task for wanting to cut ad rates. "There's always somebody who can sell it cheaper." (Electronic Media 6/4)

Cooking numbers

We may see some sudden upward trends in circulation figures for many of the nation's newspapers. The Audit Bureau of Circulations has recently changed its rules to allow papers to count deeply discounted bulk sales as paid subscriptions. This means the newspapers can cut 75 percent off their prices and still consider those sales for ABC figures. The change came after many major papers complained that falling circulation figures made the industry look bad. (Chicago Tribune 5/3)

Close call

Columbia College in Chicago appears to have sidestepped a difficult situation after making a questionable decision. The school announced it had hired former reporter Wade Roberts as acting dean of the journalism school. But the Sun-Times pointed out in print that it had fired Roberts in 1985 after he allegedly made up a story for print. When she heard of the appointment, the head of Columbia's journalism program resigned in protest. In late May Roberts notified the school he would not accept the appointment. (Chicago Sun-Times)

Income flat

It's not a pretty sight these days for some people in radio sales. In the first quarter of 2001 national spot sales are down 20 percent. 1991 was the last year that saw annual revenues drop from the previous year. The top three TV nets also recorded rough news in the first quarter. Compared with the previous year, ABC, NBC and CBS income was flat. (Ad Age 5/7, Electronic Media 5/14)

Revenue enhancement

When it comes to creative motivation, nothing works better than money, and now A&E has found a way to make more money by airing reruns that have been slightly doctored. The network's airings of "Law & Order" now contain product placements edited into the original shows by Princeton Video Image. (Ad Age 5/21)

Mixed bag

The national pastime is a mixed bag for broadcasters this year. Ratings for baseball broadcasts on ESPN are down 14 percent from last year and ESPN 2 saw a drop of 10 percent. At Fox Sports Net, baseball ratings are up 6 percent. Meanwhile, FSN and TNT have seen a drop in basketball ratings, 5 and 17 percent respec-

tively. Hockey ratings are down across the board, 13 percent at FSN; 5 percent at ESPN and 14 percent at ESPN2. (Broadcasting & Cable 6/11)

TV milk carton

Broadcasters in the Dallas/Fort Worth area have been recognized for their development of the Amber Plan. The award from the National Association of Broadcasters commends the program that allows police to use an emergency alert system if they feel a child has been abducted. Officials credit the plan with recovering 10 children. (Broadcasting & Cable 6/11)

Critic's corner

Apparently a Cincinnati theater owner is so angry that a movie critic caught him doctoring a film that he has banned the critic from entering his theaters. CityBeat film editor Steve Ramos exposed Gary Goldman's illicit altering of a sex scene in the adult film "Center of the World." Ramos was told he cannot set foot in either of Goldman's theaters again, not even for critics' screenings. The snipped section showed the use of a lollipop during a sex act. (CityBeat 6/21)

Big radio

Big business is taking big bucks from the radio industry. The annual Duncan's Radio list of gross revenues for the year 2000 shows Clear Channel is once again at the top, with revenues of $3.794 billion, followed by CBS/Infinity at $2.495 billion.

The big difference, though, is in the number of stations contributing to the total. CC has 1,224 while CBS has 184. This means Clear Channel's average station gross is nearly $3.1 million, while CBS's is nearly $13.6 million.

Other group owners on the top 10 list having properties in St. Louis include No. 7 Emmis at $285 million and No. 8 Radio One at $282 million. (Duncan's America Radio)

Commentary

Last December the Swiss multinational Holderbank Financiere Glaris, Ltd announced plans to build one of the world's largest cement plants in northern Ste. Genevieve County. Holderbank (which recently changed its name to Holcim, Ltd.) operates in North America as Holnam, Inc. Although Holcim claims to be concerned about the environment (its web page even includes an environmental mission statement), it is gearing up to destroy 4,000 acres of woods and wetlands on the Mississippi River just south of St. Louis with blasting, dredging for increased barge traffic, and emitting an estimated 75 tons of air pollution per day.

Holcim's environmental legacy is well known, and should be cause for grave concern by citizens of Missouri. From Seattle to Dundee, Mich., Holnam cement factories have been notorious for EPA citations, lawsuits, and citizen complaints. It is difficult to hide wholesale destruction of the landscape, the sounds of blasting, the smell of burning tires, and particulate matter (cement dust) (r) CJed the labor and who collected the profits? Answers to such questions are only beginning to emerge.

In 1999, a list of 2,498 German slave labor companies was displayed on the World Wide Web by the University of Hanover. The list was attributed to research by the International Tracing Service, originally published in 1990. Two of the companies listed were Alsenische Portlandzementfabriken (Itzehoe) and Breitenburger PCF (Lagerdorf), both Holderbank subsidiaries (but not identified as such). In 1997, the U.S. District Court (Eastern District of New York, Judge Edward R. Korman) began probing into the Nazi-era activities of Swiss banks and corporations in connection with a series of class action lawsuits consolidated as Holocaust Victim Assets Litigation. Initial efforts to identify Swiss subsidiaries involved in slave labor were unsuccessful due to lack of cooperation by the Swiss companies; however, a July 26, 2000, memorandum and order by Judge Korman forced the issue.

A Sept. 17, 2000, Associated Press article from Geneva reported that 37 Swiss-owned companies met the U.S. District Court deadline to disclose their involvement in Class II Slave Labor, to protect themselves from separate U.S. lawsuits. According to a Sept. 11, 2000, court document, Holderbank indicated that, in the case of Alsenische and Breitenburger, slave labor was proved, and in a number of other subsidiaries the likelihood of employment of forced labor is very high.

The Court's definition of Slave Labor Class II includes work generally known as 'forced labor' as well as the 'extermination through labor' work more commonly referred to as slave labor.

On April 4, Judge Korman disclosed details for distributing the Swiss banks Settlement Fund of $1.25 billion among five classifications of claimants including slave laborers. Surviving slave laborers who submit applications by September 30, are eligible to receive an initial payment of $500 plus a second payment of up to $500, depending on how many such applications are received. The April 4 court document identifies 22 companies under the umbrella of Holderbank Financiere Glaris Ltd. in the court's Slave Labor Class II list. These were portland cement plants which operated in Germany, Belgium, Austria, and the Netherlands.

Through its belated cooperation with the U.S. District Court and contributions to the Settlement Fund, Holderbank was successful in limiting its financial liability in connection with its activities during the Nazi era. Holderbank is moving forward as the few surviving forced laborers struggle to complete paperwork so that they may receive their tardy (not to mention short) paychecks. Their former slave labor factories Alsenische and Breitenburger merged in 1997 under the name Alsen Ag. As of May 21, Holderbank Glaris Ltd. has renamed itself Holcim Ltd, marking the start of a new chapter in almost 90 years of Holderbank's history.

But, what can citizens learn from the terrible history of giant corporations that have proven that there is literally nothing they won't do to make money? Will we allow politicians to make agreements with them and invite them into our communities? Will we accept at face value their propaganda that they are good, they are green, and they will give us jobs? Will we agree with them that citizens and workers don't need government interference in the form of environmental and labor protection? Will we turn our heads and pretend that it doesn't matter if Holnam gets its way in Ste. Genevieve County?

Charles J. Guenther, Jr. is Professor of Engineering & Technology at St. Louis Community College at Meramec.

MLB wants to own all photos

By Joe Pollack

Newspapers want to own-and resell at their pleasure and their price-all pictures and words they buy from freelancers. Freelancers are very upset, and very powerless. At the same time, newspapers want the right to keep and later sell-at their pleasure and their price-the work of their sports photographers. The four major sports are in an argument, and later, undoubtedly, will be in court trying to decide who owns the intellectual property.

A First Amendment issue? No way.

An issue of profit? Of course.

It makes for a wonderful, and extremely messy, dichotomy, burgeoning with the aroma of irony and the promise of lawsuits.

The New York Times, behaving like the 900-pound gorilla, now wants freelancers to sign over all rights to their work. After The Times has paid for it once (and while The Times pays better than most newspapers, it throws money around as if, in the immortal words of Mike Ditka, it were manhole covers), any resale profits go to The Times, and not to the writer. Photos are a more important issue. Great photographs increase in value, and while a story can be rewritten with enough change in emphasis and style, a photo is as it was when it was taken.

The recent Columbia Journalism Review had a fascinating exchange between a freelance photographer and The Times. He discovered, almost by accident, that The Times was selling one of his photos for a lot of money.

The Times was not sharing profits, and it refused to return the photo, even though the photographer did not want to resell it. Locally, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch Newspaper Guild contract calls for the photographer to get half the proceeds if the newspaper

sells a photo for commercial use. The same shoe is in place for a writer. Many years ago, the Readers' Digest bought, and used, a phrase that I wrote about Charlie Chaplin as part of his obituary. The Post took half.

Eventually, The Times returned the original photo, but the photographer had to humiliate himself along the way.

The other battles between sports and newspapers involve both writers and photographers. Sports want to limit Internet reporters from transmitting what amounts to pitch-by-pitch announcements on the Internet. Baseball, to use that as an example, wants reports sent only every half-inning.

Major League Baseball wants to control both transmission and use of photos, and placed legal restrictions on the back of photographers' passes.

The NFL was doing that in the 1970s, but the rules were honored more in the breach than the observance. When I controlled photographers' passes with the Football Cardinals, I insisted that free-lancers had to have specific assignments, and I didn't make any friends with the policy.

Some newspapers, like The Times, the Dallas Morning News and the Detroit Free Press, said they would ignore the baseball games rather than accept the restrictions. Sounds like a little high-level bluffing, but the matter was resolved for the season, though it's certain to come up again.

If baseball had been as far-sighted as football, much of this controversy would have been eliminated. Many years ago, National Football League Properties was founded. It was a marketing arm of the league, organizing programs and promotions of all sorts. It also made deals with photographers in each NFL city. NFLP bought photos, then acted as a clearing-house for those who wanted to buy photos for commercial use in magazines, books or anything else. NFLP made the deals, collected the funds and paid the photographer. Some are still collecting royalty checks 40 years after the game was played and the photo taken.

According to Rob Raissman of the New York Daily News, the compromise with baseball for 2001 restricts game photos to newspaper stories and for magazines and books-no T-shirts with newspaper logos, for example.

In terms of the NBA, which filed a separate suit against The Times, it was resolved when The Times agreed to add the NBA logo and a link to its web site, and will place the logo in ads for the photos.

The disputes will eventually be resolved, as jurists will begin to distinguish between images used for news reporting and those used for commercial purposes. It is, however, an extremely tricky mine field to cross.

Raissman, obviously no fan of Commissioner Bud Selig and the Lords of Baseball, also wrote, "Selig is using the (photo) credential to advance MLB's own business agenda. This is nothing more than a money grab-a stab at a new revenue stream for MLB."

But when the News sells books of its own photos, that's obviously a step forward for peace, democracy, the American Way and the public good.

Right? Of course right!

More pitches to the audience than to the plate

By Jeff Starck

Because local and national media have entered into huge broadcasting contracts with professional sports teams, they now have to bring in larger amounts of advertising revenue.

Broadcasters have had to squeeze more money out of their time, and the pitch to listeners has become more important than the pitch on the field.

During the Cardinals-Cincinnati Reds game on June 26-a three-hour and 42-minute broadcast 25 percent of the on-air time-55.5 minutes-was devoted to commercials and plugs.

For SJR's purposes, commercials were commercials, and plugs were any mention of a product or event of a commercial nature, including everything except the station's IDs.

There were a total of 43 minutes of commercials, with 24 60-second spots and 38 30-second spots.

Ford led the way among automotive advertisers, with three ads (three minutes) for various Ford vehicles. Progressive Auto Insurance advertised three times as well, for a minute-and-a-half. The Bank of America (three ads, two minutes and fifteen seconds) and nasally infuriating Ray Vincent of American Equity Mortgage (three ads, two minutes) were tops among financial ads.

Schnucks and Budweiser dominated the food advertising, with six and four ads, four minutes and two-and-a-half minutes, respectively, while the Missouri Lottery (two ads, two minutes) led among all the other advertisers.

But that doesn't count the plugs, those utterances that slip into the broadcast banter surreptitiously. While the plugs are smaller in time, their quantity-43-outnumber regular ads. There's the lineup card, the umpire's lineup, and numerous calls to the bullpen-all sponsored for a mere mention of a product. Many companies are "proud to bring you Cardinals' baseball" or sponsor an inning, a day in Cardinals history, or the seventh-inning stretch-in their name, of course. And, many plugs trumpeted the availability of tickets for the next homestand and promoted the team in general.

A minute-and-a-half was dedicated to a Catholic Youth Charities fund-raising dinner and a Missouri Athletic Club banquet. And don't forget the numerous donations to charity various businesses will make for every double-play the Cardinals turn and every home run the Redbirds hit.

During the past several years, baseball has tried speeding things up because of decreasing audiences not willing to pay attention in this short-attention-span age. Even without the commercial's, the broadcast would've been two hours and 46 minutes.

The average length of a nine-inning, Major League Baseball game in the National League, according to the commissioners office, has risen from two hours and 48 minutes in 1997 to two hours and 55 minutes last year.

In the American League, the game takes even longer, having risen from two hours and 57 minutes in 1997 to three hours last year. That slight difference could probably be attributed to the usage of the designated hitter in the AL. A good chunk of that time, though, is eaten by commercials.

In SJR

10 Years Ago:

• KTVI (Channel 2) education reporter Sharon Stevens was named "Reporter of the Year" by the Greater St. Louis Association of Black Journalists Minority Journalism Workshop.

• Dan Cotter, marketing manager for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, was quoted as saying, "In order to make a new newspaper reader, you have to get to them before the age of 25 or 20."

• An SJR cover story reported that, among the entire sports staff at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, there were only two females and no blacks.

5 Years Ago:

• St. Louis Post-Dispatch editor William Woo announced his retirement from the paper amid speculation he'd been forced out.

• St. Louis mayor Freeman Bosley, Jr. accused local media of presenting a negatively biased view of his administration.

• KWMU-FM dropped all its music broadcasts in favor of a news/talk format relying almost exclusively on NPR and PRI for programs.