National Conference for Media Reform:

About 2,500 people attended the National Conference For Media Reform last month in St. Louis. For most of them, control of the media by big corporations, has become the nation's biggest political issue, and even a threat to our democracy.

Among the attendees were journalists, academics, activists, several Congressmen and women, two FCC commissioners and news consumers upset that Bush administration policies, along with ownership of newspapers and broadcast properties by big companies, have lessened the independence of the media.

The most serious complaint, however, was how most of the media went along with the false information the administration put out to justify the United States attacking and occupying Iraq.

One of the speakers, former talk-show host Phil Donahue, said the media won't tell Americans how many civilians have been killed in Iraq. (Guesses range up to 100,000, but only U.S. casualties are reported, and the press is not allowed to take pictures of their coffins). Donahue said a democracy cannot exist without dissension and free speech, but much of the media has opted to become lapdogs to the powerful.

"We have a Congress that allowed one man to lead us to war," he said. "If we don't dissent, we have wasted the blood of our soldiers."

Moyers responds
Bill Moyers, at the close of the conference, delivered a blistering counter-attack on conservatives who are "obsessed with control" of the media, including the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, where they want to keep independent or liberal voices, such as his, off the air.

"The one thing they loathe more than liberals is the truth. And the quickest way to be damned by them as liberal is to tell the truth," Moyers said.

He blasted Kenneth Tomlinson, a Republican who is chairman of CPB, for secretly paying $10,000 to a consultant to keep track of the political bent of guests on "NOW," the PBS show that Moyers hosted. "They've been after me for years," Moyers said. "They'll be stomping on my grave. Who are they? Obsessed with control, using government to intimidate. They squelch free speech."

Tomlinson also hired a senior White House aide to draw up guidelines for screening content on public radio and television, The New York Times reported last month. And he told a meeting of officials from public television stations their programming should reflect the Republican mandate. Later he said it was just a joke, though no one had laughed.

Strategies for how to reform the media focused on activism, such as letter-writing campaigns or protests of media outlets. Another strategy was to take advantage of independent media outlets and blogs and to make sure that airwaves and broadband Internet access remain available and affordable to the public, rather than under the control of cable and telephone companies.

But the aura of big money, corporate greed and threats by the right-wing to punish non-followers, had cast an uneasy pall over the conference. Reporters complained that big media are getting bigger; that since the fairness doctrine was scrapped broadcasters can now spout their own biases; that government and corporations decide what is news and what isn't; and that as the corporate media pursue profits, they abandon public service.

A grassroots movement
The conference at the Millennium Hotel attracted people from every state and a dozen countries, and they found their concerns were largely the same. The reform conference was the second conference sponsored by Free Press, an organization founded two years ago by Robert McChesney, a communications professor at the University of Illinois-Champaign/Urbana, and John Nichols, an editor at The Capital Times, in Madison, Wisc., and a correspondent for The Nation magazine.

Most of the discussion was about the broadcast media rather than newspapers-a sign of where the media's major influence is and problems lie.

"This is not a liberal cause. Decisions should be made with the consent of the people. This is a movement for all Americans," McChesney said.

Still, some attending the grassroots conference wondered what they could do, besides just talking to themselves. But, like all movements, the Media Reform Movement sees its first priority as getting the word out-the public must understand the problem before they can fix it. So workshops, community discussion groups, letter-writing campaigns and other grassroots organizing have begun. More and more op-ed pieces about corporate ownership of media are appearing and magazines like In These Times, The Nation and SJR itself have devoted whole issues to the problem.

And high-powered academics at some of the country's major universities have turned their attention to number of the interwoven problems that media reform addresses from the Internet to copyright laws.

There were some success stories that Free Press took credit for:

-- The FCC, two years ago, changed a rule to allow big corporations to own even more media outlets. More than 2.3 million people complained to the FCC and government officials. Congress and the courts stopped the rule change, which is still on hold.
-- It helped in getting 40,000 people to contact the FCC about so-called "fake news," propaganda videos sent by government agencies to TV stations. The FCC then warned the stations against presenting the videos as news.
-- It is working to stop payments to media payola pundits who then talk favorably about the issue for which they were paid.

Other issues are campaign finance reform, misinformation about the Iraq War, and shoddy coverage of elections by treating them as horse races in between campaign ads full of half-truths and negative attacks.

Pushing for air time in St. Louis
by Jill Moon

St. Louis is among the top 20 radio markets in the nation but there are no progressive talk radio shows on the air here-yet.

A grassroots organization in St. Louis, ProgressiveTalk.Org, has launched a campaign to restore what they see as balance to the St. Louis public airwaves.

Right now St. Louis is inundated with conservative viewpoints on public airwaves from Bill O'Reilly to Shawn Hannity to Rush Limbaugh.

ProgressiveTalk.Org would like to have Al Franken's Air America on the air in St. Louis as well as other outlets, including the Young Turks, Ed Schultz and Thom Hartmann. Currently, progressive radio shows can only be accessed online or by satellite radio in St. Louis.

Spokesperson Wendy Foster Dickson, who lives in the western suburbs of St. Louis and sells her politically provocative merchandise from her Web site, www.commonsensemom.com, piqued interest in bringing progressive voices to St. Louis radio in February 2005 after writing a letter to the editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. She added a list of progressive talk radio shows and hosts and pointed out none was broadcast in St. Louis.

Dickson made 50 copies of the list and presented it to the St. Louis chapter of "Democracy for America." Beth Maskow, a founding member of the chapter, suggested forming a committee to further the effort.

"Here we are, in the largest democratic city in Missouri-with 80 percent of the city voting for a progressive candidate in 2004-and we don't have a progressive voice on our public airwaves," Dickson says.

Diane Sheehan, a freelance writer and former news writer, editor and special series producer for KMOV (Channel 4), immediately jumped on board with Dickson as a spokesperson for ProgressiveTalk.Org.

Sheehan and Dickson want media reform to spill over into election reform.

"We're feeling instead of just complaining, we want to be effective," Sheehan says. "We chose media because that is where it has to start. Election reform can't happen unless people are informed and that starts with the media. None of the other issues can be addressed without the media."

ProgressiveTalk.Org has a three-part plan to bring progressive voices to St. Louis' public airwaves: getting an audience to sign a petition, getting advertisers to submit letters of interest and approaching select radio station managers to show them there is an untapped market in St. Louis.

"We need to show there is a financial benefit as well as a civic benefit by serving a large market in St. Louis that is not being served," Sheehan says.

The group is in the process of getting signatures and approaching advertisers. The petitioners had collected 646 signatures by June 3.

Franken's Air America will also be available to St. Louisans who have access to the Sundance cable network. Franken's show will be taped as it is broadcast for radio and Internet.

Copyright reformers pose tough questions
by Mark Sableman

The discussion on "copyright reform" began with three eye-opening "questions" about the current legal and economic status quo:

"These are questions that we in the copyright reform movement have been asking the powers that be," said NYU professor Siva Vaidhyanathan. "They are simple questions.

"First, may we use our language, please? I ask this because language is more than the letters and the words of the dictionary. The language of our lives involves the images and symbols that cross our field of vision, often involuntarily. So one of the questions that we've been asking is, can we, may we, redeploy these elements of language to make meaning for ourselves?

"The second question is, may we use our information, please? As the public funds a variety of information sources through state and local and federal government, we find that public datasets are becoming proprietary. Building codes are becoming proprietary. Information that we need to be able to deliberate in the public sphere is becoming proprietary-priced out of reach of many people who should have access.

"The third question is, may we change the station please? Can we change the music? Can we, may we, govern our own personal mediascapes? Must we adhere to the orders from the companies that determine both the hardware and the software that surrounds us? Must we adhere to the particular technological platforms, or can we customize them ourselves? And must we live with the information architecture given to us, or may we build upon that?"

With these "simple questions" setting the stage, participants in the copyright session at last month's Media Reform Conference in St. Louis launched into a spirited discussion of how the laws designed to protect creativity-copyright and other intellectual property laws-had become, in their view, legal tools used primarily to stifle creativity.

Everyone brought his or her favorite examples of misuse of the law or business of intellectual property: o Kembrew McLeod of the University of Iowa explained how as a graduate student he applied for a federal trademark registration on the phrase "freedom of expression" as a joke, not really expecting that even a green-eye-shaded trademark examiner would approve it. The result? He got the trademark registration-and his certificate appears on the frontispiece of his current book about the abuse of intellectual property-a book titled, "Freedom of Expression ®."

-- Carrie McLaren, an editor of Stay Free! magazine, described her magazine's development of a collection of art that has been stifled or chilled in the name of intellectual property rights called the "Illegal Art Exhibit." Her examples ranged from the silly to the subtle, but included several situations of clearly appropriate artistic works that were either inhibited or kept off of public display.

-- Sandy Pearlman, a music producer, contrasted the music industry's current Internet sales ($300 million annually, mostly through Apple iTunes) with his vision of a 5-cent-per-tune worldwide Internet jukebox, tied to a "robust recommendation engine," that would entice all users into the paying system while still bringing the industry greatly increased revenue.

-- Victor Navasky, editor of The Nation magazine, told the story of his copyright case, which became a U.S. Supreme Court landmark-a story that from his perspective involved his use of only a tiny newsworthy portion of Gerald Ford's memoirs, a book that he considered "designed to put you to sleep." The resulting whirlwind lawsuit, however, put no one to sleep, and led to a 1985 decision that made copyright "fair use" determinations more difficult than ever.

For Vaidhyanathan, the key to the current copyright situation is, in one sense, very simple. The industry, he said, "gave up on copyright." Instead, they decided to "build restrictions and controls into the machines" and technology by which users access creative material in digital form.

This new development is different from traditional copyright, like Navasky's case involving use by a magazine of text from a book, where the key issue was how much of one work could be used in another. It goes by the name "digital rights management"-the effort, already very successful, to give content owners the right to lock down their works technologically. It is what Washington University law professor Charles McManis has characterized as attaching absolute "trade secret" property-type rights to the content formerly subject to the copyright balance between private rights and public use.

As Vaidhyanathan told it, this move began in 1998, with the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act and, more importantly, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which took the law into the private-property view of copyrighted works-a position far removed from the one intended by the founding fathers and our copyright law's English predecessors.

Further possible moves away from the public/private balance are on the table now, in the Grokster case before the Supreme Court, testing the limits of contributory infringement liability, and the broadcast flag legislation, which seeks to deputize TV equipment manufacturers in the war on multi-media infringers.

--- Any day now, the Grokster decision will come out, and another step will be taken, one way or another, in the cultural copyright conflict.

The session that Vaidhyanathan led represented a small step in that conflict, too. It was a useful informational step, informing and highlighting the stakes in this arcane legal battle. It put pictures, sounds and ideas into the minds of activists, media reformers, and others who are concerned about creative content, and about the public interest in ensuring that our system properly manages how that content is created, used, shared, and compensated.

Even if participants do not remember Vaidhyanathan's pointed initial three questions, they are likely to have walked away with several other, just as memorable ones:

-- How can NBC deny you the use of the 'doink-doink' (in a political commercial)? (as one attendee asked)

-- Can Starbucks keep the artist and social critic Kieron Dwyer from parodying its logo in her "Consumer Whore" drawing?

-- Is it illegal to create a social commentary song out of snippets from commercial broadcasts and popular music?

-- Can you really trademark "freedom of expression?"

And finally:
-- Is a system that is raising these questions really on the right track?

Air raid: Countering advertising carpet-bombing
by Natasha Casey

Every time I drive on I-64, that flying eagle advertisement manages to draw my attention whether I want it to or not. Living in a commercially saturated environment was exactly the topic addressed by Christy Glaubke ("Children Now"), Sut Jhally (Media Education Foundation) and Tim Walker (Adbusters), presenters on the "Advertising and Commercialism" panel at last month's National Conference for Media Reform in St. Louis.

Glaubke, associate director at "Children Now," a California based child research and advocacy organization, said one of the several new ways corporations specifically target children is "interactive advertising." Glaubke said with digital interactive television on the horizon, kids with access to a television will soon be able and indeed encouraged to consume all kinds of goods with a mere touch of their remote controls.

One interactive advertising form already yielding considerable success is "advergames," the title denoting the alliance of two powerful media, advertising and online gaming. In her presentation, Glaubke demonstrated an online golf game featuring Lifesavers and another featuring Sponge Bob Square Pants.

Although the typical reaction to these games is that "they're only games," as Jhally said in his later presentation, advertisements do not simply promote goods but rather promote a specific set of values alongside those goods, the most obvious of which is constant consumption.

Prompted by Glaubke, I later visited candystand.com and was boggled by the array of games to play (each of course with a not too subtle product tie-in), not to mention a plethora of sweepstakes to enter to win cruise vacations and trips to the country music awards. I could also join the Lifesavers club (and get exclusive Lifesaver recipes and newsletters), as well as watch Lifesaver commercials (in case I missed them on TV). The only condition to enter the various sweepstakes, subscribe to the newsletter, get monthly game updates and post game scores, is to log-in (i.e. register). I'll be honest-not even the lure of exclusive Lifesaver recipes was enough to make me do this.

Another crucial issue that Glaubke raised was that of educational programming. I was shocked to learn that "Kenny the Shark" is considered educational programming. I'm sure that any third-grade teacher assigning shark-related projects would hold "Kenny the Shark" citations to be just as reliable as any old encyclopedia. Kenny is a sunglasses wearing insecure tiger shark who lives in a house with a human family.

One of the main problems, as Glaubke noted, is that the term "educational programming" has an extremely loose definition. As a result, television stations often manipulate it in order to fulfill minimum education programming requirements.

Jhally, communications professor and media scholar at the University of Massachusetts and founder/executive director of the Media Education Foundation has long argued that the best way to understand contemporary society is to recognize the function of advertisements and the role they play in shaping our perceptions of each other and the world around us.

Jhally's contention can hardly be overstated, particularly as people typically reject the idea that seemingly innocuous media can have any substantive impact on their belief systems. But how does someone account for the staggering success of ad campaigns hawking Victoria's Secret undies and Miller beer-to name but two conspicuous examples. Don't try to explain the "significance" of Bob Dylan songs, angel iconography and scantily clad women or pretend you haven't seen the twins.

Even among this presumably progressive media-literate group, Jhally argued no one is exempt from the power of ubiquitous advertising imagery. He challenged the audience to denaturalize and deconstruct the commercial world in which we live in order to comprehend both its function and impact on our daily lives.

Jhally's key observation that no one is exempt highlights an ongoing problem within the media reform community-all too often attitudes toward the general public appear to be premised on the idea that the masses are simply duped by and are victims of despotic media.

This is perhaps one reason why media reform groups have some difficulty reaching audiences beyond the congenial choir. Elitism or cultural pessimism is hardly an attractive characteristic with which to engage "the masses." In contrast, Jhally's Media Education Foundation is a producer and distributor of educational videos "designed to inspire students and others to reflect critically on the structure of the media industry and the content it produces."

Another challenge Jhally presented to the "Advertising and Commercialism" audience was to read Capital, the seminal work of Karl Marx. As I remind my students, Karl never belonged to a famous comedy group nor did he author any power ballad in the 1980s and '90s (although granted he was on occasion dangerously close to a mullet). Jhally repeated that in order to understand the fundamental organizing principle of contemporary society-capitalism-one must go back to early critiques of the phenomenon, such as those written by Marx in the 19th century.

I quickly applauded Jhally's suggestion but just as rapidly realized I was alone in my enthusiasm. I wondered, did Professor Jhally ask us all to enlist in the North Korean army? No doubt the audience response would have been just as chilly. After living in the United States for almost a decade now I still have not managed to fully understand the defensive reactions to reading the works of Marx.

Since when did the act of reading a book come to denote "I accept all the author's arguments without question?" Surely any attempt to understand how contemporary capitalism functions would benefit from early critiques when widespread consumption was still in its infancy? Even the most cursory glance at the etymology of word consumption itself suggests its remarkable transition from connoting waste or wasteful in the 17th century to replacing the moniker "citizen."

The third presenter on the "Advertising and Commercialism" panel was Tim Walker from Adbusters, a Canadian organization. According to its Web site (www.adbusters.org) the overriding aim of this group is to "change the way we interact with the mass media and to reclaim the way in which meaning is produced in our society."

Adbusters describe themselves as a "global network of artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students, educators and entrepreneurs. We are downshifters, shit-disturbers, rabble-rousers, incorrigibles and malcontents. We are anarchists, guerilla tacticians, neo-Luddites, pranksters, poets, philosophers and punks."

The fact that my computer insists there are no spelling suggestions for Luddite (i.e., it is not a recognizable word) indicates that I may have tuned in late and missed some of this particular culture war-although thankfully shit-disturbers was approved without such complications. Walker distributed articles and the latest edition of Adbusters magazine to an eager audience and principally addressed an idea known as mental environmentalism.

In an article from a 2001 edition of Adbusters, Bill McKibben defined mental environmentalism as "the set of images and ideas we barely notice because they are so common as to be both banal and overwhelming." Walker said consumerism and media monopolies are two major pollutants of our mental environment. As part of a movement to counter this pollution Adbusters is also home to culture jammers, where activists respond in a variety of ways to challenge branding and consumption in general. The Billboard Liberation Front, a California-based group is one example of culture jamming that received decent press coverage as well as Adbusters' own creative campaigns to "uncool megacorporations."

On the face of it, one might assume that a public policy advocate, an educator and an activist would have radically divergent goals. Rather their striking interconnectedness suggests success beyond their individual and already committed followers and an imminent place in mainstream consciousness. It invariably bodes well for the future of media reform. Not to mention my I-64 driving habits.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is demanding records of activities carried out under the Patriot Act that it sees as political intimidation of citizens, including a number of Missouri residents.

The ACLU is seeking documents under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) that detail activities of the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF).

Among the Missouri residents unjustifiably targeted, according to the ACLU, is Ben Garrett, a 1998 Webster Groves High School graduate who had been attending Truman State University in Kirksville.

Danny Harmann, stepfather to Garrett, was surprised to find the FBI knocking on his Webster Groves door last year. Questions asked revolved around Garrett's political activism and intentions to protest at the 2004 presidential nominating conventions.

"Ben's stepdad was shocked by their appearance at the door," said Skyler Harmann, Garrett's mother. "He tried to be as cooperative as possible. I was not home at the time, but I am pretty sure I would not have been as helpful.

"Ben has some strong political beliefs, but he totally believes in non-violence," added Skyler Harmann. "It's too bad that our Patriot Act gives authorities license to harass people with political views that differ with the administration.

"I hope the ACLU finds out exactly how our tax money is being misused for this kind of harassment, instead of being used to protect the American public from real terrorism," said Ben's mother, a longtime local school teacher.

The FOIA request filed May 18 by the ACLU of Eastern Missouri (EM) is among numerous requests from individuals and groups in Missouri, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Maine, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Wisconsin and more.

"Civil liberties are being violated and it is happening here in Missouri," said Brenda Jones, executive director of the ACLU-EM. "We believe that the FBI is working with local law enforcement agencies through so-called Joint Terrorism Task Forces to spy on individuals and groups engaged in entirely lawful, constitutionally protected activity.

"We want to know more about the workings of JTTFs and why resources allotted to fight terrorism are being diverted to watch and intimidate people and groups who have nothing to do with terrorism," Jones said.

St. Louis FBI response
The story of the FBI's monitoring of Garrett first broke in the national media last summer. Garrett was put under surveillance, along with two other friends in their 20's, Chris Scheets and Daniel Coate, all residing in Kirksville at the time of the federal scrutiny.

Agents visited parents as well as the three men, and asked questions about plans to demonstrate at the national conventions. After the three arrived in St. Louis to prepare to travel to the Democratic Convention in Boston, they found themselves under continued surveillance.

The three men were subsequently subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury July 29, the same day they had planned to be in Boston to demonstrate at the Democratic Convention.

"We are not commenting on individual situations," said Peter Krusing, a spokesperson with the FBI office in St. Louis. "The allegations by the ACLU have been made before, and they are entitled to their opinion.

"The New York Times ran a story during the political conventions about the time that we were interviewing a number of people to find out what their plans were," said Krusing. "I would refer to the statements we issued in response to the New York Times story."

The FBI defended its actions in those 2004 releases, stating: "The implication that we are conducting interviews without legal basis is completely unfounded. The FBI is not monitoring groups, or interviewing individuals, unless we receive intelligence that such individuals or groups may be planning violent and disruptive criminal activity or have knowledge of such activity."

Anthony Romero, national director of the ACLU, said FBI spying on peaceful demonstrators is a waste of taxpayer money and an infringement on free speech guarantees.

"The FBI's intimidation and interrogation of peaceful protesters bring back eerie echoes of the J. Edgar Hoover days," said Romero. "Resources and funds established to fight terrorism should not be used to target innocent Americans."

Patriot Act follies?
"We were questioned by the FBI in July 2004 in Kirksville, and then they tailed us all over when we went to St. Louis," said Garrett, who was in Webster Groves recently for a sibling's graduation.

"They sat in their cars outside my friends' houses. The neighbors called the local police on them, and the police were shown their FBI credentials when they showed up," said Garrett. "The agents followed us to a meeting we had with the ACLU in St. Louis and they even followed us when we went to a movie.

"More than anything, I hope all of this exposes the Patriot Act for a misuse of funds and executive power," continued Garrett. "I also think so much money is involved, they just don't know how to spend it all. But how can they justify using money to have cars following a bunch of young people going to a movie?"

Denise Lieberman, legal affairs director for the ACLU-EM, said the FOIA requests filed throughout the country are meant to pry information out about the funding and potentially illegal practices of JTTFs.

"We have lots of questions," said Lieberman. "How do they come up with suspect lists? How are they using powers to deputize local police for JTTFs? What records are being kept on religious and political groups?

"We aren't interested in impeding the government's ability to fight terrorism," added Lieberman. "We do want to know if tax money is being used to intimidate innocent people or to effectively fight terrorism.

"But it is more than just that," said Lieberman. "A lot of people are going to say: 'If you don't have anything to hide, why should you care if the FBI comes to ask a few questions?' But the point is: This is a country where you are not supposed to receive a knock on the door because of your political beliefs."

FOIA requests mount
Garrett is among 14 individuals and nine organizations, represented by the ACLU-EM, that have filed FOIA requests to secure any files or investigative dossiers that the FBI may have compiled on them.

Among others who are demanding information are peace activist and Holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein, local social justice activist Bill Ramsey and American Muslim magazine editor Sheila Musaji.

Organizations making the FOIA requests include the Alliance for Democracy, the St. Louis Instead of War Coalition and the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

The ACLU's national clients in the FOIA effort make up a Who's Who of advocates for well-known causes, including environment, animal rights, labor, religion, Native American rights, fair trade, peace, social justice, nuclear disarmament, human rights and civil liberties.

The ACLU is charging the FBI and its JTTF with wrongfully withholding thousands of pages of documents. ACLU officials said the few documents received to date because of a December 2004 set of requests shed light on the misuse of the JTTF. In Colorado, one memo indicates an ongoing federal interest in Food Not Bombs, a group that provides free vegetarian food for the hungry.

The ACLU maintains there has been a marked increase in questionable domestic spying with passage of the Patriot Act. One of the most famous cases is the infiltration of the anti-war group, Peace Fresno, by a member of the Fresno County Sheriff Department's Anti-Terrorism Unit in 2003.

Peace Fresno discovered one of its members had actually been a government agent through an obituary published after his death in a motorcycle accident. The incident is portrayed in Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" as an example of civil liberties violations in the post-Sept. 11 climate.

Features:
Covering 'miracles'
by Steve Perron

Every reporter wants to cover the "big story." In early April, one of the biggest stories in recent memory occurred when Pope John Paul II died and countless millions converged on Rome for a week of funeral services. A handful of St. Louis journalists were sent there to cover it. Three of them shared a bit of their experience with SJR-reporter John Mills and photographer/editor Gary Womack for KMOV (Channel 4), and reporter Tim Townsend of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Getting ready
All three say advance preparation was critical, often beginning long before any bags were packed.

"Coverage of Pope John Paul II's death was one of the first things my editor, Sandy Wood, and I talked about when I arrived at the paper a year ago," Townsend says.

He adds that the obituary was written by former Post religion writer Patricia Rice well before the Pope died.

At Channel 4, advance work had actually begun two years earlier, when a producer wrote and edited a long-form recap of the Pope's 1999 St. Louis visit. About two months before his death, two producers began conducting interviews and writing sidebar reports featuring people who had personal encounters with the Pope during that visit. Then, about a month before his death, Womack was told to take a portable editing unit home with him, so he would be ready to leave for Rome at a moment's notice.

In mid-March, Townsend became worried that he might not be able to find a hotel in Rome. "I took numbers from about 15 nearby hotels (near Rome) and plugged them into my cell phone so that the minute I heard he'd passed away, I could scroll through these hotels and book a room. When the situation began to look more critical, I started taking my cell phone to bed."

It didn't matter. When the decision was finally made to send Townsend to Rome, while the Pope was still clinging to life, all 15 hotels were booked solid. Townsend was able to find a room within a 20-minute walk from the Vatican.

But not all the preparation was about logistics. Mills says, "Being mentally prepared for multiple 20-hour days was critical." He couldn't have been more correct.

A matter of hours
Mills and Womack hit the ground running, facing enormous crowds, a seven-hour time difference and extraordinary demands from producers in St. Louis.

"I have never worked that many hours in my life," says Womack, a veteran with more than 20 years in the business. "I got to the airport at around 10 a.m. Sunday for the flight to Rome and worked the next 39 hours straight. I never slept more than four-to-five hours per night, and then because of the seven-hour time difference, stayed up Thursday through Friday for another 32 hours straight. I don't think we sat more than five minutes once we got off the plane, and the first thing I rolled on was the Pope's body."

"We carried all of our camera, editing and lighting equipment into our 5th floor office," Mills said. "Just as we arrived in St. Peter's Square, pallbearers were just approaching St. Peter's Basilica with the Pope's body. We did three packages a day for the next four days, including live reports at 5 p.m., 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. Of course, with the seven-hour time difference, that was midnight, 1 a.m. and 5 a.m. for us in Rome." (A television news "package" is a report that includes a reporter's narration and sound bites. A package usually runs about 1:15 to 1:30. Many of Mills' reports ran 2 minutes or more.)

Townsend says the time difference was a double-edged sword.

"It helped because by the time I figured out, reported and wrote my story for the day it was only late morning or early afternoon in the (St. Louis) newsroom. It hurt because by the time the normal cycle of the newsroom was ready to deal with my story, it was midnight or later my time." As a result, "eating sort of happened whenever it happened."

Crowds, cramped quarters and cobblestones
There were no sidewalk dinners with glasses of wine and music on this trip. The enormity of the crowds made for stunning pictures and great copy, but it also left reporters worried that they might get stuck in a spot with no way of transmitting their stories. As the funeral approached, many decided it was too risky to leave the scene, and in some cases, too risky to sleep.

"So many people were sleeping on the street outside our Vatican office in the hours before the funeral, we couldn't leave the gated compound," Mills said. "Luckily, we had packed a bag for the night and grabbed some sleep in the office."

Townsend tried to join the join the throngs sleeping in the streets.

"The night before the funeral itself, police closed down St. Peter's Square. I decided it was too risky to sleep that night. I went back to my hotel and grabbed a jacket, a few notebooks and towel from the bathroom. It was nearly midnight and I spent the next couple of hours searching for a way through the crowds, who were sleeping in moats, in trees, under scaffolding, along the riverbank, anyplace they could find a little bit of ground close to the Vatican. By now it was 3 a.m. and I folded my towel into a pillow and crashed on the cobblestones to try to sleep. After about 45 minutes I gave up."

Lasting impressions
All three returned to St. Louis with images and impressions they say they will never forget. For Mills, it is a sense of accomplishment.

"We far exceeded our expectations in terms of the number of reports we produced, never missing one of 16 live shots during the course of the week." (There was at least one close call, though. KMOV was sharing a Vatican camera position with another Belo station in Houston. At one point, minutes before the 5 p.m. news went on the air, producers at KMOV and in Houston were screaming about who had the 5:01 "intro" position and who had the 5:03 "tag" position while Mills and the Houston reporter were arguing the point in Rome. The dispute was settled with mere moments to spare.)

Mills is also especially proud of the local angles he was able to provide. "(We got) more good St. Louis angles than I imagined possible. On Thursday evening, the night before the funeral, we did one of our best reports, interviewing St. Louis and other Midwestern students who were camping out all night in sleeping bags. In that report I said, 'It's an undeniable showing of love and respect for Pope John Paul II.' I think that sums up the week."

Townsend says he will never forget the lines and the crowds, and the people in them. Recalling the night before the funeral, when he tried to sleep on the sidewalk with little success, he says, "I started talking to others who couldn't sleep. A priest-in-training from Pittsburgh who was studying at one of the local seminaries told me, 'Miracles are happening here tonight."

He also remembers that sometimes, he just got lucky. "When I arrived in Rome I threw my stuff in the hotel room and went out to talk to people. Amazingly, one of the first people I found when I got to St. Peter's Square was a guy from University City wearing a Cardinals hat."

It is no surprise that Womack, a photographer, recalls images. "The music was blaring out of the speakers and was mesmerizing. The people in the square would be crying one moment and then see the Pope on a big screen TV and start clapping. It was eerie."

And he remembers the emotions. "As I was getting ready to head out of the barricades I spotted two Italian female police officers. They were both crying. I started to shoot video and they spotted me. Normally I would try and hide myself and move around to get them unnoticed. But I wasn't going to miss this shot. I was only a few feet away and wouldn't move. They looked at me and tried to pull themselves together but couldn't. And I thought to myself, they know I am taking their pictures and they can't control their emotions. I was amazed."

(Reporter Dan Gray also reported from Rome for KTVI (Channel 2), but was unable to provide comments for this article.)

From around the Globe
Former Globe staff reunites to talk issues
by Rick Stoff

St. Louis would have been better off over the past two decades if its second daily newspaper had remained in business, according to the somewhat biased opinions of a few former members of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat staff.

The "Old Globe-Democrat," as it now is called, faded into history in fits and starts that began in 1984 and ended in 1986. A few former staff members who have stayed in touch arranged a sort-of-20th-anniversary reunion of the paper's editorial staff at the home of former feature writer Lucyann Mueller Boston in Webster Groves May 22.

More than 100 reporters, editors and photographers gathered on a Sunday afternoon to catch up on each other's activities and careers after being separated decades ago, seemingly for good. The afternoon seemed to be like one of those speed-dating events in which one tries to make contact with as many people as possible in a short time frame.

There were some people I never had a chance to visit. Thanks to the hard work of the event's organizers, we left with a lengthy list of e-mail addresses that should enable many of us to reconnect.

In the days after the reunion, a few of the old Globies were asked for their thoughts on how St. Louis would be different if it had continued to have two daily newspapers.

"St. Louis would be a better place today because more people would be reading a St. Louis paper and would be better-educated," said Ron Janecke, a former Globe sports editor who recently retired from the St. Louis Business Journal. "The Post circulation today is less than the circulation of either paper in the mid-80s. That means less than 50 percent of the readers of a St. Louis daily then are reading a paper today."

Bob Blanchard, a former business editor at the Globe, assumes that many of the paper's 1985-era employees would have moved on by now.

"The Globe would have new blood-almost the entire staff-from our times," he said. "It would still have outstanding coverage of local news, top-notch in-depth stories and investigative reporting. It would be overall upbeat, hard-hitting and thorough, and by all means accurate. Doesn't this sound a lot like the old Globe?"

Old Globies tend to be very proud of their work and co-workers, particularly in the face of competition from a St. Louis Post-Dispatch that usually out-manned them. But they think they would have made St. Louis a better-informed place simply by providing competition.

"Competition is good in just about everything, newspapers included," Janecke said. "One of the biggest dangers in our country today is the concentration of the news media in the hands of a few powerful corporations. It can only lead to less of a choice in news and a greater ability to manage the news."

"A community is better served in the coverage of news by having some competition. A monopoly paper can be as lazy as it wants, or get around to something when it wants, or not bother getting around to it," said former editorial page editor Martin Duggan, who has followed his stint at the Globe with a long career as co-host of the weekly "Donnybrook" public affairs program on KETC (Channel 9). "St. Louisans don't have a choice of what to read. We need a variety of coverage-the more you have the better off you are."

Regional influence
Blanchard thinks the continued presence of a second newspaper would have provided the region with "better government, better roads, better lighting, a happier populace (we're frequently told it's a shame St. Louis is a one-paper town), a brighter future, not so much dependence on TV news."

And, he added, the continued publication of the paper would have meant, "Last, but not least, better retirement for Globies."

The Globe improved its region by aggressively covering issues, said former managing editor George Killenberg, known to staff members as "GAK" for the way he signed his memos.

"We always said the Globe-Democrat was not a thermometer, it was more of a thermostat," he said. "We wanted to help change and make things better and not just report what was going on. When (former publisher Richard) Amberg got in there, he believed in the philosophy that a newspaper should be a leader and do things."

He noted that the Globe once ranked in the top 10 in public service awards for five consecutive years at the Associated Press managing editors' convention. "That's the one thing I am most proud of," he said.

He named Globe efforts over the years that improved highway safety, the investment of state funds, the fund-raising conduct of charitable organizations and conditions in what are now some of the city's best residential neighborhoods.

Killenberg would like to see a newspaper fighting today for construction of median cable barriers on rural highways in continuation of an effort the paper made to make urban highways safer decades ago. "The rural interstates today have heavier traffic than the urban interstates had when they decided those had to have crossover barriers."

Duggan's thoughts
From the editorial page office, Duggan would have worked to stop the population exodus from the city of St. Louis by campaigning to protect its parochial schools through a voucher program that would have allowed parents to send their tax dollars and kids to the school of their choice.

"I think one of the most unfortunate things that has happened in the city of St. Louis is the disappearance of the parochial schools, which were such a stabilizing influence in neighborhoods and where people, if they had them still, would remain," he said. "I have been a big booster of school choice and think that parents should be allowed to have use of their tax dollars to send their children to the schools they want them to go to. We were writing about school choice then.

"As to the population decline, I don't know if that is reversible, in all honesty. I never dreamed when I was growing up that we would ever live anywhere other than the city. Friday of this week we will be in this house (in St. Louis County) 40 years. We came out here from the crime, which even was rampant on our own block," Duggan said.

Duggan said he also would have crusaded to change the election of the St. Louis mayor to a non-partisan process, as used in other major cities, to increase the diversity of candidates and views available to voters.

Hindsight
History sometimes seems to be painting the Globe as a failing newspaper. Fading into obscurity is the fact that the Globe actually had a larger weekday circulation than the Post and was building the lead when the Newhouse family decided to close the paper and enter a controversial monopoly profit-sharing arrangement with the Pulitzers.

The Globe's possession of the morning slot obviously had a lot to do with its circulation advantage, but the fact of the matter is, as the pundits say, we were still kicking some of the competition's tail.

"People forget we were a good newspaper," Killenberg said. "The Globe-Democrat was loved by a lot of people, and not just for its editorial page. I didn't know what was on the editorial page until I picked up the paper at night."

Janecke theorizes that the Post still would have shifted to morning publication if subsequent owners had kept the Globe going. Meeting that challenge would have required the Globe to beef up its news and sports coverage.

"While the Globe was very aggressive in covering those areas, it would have to be more so if it were publishing today. The head-to-head competition would be fierce. I recall many a Globe reporter coming back from an event and saying there were two or three Post reporters there while he or she was the only one from the Globe. That couldn't happen today," Janecke said. "The Globe would have to loosen the purse strings."

There is agreement that the Globe likely would have maintained a conservative editorial page. But how conservative?

"If the Globe were still publishing today, it would still be a conservative voice," Janecke said. "No matter one's political leanings, I think a choice of views is good. There are many in our conservative Midwestern city that would welcome this."

"I think contrasting views in editorial opinion is vitally important to a community," said Duggan, who first went to the Globe as a summer intern in 1939 and retired from the editorial page in 1984. "It would certainly be foolish for a paper that is in competition with the Post-Dispatch not to be a conservative paper."

A conservative platform
When asked about the recent rise in the influence of conservatism in the United States, Duggan said, "I would like to think the Globe would have been a major contributing factor to that being the case, and we would still be plugging along. Who is to say what my successor or a new owner would be doing?"

The Globe editorial page could be a rough place during Duggan's tenure. Former staffers still recall an editorial written upon the death of actor John Belushi. The editorial, "Death of a Slob," lamented entertainers such as Belushi, Elvis Presley, Janis Joplin and Judy Garland for "setting a bad example for youngsters."

The possibilities for the Globe's conservative evolution, if those two words can be used in the same sentence, could have been unlimited. One of the paper's final publishers, William Franke, returned to the news last year when be was identified as a financial contributor to the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" campaign attacking John Kerry's presidential campaign.

Franke served on the "Swift Boat" steering committee. The Kerry campaign filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission contending that the Swift Boat ads were inaccurate.

Duggan disagreed with a contention that political discourse has become less civil since the Globe closed, but he did express a lack of interest in some of today's extreme conservative media.

"I don't find the political discourse all that bad. I don't think you would really know what you are comparing it to," Duggan said. "I think politics is kind of tame. I like slugfests politically, and I think people enjoy them and learn from them. It delineates candidates.

"What I am really appalled at is the absolute vulgarity in entertainment, and what isn't even considered raunchy entertainment-some of these Hardee's commercials, which I consider to be pornographic. You should be selling hamburgers to families, not sex maniacs," he said.

"There is so much crudity in our society that it is accepted as commonplace. Even in newspapers you find expressions, vulgarity in quotes, that you would never find in the past. There is a certain lack of courtesy as well as civility in all phases of our lives."

Duggan was asked for his thoughts on the extreme edge of today's conservatism, the kind exemplified by people such as Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh that critics say consists largely of yelling and factual fabrication.

"I have never heard Bill O'Reilly," Duggan said. "I listened to Rush Limbaugh when he was a new phenomenon. I find those types pretty tiresome, so I can't comment on them. I would not want to waste my day listening to stuff like that."

The newspaper industry's competition now comes from cable television and the Internet, Killenberg said, so today's newspapers would benefit by trying to be more like the "Old Globe-Democrat" and emphasize "aggressive local news."

"That is the one area the daily newspaper can dominate," he said, but "often the daily newspaper looks like a paper 30 years ago. It hasn't changed, and it hasn't accepted the fact that it is not the only source of news."

As managing editor, he tried to build a front page that always had at least one "non-duplicative story that would be totally exclusive," he said.

Killenberg also lamented the fact that some of today's media are not strong enough to stand behind stories and withstand criticism. He cited two recent high-profile cases in which Newsweek magazine and CBS News and Dan Rather "capitulated" and apologized for stories that may have been largely true but lacking authentication of minor points.

The CBS/Rather story examined President George W. Bush's mysterious whereabouts during the Vietnam War, when he may or may not have been fulfilling the terms of his military service commitment.

"Rather's report was correct, except for one piece of paper," Killenberg said. "To change a war hero like Kerry and make him to be a coward, when the other guy didn't do his duty during the Vietnam War, it is just incredible."

Well, GAK had retired before the Franke era, anyway.

Columns:
Early Edition:
From the pits of Hell
by Ed Bishop

Every journalist who has ever made a mistake in print knows how embarrassing it can be-you just want it to go away. But it's important to correct the mistake, this time leaving the reader with a clear understanding of the facts.

For example, a couple of weeks ago, MetroVoice, St. Louis' Christian News and Events Publication, ran an ad for the movie "Kingdom of Heaven." Jim Day, MetroVoice's publisher, says he didn't know at the time that the film was "a politically correct, revisionist movie that glorifies the enemies of Christ."

Day says it wasn't until he received a letter from a local pastor explaining that the movie portrayed Muslims in the Middle Ages as tolerant of other religions, and willing to coexist with other cultures, that he realized he had goofed.

The movie, the pastor explained, showed that in 1187 when the Muslims recaptured Jerusalem from Christian Crusaders their leader Saladin treated the defeated Crusaders with magnanimity. Worse yet the movie made the Crusaders out to be semi-barbarians who conveniently mixed religion with looting.

Well, gosh, any old-time movie buff who has ever seen Basil Rathbone (or whoever it was) as Saladin knows that stuff's not true. The Crusaders were the good guys.

So Jim Day apologized for the mistake. And then he took the important next step-he made the position of his newspaper perfectly clear.

"And, don't be deceived," he wrote in a front-page apology to his readers, "the Muslim faith is from the pits of Hell and an enemy of Christ."

I had a question for Day about all this, but I was embarrassed to contact him.

You see, last winter I'd negotiated with him to do a Q&A with SJR about the agenda of the Christian Right and his publication's endorsement of that agenda. He agreed only if I'd submit the questions in writing and then he would answer them via e-mail.

I didn't like the arrangement. I wanted a face-to-face interview that we could both tape. I tried to explain to him that written questions would take the spontaneity out of it, that a Q&A was supposed to sound like a conversation. But he wouldn't budge and reluctantly I agreed to do it his way.

Then all hell (the uncapitalized kind) broke loose-it was announced that Lee Enterprises was looking to buy Pulitzer, Inc. I told Day we'd have to postpone the piece and that I'd get back to him. I never did.

I'm sorry for that.

Because now I would like to ask him if he has ever heard of Maimonides.

Maimonides was one of the most important philosophers of the Middles Ages. He was a Jew born during the crusades in the Muslim city of Cordoba in Spain.

Like other Jews he was free to study and teach in the city's university and take part in the city's administration. It's true that he had to flee Cordoba when a fundamentalist Muslim sect took control of the city. But where did he and his family go? Morocco. Another center of learning in the Muslim world where Hindus, Jews, Arabs, Coptic Christians and others worked and studied together.

At that time in Europe, Christians were burning each other at the stake and the newly formed universities were only beginning to throw off the intellectual shroud of the Dark Ages partly because European scholars could at last read the great philosophic, mathematical and scientific texts of ancient Greece preserved by Muslim culture.

So Jim, ever heard of Maimonides?

(I'm hoping he reads this. I'm also hoping he forgives my not getting back to him and that he will write a letter to the editor explaining how Maimonides fits into a "faith from the pits of Hell." Maybe I just don't understand the cultural benefits of burning folks at the stake. Hey, Jim, anybody can make a mistake.)

Letters:
What's fair?
SJR:
Ken Tomlinson, chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, was on Diane Rehm's National Public Radio show recently. Tomlinson is the guy who went after Bill Moyers and NOW on PBS because he thought Moyers was too liberal.

Tomlinson succeeded in cutting NOW to a half-hour and giving the other half-hour to the Wall Street Journal's Paul Gigot, claiming that Gigot (conservative) "balanced" Moyers (liberal) and that the "public could decide" which program they wanted to watch. (Note that Tomlinson is shamelessly using the Fox (conservative) slogans of "Fair and Balanced" and "We Report-You Decide," as if they had any credibility at all.)

What I find interesting is that the Republicans who control CPB say they want "balance" on PBS, but the Republican-controlled FCC has not had any problem for 16 years with there being no balance (because there's no fairness doctrine) to Rush Limbaugh's viciously partisan program on commercial radio. It is obvious the GOP wants only tightly controlled right-wing Republican messages to reach the public on what are supposed to be the public airwaves.

Anita Riddle
Kirkwood

Retort
SJR:
Who's doing the fabricating? At the end of his letter to the St. Louis Journalism Review (May 2005), Jamie Allman vigorously denies ever insulting or attacking pedophile priest's victims.

I think he protests too much, because look at what he says about SNAP leader Barbara Dorris in the very same letter. He writes of Dorris' alleged "irresponsible fabrications, doubts her "interest in accuracy" and cites "false claims" and "offensive fabrications" she allegedly makes.

Remarkably, the prescient Allman can even see into Dorris' mind and heart, claiming she "deliberately fabricates the context of my quotes." Given this strident language, it's not hard to believe that indeed Allman has attacked SNAP's leadership in the past.

Surely the truth lies somewhere between the two perspectives. Call me a cynic, but I'll side with a woman who has spent years voluntarily consoling traumatized sex abuse victims over a shrill "Johnny come lately" professional flak.

Judy Jones
Marthasville

Media & Politics:
Why they voted
by Terry Jones

Why did a majority of voters pick George Bush over John Kerry in 2004?

If you went to the exit polls to help answer this question, as most Wednesday morning pundits did, more voters selected "moral values" as the most important issue than any other factor. Twenty-two percent checked it off a pre-determined list. Next were economy/jobs (20 percent), terrorism (19 percent), and Iraq (15 percent).

Finishing first in the most-important-issue sweepstakes combined with the fact that 80 percent of the moral values folks voted for Bush led to the conclusion that the 2004 presidential election was more about the cultural war inside America rather than the Iraqi conflict outside it.

There was some immediate push back to this interpretation, largely from those critical about using a broad and vague term like "moral values" as a response alternative. A post-election poll conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, discussed in this column in the December 2004/January 2005 issue, found that given an open-ended alternative ("What one issue mattered most to you in deciding how you voted for president?"), only 9 percent volunteered "moral values" even though the phrase had had ample exposure by the time Pew did its survey.

Despite these concerns about questionnaire design, the primacy of moral values has continued to hold interpretive sway even though its empirical foundation is just one exit poll question. The Christian right crowd, James Dobson and company, are eager to claim credit that their issue is numero uno and promote it heavily. The White House and the Republican Congress continue to pay homage to social conservatives despite polls indicating majorities disapproved of their heavy-handed intervention in the Terri Schiavo case.

Within the Democratic Party, the moral-values explanation has sparked debate about whether it should move "to the center" on social issues. Most Democrats took a pass when the Schiavo publicity peaked, presumably assuming that to oppose becoming involved was spitting into the political wind.

But now two talented voting-behavior scholars, D. Sunshine Hillygus from Harvard University and Todd G. Shields from the University of Arkansas, have weighed in with a much more sophisticated analysis which, to cut to the bottom line, demonstrates that moral values were a sideshow in the 2004 presidential election.

Their article, appearing in the April 2005 edition of PS: Political Science and Politics, takes advantage of a relatively new data source, the Knowledge Networks (KN) Internet panel. The KN panel is a random sample of approximately 2,800 U.S. households recruited, Nielsen style, to participate in three-to-four surveys a month. KN supplies the non-Internet households with WebTV equipment, solving the problem of universal Internet access and making the sample truly representative.

Piloted in the 2000 election and in place ever since, KN's methodology has passed muster and is now widely accepted by social scientists.

The first and most straightforward way Hillygus and Shields examined the results was to see how party loyalists voted when they disagreed with their party's candidate on an issue.

They found much more defection on the Iraq war and the economy than on 2004's most visible social controversy, a constitutional ban on gay marriage. There were high levels of defections, for example, on the Iraq war (33 percent of Republicans opposing the war voted for Kerry and 48 percent of Democrats supporting the war went for Bush), much more than on gay marriage (13 percent of Republicans opposing a constitutional ban voted for Kerry and 18 percent of Democrats supporting the ban cast their ballot for Bush).

Looking at Independents yields a similar pattern. Those supporting the Iraqi conflict went for Bush over Kerry, 90 percent to 10 percent. Those opposing the war voted Kerry 78 percent, Bush 22 percent. That's a 68-percentage point gap. On a constitutional ban on gay marriage, the comparable gap is less than half that: 30 percentage points. On abortion, it is smaller still: 23 percentage points.

Upping the analytic rigor, Hillygus and Shields use a multivariate logit model which, for the statistically challenged, enables calculating each issue's relative explanatory power while simultaneously controlling for political party identification, political ideology, and relevant demographic factors like gender, race and income.

For all voters, Iraq has more than four times the explanatory power as gay marriage, the economy three-and-half-times the power, and terrorism approaches two-and-half-times the power. In battleground states, those receiving the overwhelming share of the active campaign, the Iraq/gay marriage explanatory ratio was even larger (Iraq was six times more powerful) and the other ratios remained about the same.

The authors conclude that "values-based appeals only served to reinforce Bush's support among those already planning to vote for him but failed to persuade new voters." They add, "the issues of gay marriage and abortion were not strongly related to how they cast their ballot-whether the respondent was an Independent, living in a state with a gay marriage initiative, or living in one of the much talked about battleground states."

This article was published in early April, upsets the conventional wisdom about what mattered most in the November 2004 election, sheds new light on how much attention voters give the cultural wars in making presidential choices and was written by highly respected scholars. How much attention has it received in the nation's major newspapers? As of May 31, none. So much for setting the explanatory record straight.

Off the Record:
Post's liberal slant

When shareholders of Pulitzer, Inc. voted to sell the company to Lee Enterprises June 3, they were first told that the flagship St. Louis Post-Dispatch will keep its editorial platform for another five years.

This caused Editor & Publisher magazine to say the Post "will keep its longstanding liberal editorial slant for at least the next five years." Maybe. We'll have to see.

The agreement was included in proxy material mailed to shareholders. It also said a person designated by Pulitzer should have a say in the appointment of a new editor, should the current editor, Ellen Soeteber, be replaced within five years.

Lee officials have said they leave it to local publishers and editors to decide what editorial positions are best. Lee has decided to keep Terry Egger on as publisher of the Post, and Matt Kraner as general manager. CEO Robert Woodworth, who engineered the sale to Lee, gets an $8.8 million severance payment, and may be a consultant.

The proviso for keeping the Post's liberal platform, dating back to 1911, was seen by staff members as a way to deflect any criticism of Michael Pulitzer, the chairman, and Emily Pulitzer, the largest shareholder, for selling the 126-year-old paper with a storied history, rather than finding a way to keep it independent.
-- Roy Malone

Who's watching?
Do you know where your "audience" is? The American Time Use Survey came up with information that may surprise you.

Among those adults surveyed, watching television is the third most popular way Americans spend their time each day, following sleeping (8.6 hours) and working (8.0). As a percentage of leisure time, the average consumer spends over half in front of the tube.

Those adults with college degrees watch less television than those with a lower education level, and the older a person gets, the more time is spent watching the tube.

What about reading? Teenagers spend an average seven minutes a day reading (not counting homework). Adults 45-54 read about 19 minutes. Those over 75 read an average of 72 minutes per day.
-- Frank Absher

Fond farewell
Local television news is an extremely competitive business. In St. Louis this is especially true for KSDK (Channel 5) and KMOV (Channel 4), the only stations in the market with a 10 p.m. newscast. But recently, the battle for ratings was forgotten, at least for one day.

In late May, Channel 4 assignment manager Pete Barrett died, after a four-year battle with cancer. As assignment manager, Pete oversaw scheduling of crews, coordinated daily news coverage, provided important editorial input and much, much more. He managed the often nightmarish logistics of coverage of major events such as the Papal visit of 1999, sports playoffs, presidential debates, etc. Because of his position, he was also very well known to managers and crews at every station in town.

Pete's funeral was held at 1:30 p.m. on a Tuesday. Attending would be difficult for staffers at Channel 4, who still had to get 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. newscasts on the air. But it became easier when management at KSDK called to offer their assistance. Within hours of Pete's death, KSDK offered to help shoot and edit stories on the day of the funeral, thus freeing up photographers and editors at Channel 4. As it turned out, little help was needed, although Channel 4 did accept and air KSDK video of a fire in St. Charles County. KSDK requested no courtesy for the video. Such an arrangement would be unimaginable under normal circumstances. KSDK's gracious offer was warmly received by everyone at Channel 4.

(Channel 4 News Director Marty Van Housen also went out of his way to make sure everyone who wanted to attend the funeral, could, by instructing that the day's newscasts be built in a stripped-down fashion, allowing for a maximum amount of early preparation.)

Pete Barrett was 50 years old. He worked at Channel 4 for nearly 20 years, and before that at KSDK. He was a logistical whiz. As Channel 4's Laurie Waters said at his funeral, "For Pete, having five photographers and 10 reporters was a one-to-one ratio."

To say he was well liked and greatly respected is a gross understatement. Despite tortuous chemotherapy and other treatments, he continued coming to work regularly until three weeks before his death. Pete is survived by a wife, son and daughter. He will be greatly missed, for a long time.
-- Steve Perron

Job opening
The St. Louis Newspaper Guild is advertising for a new business agent to replace Jim Light, who is leaving. An ad that appeared recently in the St. Louis Labor Tribune said the union local has an immediate opening for someone to run the daily operations, including contract enforcement and grievance procedures.

Light took over the job in January 2004 to replace longtime union manager Herb Goodrick. He came during prolonged negotiations over a new five-year Guild contract at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which was signed a year ago. There's been friction between Light and some union members, including some on the union's executive committee. At a recent meeting Light became upset and offered to quit.

"I elected not to renew my existing contract at the end of the year. It's a decision I made," Light said. He had previously been an official with the foodworkers UFCW Local 655.

The Guild bargains for about 650 employees at five units: the Post, St. Louis Review, Unicom, Labor Tribune and KSDK (Channel 5).
-- Roy Malone

Channels:
Ups and downs of local news
by Tripp Frohlichstein

You know Channel 5 (KSDK) is a powerhouse station when NBC can lose a substantial percentage of its primetime audience and the newscast can still gain viewers at 10 p.m. That's what happened in the year-to-year comparison of the Nielsen May ratings. Although NBC's primetime lineup lost 15 percent of its viewers, Channel 5 actually gained a small audience at 10 p.m.

Primetime lineups have long been associated with news ratings. If a viewer is watching a particular channel at 9:55 p.m., chances are the viewer will keep the same channel on at 10 p.m. But the May numbers indicate people are actively switching to Channel 5.

Despite the switch to Channel 5, KMOV (Channel 4) had a big gain at 10 p.m. as well. Even though the station remains in its traditional second-place spot for late news (with a couple of exceptions over recent years), it added two ratings points (around 24,000 homes) in the last year. No doubt they are pleased with that growth.

The other big nighttime story is KTVI (Channel 2), which is putting KPLR (Channel 11) to shame. Channel 2 has added nearly 25,000 homes to its viewer tally since May 2004, growing a whopping 24 percent. Channel 11 lost about 6,000 homes during the same period. The station noted its ratings were up, however, compared to February (Channel 11 also says its baseball Cardinal ratings were the highest baseball ratings in the country).

There is nothing wrong with Channel 11 news. It's fine. And that's the problem. Channel 2's newscasts are better than fine. Channel 2 is often superior when it comes to local coverage in terms of the quality of reporting (over Channels 4 and 5 as well as Channel 11). Granted, Channel 2 has an hour, enabling the station to have a greater number of stories and greater depth to its reporting.

Channel 2 also benefits from an improved Fox primetime lineup leading into its 9 p.m. news.

Some mixed results highlight the evening newscasts. At 5 p.m., only Channel 5 was up. At 6 p.m., Channels 4 and 5 both saw viewership gains. Channel 2 was essentially steady, losing only one-tenth of a rating point.

Channel 4 should be especially happy. Two new faces were added at 6 p.m., which easily could have meant a drop. Early indications, though, would indicate that viewers like anchor Russell Kinsaul and weathercaster Reynolds Wolf.

Most interesting, though, is that Channel 2's rating is up between 5:30-6 p.m. Going up against network newscasts, is this an aberration or a desire for local news?

In the morning, every station saw increases in viewers between 5-7 a.m. compared to last year. The biggest percentage gain was Channel 5's 26 percent increase in its 5-6 a.m. newscast with Channel 4's 20 percent close behind.

At 6 a.m., Channel 4 boasted a 16 percent increase. Channel 2, however, remains in second place with its morning news product.

As we head into the stations' spin zone, how do they interpret the numbers to their own advantage (as they should be expected to do)?

Channel 2 General Manager Spencer Koch said, "In spite of the Cardinals' primetime ratings' onslaught, combined with no bad weather, it's gratifying to see the 9 p.m. news grow 13 percent in ratings."

"The appetite for local news in the morning continues to grow. Our mornings show strength for four solid hours."

Channel 4 General Manager Allan Cohen weighed in with, "We've seen growth in virtually every news daypart. We are extremely satisfied with our performance and feel we have an exceptional base to build upon in the future."

Channel 5's General Manager Lynn Beall said, "It's obviously great to win, but showing growth in every newscast, that's really an accomplishment. I think our viewers recognize the quality of our storytelling and the journalism we strive to do here. I'm proud of the kinds of stories we do, and the good news for St. Louisans is that we provide these stories year round, not just during sweeps."

Channel 5 News Director Mike Shipley weighed in as well: "We delivered relevant stories, reports that really connected with our viewers. Take for example our investigation on playground bullying. The initial story brought home the significance of the problem, but we dug deeper, with follow-up reports to help both parents and educators. We provided additional information on our Web site and gave our audience a chance to have their questions answered by professionals with a phone bank and chat room. Our investigation has even led to some proposed legislation to deal with some of the issues we uncovered. That's the kind of depth and journalism that our audience has come to expect."

In Nielsen terms, 1 ratings point equals 1 percent of homes that own television sets (12,167 homes), while each share point represents 1 percent of the TVs actually in use to watch programming at a given time.

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As a Kirkwood resident, I was shocked to learn on the morning of May 15 that our state representative, Richard Byrd, had died of a heart attack the day before.

I heard the story on Channel 5's morning news. Wanting to learn more, I went to the web, starting on Channel 5's site, where the story was prominently posted but had very little detail.

I then went to other local news web sites. Nothing. I checked Channels 2 and 4, KMOX radio and STLToday.com. I came up with nothing when I put Byrd's name in the search section of each site, except Channel 2, as I could not find a search box. If there is one there, and there should be, it is not easy to find. So I clicked on the local news story link. Not a mention of his death could be found anywhere. To make matters worse, there are parts of Channel 2's Web site where you can barely read the type. Their Web site definitely needs some work.

So at least for this situation, I salute Channel 5 where the news really did come first.

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I also salute Channel 5 for living up to its commitment by identifying video the station did not shoot. Shipley said in the May issue of the St. Louis Journalism Review that he told his producers to label such video, and they have been doing it. As an example, when doing a story on Coke, we saw nice pictures of bottles of Coke rolling off the assembly line. It was appropriately identified as "company video." While this is less controversial than some corporate videos might be, it shows the station has the right idea. Way to go.

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How about Channel 4's Larry Conners' May ratings sweeps story on lie detectors? It was promoted in a way that teased viewers to find out the truth about Conners (if you even cared in the first place). I now know Conners is older than 52, has been ticketed for speeding, has had cosmetic surgery and smoked marijuana at some point in his life-too much information.

Conners also delivered an odd line in the story. He said, "Criminal suspects have to volunteer to take a polygraph." Wait a second. If you "have" to do it, you are no longer volunteering.

Sports/Media:
Two sports giants - one of them tall -- die
by Joe Pollack

One of the advantages of getting older is that you pile up a lot of what is referred to today as "life experience," a rather meaningless phrase that mostly relates to what happens during administrations led by dynasties such as the Bush family.

When I look back, I call them memories, and age brings about knowledge-the knowledge that accrues from associating, even in minimal ways, with the heroes whose footsteps so many of us try to follow.

The last month brought the deaths of a pair of those giants, golf writer Herbert Warren Wind and basketball star George Mikan, the first big man to have a real impact on his sport. I didn't know either man, but I read the works of Wind and followed the exploits of Mikan.

Oh, I met Wind once, when he was here to cover the U.S. Open at Bellerive sometime in the early 1960s, but my major impression of that event was the golf writer of the Times of London, whose paper paid for him to hire a secretary so that he could dictate his stories, without having to get his fingers inky from contact with a typewriter ribbon.

When I was a high school kid in New York, students got practically free tickets to a lot of sporting events at the old, old Madison Square Garden, a giant barn of a building that practically filled the block between 49th and 50th streets and 7th and 8th avenues. Our seats were in the upper balcony; you could see the whole basketball court if you sat in the first six rows but you never saw the whole hockey rink, which was wider.

That's where I first saw Mikan, a rather clumsy, gawky kid who never played basketball in high school, but who was created as an athlete by Ray Meyer, in his first head coaching job at DePaul University in Chicago. Meyer's successful work with Mikan sent every basketball coach since then in search of tall basketball players, whether they really could play or not. The free-throw lane was widened because of Mikan and shot-blocking became a new skill and also brought rules adjustments.

In the days before pro basketball became a major blip on sports radar, college double-headers were regular events. My friends and I would take the IRT subway from our homes in Brooklyn, going early to secure better seats and carrying textbooks to study in the hour or so we had to kill before the games began. And study we did, because our parents were in league with our teachers to make sure we got an education.

Mikan, Bob Cousy of Holy Cross, Bob Kurland of Oklahoma A&M (now Oklahoma State), Arnie Ferrin of Utah, Howie Schultz of Hamline (later a first baseman for the Dodgers) and Bill Mlkvy of Temple (the Owl without a vowel) were our visiting heroes. Local stars included Hy Gotkin of St. John's, Dolph Schayes of NYU and Irwin Dambrot of CCNY.

Mikan was not particularly athletic, and he wore glasses, which made him instantly popular with those of us who share that handicap. But he worked, and he practiced, and he scored early and often on a sweeping hook shot that would-today -probably be blocked before it left his hand. Later, he was an NBA star, and still later, he was the first commissioner of the ABA, whose leading legacy was the red, white and blue basketball.

Wind was a stylist in the days when writers sought style and grace and clarity and did not try to be more important or more colorful than the athletes they covered. If they were witty, as Wind sometimes was and Red Smith always was, it was an added attraction to the reports. Today, with television sports shows filling the airwaves, it seems more important to be rude and vulgar than to be stylish and witty. Writers, seeing quick bucks from radio and television, discover that the material runs out after a while.

It's hard to be funny, which Bryan Burwell should learn after several failing attempts to be so-once with a discussion of his momentary appearance in a movie (and who paid for the trip to Hollywood?) and once with fictional memos about basketball and images and politics.

Sports columnists are among the world's luckiest people. They should stick to sports and be thankful that they can eschew politics.

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Those of us who still feel we were badly used and will pay bills for the new Cardinal stadium, as we shall pay bills for Metro's overruns, can be pleased that St. Louis is in the bidding for the 2012 Olympic Games. New York, London, Paris and Moscow are in the running, and the New York bid seems contingent on a new, publicly funded stadium for the west side of Manhattan. It will cost uncountable millions of dollars while New York, like St. Louis and just about every other American city, sees education, health care, streets and public safety problems that it cannot afford to solve.

But the Jets will play there, and maybe the Giants, too, giving the stadium a workout a couple of dozen days a year and bringing some of the world's greatest traffic jams to fruition. It's a wonderful life!

AM/FM:
More bad news
by Joe Sonderman

For decades, WIL (92.3 FM) had the biggest commitment to local news of any music station. Its a tradition that dated back to the station's top 40 days in the 1950's. For many years the booming voice of Gene Hirsch delivered the top stories. Hirsch was followed by the very committed Jim Bafaro, and WIL often gave other stations a run for their money in the news department.

For the past eight years, Monica Adams has served as news director, with assistance from Metro Networks as the news staff dwindled. Now Adams is out, and it appears that WIL is on the way to becoming another jukebox. It's a shame, because the way to keep listeners in the face of competition from satellite radio and syndicated programming is to provide more local information, not less. Some of her colleagues say Adams may have been let go to free up money to bring a familiar voice back to WIL.

Bo Mathews is back in St. Louis to take his old spot in the afternoon drive on WIL. The affable Mathews previously pulled down big numbers in that slot from 1988-2002, part of the 14 years he spent at WIL. He related very well with the country audience and worked tirelessly on charity causes, particularly St. Jude's. He left for a morning drive position at WWKA in Orlando, where he had the top morning show in beautiful Central Florida. But he decided to part ways when the station sought to move him to afternoons.

Lynn Stewart was holding down the afternoon slot on WIL, and will now shift to mid days, allowing Assistant Program Director and Music Director Danny Montana to focus on his off-air duties.

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Stephanie Duran is out as co-host of the morning show on Y-98. After a Friday show, Program Director Kevin Robinson informed Stephanie it was her last. Robinson said the morning show was too "busy." KYKY (98.1 FM) is doing some wonderful things with the music. A "Top one-hit wonder" weekend was especially enjoyable, with some great pop tunes that haven't been heard lately, mixed in with the rock titles.

The management over at WARH (106.5 FM) should pay attention. The station continues to head toward more of a tired rock sound, going so far as to tap long time KSHE (94.7 FM) personality Al Hofer ("The guy the ladies gofer") as music director. Al knows his stuff, but we don't need any more stations playing endless classic rock. The hot "Jack" format sweeping the nation, which many thought "The Arch" might emulate, is simply a revisiting of the old Top 40 format with the widest variety possible.

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Another much beloved set of call letters is history in St. Louis. KIRL (1460 AM) is now KHOJ. I'm old enough to remember when KADI rocked with the best of 'em. Personalities such as Kevin McCarthy (who went by Keith Bloom) and Dick Eulett spent time in the lonely cinder block building in the flood plain along Highway 94 in St. Charles County.

After a horrific scandal involving owner Mike Rice in the 1970's, the new owners began serving the African-American community with wonderful traditional gospel music. The station is now owned by Covenant Network, part of the Eternal Word Television Network, (EWTN) the massive worldwide Catholic network and Catholic programming has taken over.

Radio History:
Gospel according to Gregory
by Frank Absher

When Columbus Gregory first walked through the doors of KATZ in St. Louis, his only goal was to sing on the air. In the half-century that followed, he did a lot more.

Gregory had been raised in the South and had been assigned to Korea for his military service. While he was there he heard a friend talking about this Negro disc jockey in St. Louis who had become a major celebrity. When he rejoined civilian life, Gregory headed toward St. Louis to hear the man everyone called "Spider."

Spider Burks was, indeed, a celebrity, spinning jazz records on the radio and making personal appearances at local clubs almost every night of the week. Gregory got a job with the railroad, and, in his spare time, began singing gospel with a local quartet called the Victory Airs. In conversations with other gospel singers, he became convinced that their groups would draw better crowds to their performances if listeners could hear them on the radio.

Gregory organized eight of the groups and arranged to buy a half-hour time block on KATZ every Sunday morning. Two groups would sing each week and every group would put $5 into the pot to cover the $40 weekly charge. The process worked, but, one-by-one, the groups dropped out, leaving Gregory with the contract to purchase the time.

The railroad job was not working out, but Gregory's skills at packaging radio time and at entertaining were developing. In 1959 he got word that the station was looking for a man who could handle engineering work for disc jockey remotes and promotions for the station-he jumped at the chance. Soon he found himself in local grocery stores during the day, promoting products advertised on KATZ, followed by late night work at local clubs supporting the DJs. It was a seven-day-a-week job.

"I did that for three years," Gregory says. "I was Dave Dixon's engineer at night. George Logan did some Saturday afternoon things and I was called in to do all his remotes. When Dave Dixon passed, his brother Jerome took over and I was his engineer. I was Spider Burks' engineer over at the Blue Note Club. In 1963 I decided to try to become an announcer."

It was a logical goal because the life of an engineer wasn't particularly glamorous. "Back then we were playing 45s and LPs and I had a remote mixer. I'd always sit in the storeroom of the club and they had a microphone in the front for the disc jockey. I had to work off their cues. Dave Dixon's vocal cue was 'Night Beat Down Rhythm Street.' When I heard the word 'street' I let the record go."

Things were different in those days, Gregory thinks.

"The radio announcers today aren't nearly as popular as they were back then. In the '50s and '60s in the black community, if a person wore a military uniform, they were looked up to as really being somebody special. Radio announcers then were held in the same high regard.

"Today's disc jockeys are searching for popularity. Back then, they weren't searching for it. They were popular just being themselves."

Gregory has worked with many disc jockeys over the years, but his most fond memories are of Dixon. "Dave was a real guy. He wasn't phony. If you weren't doing your job, he'd tell you, and that's the way to help a person. You don't help a person by telling him 'Oh yeah. You're doing great. You're great.'

"Dave would take time to tell me how to do things better, and that made me a better engineer. He was one of the nicest guys I worked with."

In 1963, Gregory went to KXLW as a gospel announcer. General Manager Richard Miller doubled his salary to bring him over. Before he knew it, Gregory was holding down a six-hour shift Monday through Friday mornings. "I always included the audience in the program. I'd even take requests from callers and let the callers talk on the air. Richard Miller loved that."

KXLW played secular music as well as gospel, and Gregory says Miller really had a knack for getting the best talent. Guys like George Logan, Jimmy Bishop and Steve Byrd were on KXLW, but one day, they were all gone. A forward-thinking programmer by the name of Bernie Hayes had hired all of them away to go to work on KWK. In response, KXLW went gospel full time, and Gregory was appointed program director.

"I brought in Leonard Morris, Louis Bates and Hosea Gales. That was back in 1968. I was with Richard from 1963 to 1979, even though I began working on WGNU-FM full-time in 1976. I'd do an hour or so at sign-on for Richard before going to the WGNU studio in Granite City.

"WGNU-FM had a lot of gospel music that I had overlooked. It had string sections and bands, and I said 'Wow!' I was on from 10-to-2 Monday through Friday, and I had people calling the station to buy advertising time."

He later worked for more than 25 years as a gospel music disc jockey on KIRL. Gregory's quest to minister through gospel music on the radio kept him on the air well past the standard retirement age of 65, and he prided himself in the fact that people who listened could never tell how old he was.

Late Edition:
Some stockholders will oppose sale of Pulitzer, Inc. to Lee Enterprises
by Charles L. Klotzer

While the formal sale of Pulitzer, Inc. to Lee Enterprises may have taken place by this time, we know for sure that it will not receive unanimous endorsement by current stockholders. When Pulitzer went public years ago, this writer wanted to be sure that he would receive all the legal documents beyond the approved PR releases, and we bought one share for the price of $22 if memory serves me correctly. Although that purchase may now result in a check for $64, the company's request to vote "for" the "Agreement and Plan of Merger" was resolutely turned down with a bold X in the "no" column.

After reading-or more accurately reading, skipping, reading, etc.-Pulitzer, Inc.'s 125-page proxy statement to stockholders and the 109-page Annual Report to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, it appears that Lee seemed to be the logical choice. Although, I should confess, that most parts of these reports were nearly as dense as trying to decipher my son's physics' article on "action at a distance."

My principal reason for regretting the sale is the loss of hometown ownership. Yes, Emily Pulitzer told us that she was the only Pulitzer still residing in St. Louis and that the time had come to recognize that the family had run out of options to retain control. Nothing was said about the son of Joseph Pulitzer III, Joseph Pulitzer IV, who apparently had a falling out with his father years ago and left the St. Louis Post-Dispatch where he had been working. (For more details see Riverfront Times, March 2-8, 2005).

Then there was an offer by Post editors that should have been considered more seriously. Pulitzer Inc.'s key financial advisor, Goldman, Sachs & Co., met with representatives of the employee-led group a number of times and concluded "that the employee's group's proposal contemplated the retention by the holders of more than a majority of our [Pulitzer's] outstanding shares of a significant portion of their equity interest in our company and that the group had not evidenced that it had commitments for sufficient financing to effect an all-cash purchase."

If we can translate that conclusion, it means that the key stockholders wanted their $64 per share now and they did not care to hold on to some of their stock to facilitate a transfer of ownership to their employees. Admittedly, such a transfer would have involved risks and may not have been as lucrative as the sale to Lee. It is conceivable that such a sale could have been taken to court for not being in the fiduciary interest of its stockholders. Even now, shortly after Pulitzer entered into the merger agreement with Lee, two class action lawsuits were filed for failing "to maximize shareholder value by, among other things, benefiting themselves at the expense of Pulitzer's public shareholders" among many other reasons. Pulitzer Inc., of course, "believes the allegations are without merit."

Pulitzer, Inc.'s proxy statement revealed that putting out the "for-sale sign" generated wide interest among potential buyers. In all, 14 parties expressed an interest. Five of these subsequently expressed sufficient interest to execute a confidentiality agreement. After some parties withdrew and others were disqualified, four remained to submit a final bid by Jan. 24. By that date, only two of the interested parties submitted final bids. One of them was Lee's which offered an all-cash bid of $62 per share, but indicated that under certain conditions it would increase its bid to $63. Ultimately, they agreed to a per share bid of $64.

Goldman Sachs reported "that the second final bidder has also submitted an all cash bid of $62," but that "its execution of a merger agreement was contingent on its first entering into an agreement to sell under certain terms its interest in a specific business property" as well as other conditions including "to its first reaching an agreement with a third party that would require review by a governmental agency."

While the Gannett Co., Inc. is never mentioned, it appears that for Gannett to acquire Pulitzer, Inc., it would have had to sell KSDK (Channel 5), because under FCC rules a company cannot own both a major television station as well as a major newspaper within the same market.

The St. Louis situation was not the only problem Gannett would have faced. Pulitzer, Inc. has a Joint Operating Agency (JOA) in Tucson with Gannett. If Gannett had been the buyer, the JOA would have turned into a monopoly, with Gannett owning both the Tucson Citizen and Tucson Star.

Indeed, Gannett's 2004 Annual Report complains, "our desire to make acquisitions that would truly position us as competitors in the 21st century information age was thwarted by the government's regulatory controls. Laws barring ownership of newspapers and TV stations in the same community remained hung up in court and the bureaucracy of the Federal Communications Commission. We believe these unreasonable and antiquated regulations must be changed."

As Gannett must have learned by now, even with FCC approval and Bush's approval, Congress had to retain these rules thanks to an outpouring of millions of e-mails and phone calls protesting FCC's capitulation to the media industry.

The conditions and possible delays of the second bidder and that Lee's board, unlike that of the second bidder, had approved a final bid, moved the Pulitzer Inc. board to continue negotiations with Lee on an exclusive basis. As early as 2000, senior management began to review the future of the company. By 2003, Robert C. Woodworth, president and chief executive officer, and Terrance C. Z. Egger, senior vice present for all St. Louis operations, conducted independent studies and concluded that the company's "limited scale is an increasingly significant risk factor."

In other words, Pulitzer was too small to be competitive. Moreover, the Post's 2000 daily circulation of 300,920 had declined to 283,362 by 2004, and Sunday's circulation over the same period had declined from 487,080 to 452,626. Maybe even more important, total advertising inches had declined over this period from 2,901 to 2,359. (Nevertheless, net income over this period had increased from $34,902,000 to $44,114,000 and dividends per share had increased from $0.64 to $0.76.) The executives' conclusions were first presented to William Bush of Fulbright & Jaworski L.L.P, Pulitzer's general counsel, and James M. Snowden, executive vice president of Huntleigh Securities Corporation that provides financial advice to Pulitzer, Inc. In turn, they met with the principal stockholders, Michael Pulitzer, Emily Rauh Pulitzer, David E. Moore and Richard W. Moore who own 84.9 percent of the combined voting power.

It was Goldman Sachs, Fulbright and Huntleigh who conducted the process of searching for bidders and recommending Lee Enterprises to the Pulitzer board.

The merger agreement stipulates that the Post will "maintain its current name and editorial page platform statement, and maintain its news and editorial headquarters in the City of St. Louis, Missouri, for at least five years." Lee is also required not to appoint a new editor for five years. While Woodworth's employment will be terminated, Egger will be retained.

Lee's purchase will actually cover only 95 percent of Pulitzer, Inc. Long-time readers will remember that SJR exposed in its 1970 inaugural issue the well-kept secret of the Joint Operating Agency (JOA) between the Post and the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, now long defunct. The St. Louis JOA initially conceived to preserve competitive newspapers, became the first entity in the country to reign over the closing of a newspaper. After the closing of the Globe, The Herald Company, Inc., owner of the Globe, had for years a 50 percent stake in both the profits and major expenses of the Post. On May 1, 2000, Pulitzer paid $306 million to reduce Herald's stake in the Post to 5 percent. In 2010, Herald has a one-time right to require to be bought out. The JOA, which by now has been renamed as a "Venture," will be terminated on May 1, 2015, and Pulitzer expects that the total buyout will not exceed $100 million.

Financially, none of the 17 executive officers and directors has much to worry about. The cashout value for various stock options totals more than $50 million with Egger receiving $3,161,328, Woodworth, $14,719,992 and Michael E. Pulitzer, $6,202,613. In addition, millions more are awarded for transaction incentive, bonus in lieu of 2004 options, estimated retention incentive, individual pension plans, severance payments, etc. with large payments to Pulitzer executives and directors. Upon further reflection, our readers might be interested in knowing exactly who gets what. Happy reading.

People:
News about St. Louis media personnel, awards and accomplishments