Some criticized Bill as an "ivory tower journalist," because he was both a gentleman and a gentle man, but he understood the realities of the newspaper business as he understood its philosophy. He also understood music and baseball and fishing and many other things that drew together the disparate parts of his well-lived life.

As he grew through the St. Louis Post-Dispatch hierarchy, from feature writer to top executive, but remained my friend, he often told this story:

"When I left the Kansas City Star and drove to St. Louis to start work at the Post, I drove across the state on I-70 and realized I had doubled my salary along the way. I certainly didn't become twice the reporter or twice the writer on this journey, but I went from a non-union newspaper to a bastion of the Newspaper Guild, and those who preceded me had fought for me."

Of course, when Bill came to the Post, in 1962, he came from a major newspaper and most assuredly came for a salary well above union scale. They were Post policies in those days, and still were when I joined the newspaper 10 years later. Joseph Pulitzer believed, and most of his managing editors did, too, that if you were good enough to work for the Post, you were too good to work for scale.

Bill and I met through a happy accident of geography. We both lived in the marvelous, free-thinking, individualistic and liberal apartment complex that was Laclede Park, on Laclede Avenue just went of Compton Avenue.

At the time, in the early 1960s, it reflected the spirit of the decade. And it was strongly peppered with people from the Post, where he worked, and the Football Cardinals, where I worked. Jack Rice, perhaps the finest word stylist ever at the Post, lived there. So did Bob Dunlap, and Charlene Prost and photographer Fred Sweets and his sister, Ellen, and Pete Donhowe and Ray Vodicka.

A number of talented people who worked in Charles Guggenheim's film company were renters, and so were MacArthur Lane and Prentice Gautt and Dave O'Brien and Dave Meggyesy and Rick Sortun of the Big Red. Airline stewardesses and Jack Carl of the eponymous Two Cents Plain delicatessen lived there, as did the charming and lovely Delcia Devon, brought from London by Famous-Barr to be a "bird" who pushed Carnaby Street fashions.

Bill and I played softball on the diamond at the corner of Laclede and Compton, an all-in kind of game that featured such free spirits as Martin Quigley and the Hawks' Zelmo Beaty, with Jerry King and Nelson Algren and Washington University sociology professor Irving Louis Horowitz, who was such a voluble and argumentative competitor that Quigley told him one day to please remember he was in a softball game and not a therapy session. Percy Green played, too, wearing his combat boots, and St. Louis U. med students and interns, often in shirts and ties in case the hospital called.

And we drank at the Gaslight Bar and talked a lot, and argued with bartender Jack O'Neal, and Bill taught me a Chinese drinking competition that involved throwing fingers, much like rock-paper-scissors, a sidewalk game of my childhood that went on a long sabbatical, only to reappear in the last decade, continual proof that whatever goes around comes around.

Bill's parents, Kansas Citian Elizabeth Hart and China-born Kyatang Woo, met as students at the University of Missouri, and eloped to Illinois for a marriage ceremony because she was Caucasian and he was Chinese, and Missouri law at the time would not let them marry. After graduation, they moved to Shanghai, where the elder Woo worked for newspapers.

Bill was born in 1936. He talked often of his childhood there, less so of the years of internment by the Japanese they later endured. After World War II, Bill and his mother, now divorced, moved to Kansas City, where he grew up and made the decision - considered depraved by some-to attend the University of Kansas and become a Jayhawk.

When Bill married Tricia Ernst, my wife and I were invited to the reception, a fascinating, almost-exotic evening. Bill's father, a dignified man in a black suit who exuded power, attended and was accompanied by a beautiful young woman in traditional Chinese garb, and by four or five men, obviously bodyguards.

They wore black suits, too, had broad shoulders and impassive faces whose eyes seemed never to miss a movement by any of the guests. They could have stepped right out of "Men in Black."

I also got to know two of his step-siblings through the years. Willie Woo, later associated with Bob Duffy in Marty's Bakery, was a presence in the city for a number of years, and Elizabeth Li, who I first met when she visited Bill in Laclede Park, was a charming hostess on a couple of my trips to Hong Kong.

Married to a banker, she lived in an apartment halfway up one of the spectacular Hong Kong hills, with a breath-taking view of the harbor. We lunched and shopped together and I carried gifts for Bill's children home in my suitcase.

I admired Bill's growth during the sixties, and enjoyed his varied writings, from a wonderful journey through Russia, his general articles, his features, some thoughtful pieces that led to his sincere, literate, well-considered editorials. He always had talent for analysis, and he saw beyond (or beneath) the nonsense that provided a smokescreen to cover so much that was mean-spirited, or wrong.

I had been with the Post about 15 months when the paper was shut down in a labor dispute in 1973. Bill took the reins of St. Louis Today, a strike paper that operated from the New City School. Bob Posen and Harper Barnes did a great deal of the necessary work in editing and production, Bill McGoogan sold ads.

Ted Gest, Bob Sanford, Pete Donhowe, Jack Rice and many others were reporters, rewrite people, copy editors and the like. I was among the group, and as I was working with Bob Starr on the Football Cardinals broadcasts on KMOX Radio, I reverted to sports writing, came home with the team after road games, wrote the story and delivered it to the printers that night.

We had a lot of good times and we worked very hard. And St. Louis Today, our strike paper, made considerable money. It was a truly democratic (or communistic) operation. Everyone worked for the same wage. And at the end, we split our profits into equal shares, gave Bill and Bob Posen double shares for their immense work and leadership, donated to the New City School for its help, telephones and office space and went back to the Post.

Bill was a Guild member at the time, and even as he eventually was promoted to an exempt position, he remained considerate of the union and the labor movement. In later years when relations between management and labor became more heated, more acrimonious, he often looked uncomfortable as he walked through the newsroom.

The positions he espoused as an editor were not necessarily those he believed in, or agreed with, but while Joseph Pulitzer, Jr. could leave the office and go skiing in Europe as a strike deadline neared in another year, once Bill became the editor, he had to remain in the office and put the paper out every day.

Bill left Laclede Park in the '60s, a few years before I did. Later, he married Martha Shirk, and their three sons became vital parts of his life. We watched them grow through some of the columns he wrote after he became editor of the Post, the first non-Pulitzer to ever hold the title and the first person of Asian descent to become the editor of a major American newspaper.

The columns had a wide range; some dealt with his children and the life of a Webster Grove parent, others looked at matters that were, on the surface, more serious.

Although Bill had a fine sense of humor, he was a man who was serious, a man who had considerable depth. We were never close friends, but we were more than acquaintances. We respected one another, and I was very sad when he lost a major power struggle and, as a result, left the newspaper.

I did not see him for the last decade of his life, but I followed his successful career. I'm sure he was a wonderful teacher, a man who instilled the same passion and loyalty in his students that he had in his reporters, especially in his earlier days as the editor.

In his last few years, he was more reclusive in the office, and it was almost as if he was waiting for the second shoe to drop. The first, for me and I think for him (I never asked him. I wish I had), was the day Pulitzer was forced to become a public company.

Joe Pollack is a former St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist.

Woo was a champion of watchdog journalism
by Don Corrigan
During the final decade of his life, William Woo was one of the more articulate critics of the public journalism movement. He began his critique while still editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and later expressed doubts about the movement as a West Coast academic.

One of his first sorties into the battle over public journalism came in 1995 when he gave a speech at the University of California-Riverside. In that speech he agreed with public journalism advocates who declared newspapers to be in crisis with declining readership.

Woo was skeptical, however, of the public journalism prescriptives, such as abandoning a "negative" watchdog mission for a more "positive" activist role for betterment of the community. Woo worried that the new activists were far too eager to ditch the traditional tenets of journalism, as well as the tried-and-true ways of doing things-from beat coverage to balancing story narratives.

Woo noted with some concern that more than 170 newspapers across the country were cooperating with the Project on Public Life and the Press, a sort of think tank to hatch public journalism experiments. Ironically, Woo himself was destined to be replaced at the Post by one of public journalism's most visible and vocal proponents, Cole Campbell, formerly editor of the Virginian Pilot of Norfolk, Va.

Woo distrusted the zeal of public journalism prophets such as Campbell, and he could only shake his head at talk of the movement's "evangel" and its "converts." Woo lamented that Roy Peter Clark of the Poynter Institute referred to Jay Rosen, director of the Project on Public Life and the Press at New York University, as "surely the Apostle Paul of the movement as a wise man from the East."

If Rosen was the movement's Paul, then Campbell was its Peter, and he came to St. Louis to replace Woo and to build his church upon the rock of Pulitzer's Post. Schisms broke out in the skeptical Post newsroom, however, almost as soon as Campbell lifted his staff over the North Tucker Boulevard newsies and began to preach his gospel.

For starters, seasoned Post journalists had little patience for Campbell's penchant for seminar sessions on how to wade into the "civic swamp" to get a handle on the "public's agenda." When a news source called a Post reporter with a story tip, the reporter begged off, saying he "had no time to talk now because he was learning how to reconnect with people."

Editors and reporters also found it a laughable notion that the news could be improved by jettisoning traditional beats and replacing them with "public life teams." When everyone is responsible, no one is responsible-and good stories began to slip though the cracks because no one knew who was on first in the new paradigm of teams for public life.

Another source for smirks, snorts and belly laughs was Campbell's idea to convene the public for "charettes" on public life issues. These forums to help reporters get the "public's take" on issues were sparsely attended and "dismal failures" at best. Sometimes panelists temporarily sat with the audience, so the "conveners" on the panels did not outnumber the audience.

Campbell's reign at the Post was shortlived, and there were audible sighs of relief across St. Louis when the great newspaper experiments ground to a halt.

It wasn't too long after Campbell's departure from St. Louis that the institutions supporting public journalism crumbled into dust. The Pew Center for Civic Journalism and the Project on Public Life and the Press disappeared ingloriously.

What still remains are those cautionary words of William Woo when he cast a cold eye on prophets, evangelists and converts espousing public journalism-with its exalted language of "change agents," "civic catalysts" and the "community's conversations."

Wrote Woo: "What does it mean to say that we are not in the watchdog business, but the business of public life? One is precise, the other abstract ...

"I think I know what Jay Rosen means when he says we should be about strengthening a 'community's capacity.' I am much surer about what is meant in the Post-Dispatch platform, written in 1907 by the first Joseph Pulitzer, where it says 'never tolerate injustice or corruption.'

"When we use this new jargon of journalism, what exactly are we trying to say?" Woo asked. "Orwell's warning that language and thought tend to corrupt each is still relevant."

Don Corrigan is a professor in the School of Communications at Webster University and also edits three weekly newspapers.

Local TV newscasts scoop their own Web sites by a giga-mile
by Tammy Merrett
The reality of Web sites associated with publications and television stations is shifting. Newspapers and television no longer use Web sites just for promotional purposes. More often people turn to them during the day for news, and the sites also generate revenue for news operations.

Many who are loyal to local television stations for most of their news also make up a good bit of traffic on those stations' Web sites. While St. Louis-market stations certainly value traffic on their Web sites, they are sometimes inconsistent in how frequently and quickly information is updated.

In a recent informal analysis of how well the local television stations with news departments updated their Web sites, KSDK (Channel 5) came out on top. The station updated its news section on the site many times per day and into the evening as warranted. KMOV (Channel 4) came in second in updating frequency and urgency while KTVI (Channel 2) came in third, and KPLR (Channel 11) came in a distant fourth.

To be fair it should be noted that Channel 11 has only one local news broadcast per day and nowhere near the resources of its competitors.

Stories on air v. online
During the 6 a.m. newscast on April 17, Channel 5 reported on an area teenager who accidentally shot and killed himself. It was posted on the Channel 5 site by 8:50 a.m., but Channels 2, 4 and 11 did not have the story on their sites until a couple of hours after the story was originally reported.

The same was true of another story that morning about an alleged sexual assault involving the former president of Maryville University. When charges were not pursued by St. Louis County prosecutors-the story was reported the evening of April 19-Channels 4, 5 and 11 had the update posted to their sites before noon that day. Channel 2 did not update the story that day.

It was interesting to note the placement of most of the original reports of the alleged sexual assault compared to the placement of the update about charges not being filed. Most of the local stations' sites played the original story prominently, making it the lead story on some of the sites at certain times. When no charges were made, however, the story was played low. On Channel 4 it was set off toward the very bottom of the homepage in supplemental headlines sections. It took much more scrolling to find the follow-up than the initial story.

Besides the previous two top stories, Monday, April 17, was a busy news day right out of the gate. Highway 40 lane closures caused some serious traffic problems that day. Both Channels 4 and 5 had the information on their Web sites when checked by 8:50 a.m., but Channel 2 had only the weekend construction schedule. Channel 11's site did not have the story.

Of course, Channel 11 does not hide the fact that its Web site is secondary to its newscast.

"Our priority is the broadcast first and then the Web site second," said Dan Rositano, Channel 11's manager of information systems and Web site coordinator. "We have less resources than our competitors."

The evening of April 17 brought the discovery of missing teen Wade Lurk's vehicle and body-a story all the stations followed closely on air. While the stations that had 5 or 6 p.m. broadcasts reported at that time on the story, there was a bit of a delay in getting it posted on some Web sites.

Channels 2 and 4 had the story posted around 9:30 p.m. Channel 5 came out the clear winner with its story being posted to the site much earlier in the day-around 2:30 p.m. As of 10:30 p.m. that night, the story was not on the Channel 11 site.

The stations did fairly well on the whole in updating their Web sites with the Herbert Chalmers, Jr. shootings April 18. The story was reported on the evening and night broadcasts on all the local stations. Channels 2, 4 and 11 all had the story on their sites around 8:30 p.m. Channel 5, though, had posted the story at 2:15 p.m.

"The goal is to constantly update KSDK.com as appropriate. It is not tied just to the newscast," said Lynn Beall, president and general manager of Channel 5. She added that users should often see breaking stories online before they are on air.

Channel 4 came out ahead on the April 18 story of a bridge worker's body being found two months after he fell into the Mississippi River.

The story was reported on the late news of the day. Channel 4 had the story posted on its site by 9:15 p.m., before its 10 p.m. newscast. Channel 2 did not have the story by 11 p.m. Channel 5 did have the story by that time, but it was difficult to find as it was off to the side of the main headlines in a video section. Channel 11 did not have the story online that night either, though it was part of the broadcast.

When another Chalmers victim was found April 19, it was reported on the 5 and 6 p.m. newscasts of the day, but none of the local sites had the story posted to their Web sites until the next morning around 8 a.m.

Then on the late newscasts of April 20, when a woman came forward whom Chalmers allegedly raped before the shootings, the story was posted on Channel 4's site at 10 p.m. Channel 5's update posted at 11 p.m., but Channels 2 and 11 did not have the story on their sites that night.

Rositano said that often viewers will go to bed after watching Channel 11's late newscast and might check on a story the next day. He stuck with the idea that most people view online news during workday hours, which might explain a lack of updating later in the day and especially after the late newscasts. It at least provides a good excuse.

Promises, promises
On Channel 5's 10 p.m., April 19 newscast, viewers were directed to the Web site for the full text of a letter from Mike Danton, the former Blues player in prison for attempting to have his agent killed. And it was there as promised, though hard to get to unless you entered the site through the homepage. A search easily located it, though.

After its April 19 report on the Chalmers shootings, Channel 11 directed viewers to its Web site for a plan on how to deal with the possibility of workplace shootings. But, it was not there that night and did not appear until well into the next morning.

Changes coming at Channel 2
In this analysis, Channel 2 came up short many times. Patrick O'Brien, producer and webmaster at Channel 2, offered what could be an explanation or at least a solution.

O'Brien and others at the station realize that the site may not be doing what many expect a news Web site to do. He said those issues will be addressed when the new design for the Fox 2 site is rolled out mid-summer as part of a larger revamping of 25 local station sites owned by Fox.

According to an April 17 article about the project in Broadcasting & Cable, the Fox-redesigned sites will include what is described as "significantly upgraded local news and weather sections." The sites will also feature extensive video streaming, content from FoxNews.com, FoxSports.com and Sky News, and an entertainment section.

"It is going to make the Web site a more personal experience," O'Brien said. "Now we kind of repeat what was on air. The news can expand to be so much more than that."

What is posted, when, where?
As with any news operation, there are decisions to be made based on news judgment. A news Web site is no exception. What is to be posted, where on the site and how soon are all things to consider when updating a site.

All the local stations' representatives interviewed said they take the same basic approach-posting updated stories as soon as possible, putting the biggest stories as far forward as possible and adding expanded material where and when possible. Of course, some are better at this than others, based on the sample above.

The stations do not have specific guidelines on placement of stories and tend to follow their noses for news and audience tastes on what the top stories of the day or moment are.

"The news director doesn't come to me and say, 'This should be your top story,'" said Dave Sherman, news and operations manager at KMOV.com.

The main focus of the Channel 4 site is local news, mostly from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., when most people are online at work. Sherman added that it is the time of day on which most media focus their energy.

Sherman said story selection for the Web site follows a similar process to that of the broadcast. Expanded stories are the goal on the site every day either in the form of a more in-depth story or additional video for the story.

Channel 2's O'Brien said that it is usually just the top stories that are added to the site now, adding that the current site does not have much room on it for more, something that is expected to change with the redesign this summer. He also said that the order of stories is rearranged with each newscast.

After the news is covered, Sherman said that, at KMOV.com, they know what their readers are looking for in addition to news because users must register to view stories in full.

"We know who's on the site and what they like," he said. "It skews more to the entertainment side. We are not here to duplicate the newscast. We think it would be redundant to repeat what they saw."

At KSDK.com, Rebecca Rahm, program director for Channel 5 and KSDK.com, said there is no set schedule, as with the other stations, for updating their site, but that the site is updated when there is new news in the St. Louis market. She added that they make an extra effort to keep the news "fresh" to avoid the redundancy Sherman described.

"We are constantly evaluating, especially in the newsroom, what the top three stories are. The most recent are always the most updated," said Tracie McClain, KSDK executive producer in the morning.

Rositano said that news updates on the Channel 11 site happen most often with breaking news during the day, though the sample above does not really show that.

Staffing concerns
To the casual observer, it might be easy to assume that on-air reporters would be too busy to generate material for a Web site or even have time to update it. But in this era of convergence, more and more reporters are finding themselves in the situation where they must learn how to convert their work to other media formats and then do it on a regular basis.

None of the local sites has reporters exclusively devoted to their Web sites. Some have staff members devoted to the running of the sites, but the person who works exclusively for a newscast Web site in St. Louis is rare.

Sherman said that two online editors do most of the updating of the Channel 4 site. He does some as well. There is a separate bottom line for the online and television operations, but there is not a separate reporting staff.

The two online editors split the days-one handling the morning to mid-day shift and the other taking the mid-day to around 10 or 11 p.m. shift. Sherman also added that many of the reporters at the station are learning how to post their stories as well.

"It's taxing for three people to cover 15-16 hours a day," Sherman said.

As it stands now, O'Brien oversees the Channel 2 site and gathers information from reporters to put online. Four to five others, who have other responsibilities at the station as well, update the site. He said only one person is solely dedicated to the site at this point, but the station is looking for five web producers and salespeople for the new version of the Web site to come.

Tim Wolff is the online executive producer for KSDK.com. He oversees content, but everyone in the news department can and does update stories.

Mike Shipley, news director at Channel 5, said all KSDK reporters are responsible for writing for the web, producers for preparing information that comes from their shows, photographers for posting their work to the web and editors for preparing video for the site.

Rositano said that six associate producers at Channel 11 update their site along with their other duties at the station.

Anything new?
While no St. Louis newscast's Web site has reporters who work exclusively for their station's Web site at this time, both KMOV.com's Sherman and Channel 5's Shipley said their reporters and producers are working more and more on generating or acquiring material for the web that may not go on the air.

Some of the material could be generated by interactive features on the sites such as online chats, polling or blogs. KSDK.com has a Karen Foss blog in the works, and the new Fox site may include user-generated content.

Through Tribune Interactive, Channel 11 has started posting video to the site as recently as the last week in April.

As far as web-specific content is concerned, Rositano said there is some related to the Cardinals and the Blues on the Channel 11 site, but not really in news.

"We don't necessarily feel we have to do web-specific content for news, based on the numbers and information on the traffic we get," he said.

Corporate influence
While there are some people who focus on information technology issues at the local television newscasts' Web sites, IT types are needed more at some stations than at others.

Sherman said that the Channel 4 site has a structure shared by all Belo Corp. television station Web sites, but that there is local flexibility in content. He added that the Belo stations can share information on the sites. Belo Corp. is the parent company of Channel 4.

Rositano said the design of the Channel 11 site is taken care of by Tribune Interactive, part of the station's parent company, and that it really takes a load off the station's shoulders. He added that the content area of the site is determined more on a local level.

"We chose to lead with weather then the news," Rositano said. He said that some of the 26 other stations in the group do not do much or anything at all with news, but, since they have a local news presence, news is part of the site.

But sometimes the home office can get in the way of progress or at least slow it down. O'Brien said he has been contacted many times by users wondering why the Channel 2 site does not have or do certain things. He said he has had to ask them to be patient because the station's hands were tied.

"We are waiting for this really nice stuff to happen," O'Brien said.

KSDK.com's design is local, based on user needs and wants, according to Rahm. She said there are some shared standards from its parent company, Gannett, on the back end.

"We want it to be the best online source for local news and information. It is not just a site sent down to us from another city," Beall said.

Tammy Merrett is the faculty adviser of The Montage at St. Louis Community College-Meramec and the online editor of SJR.

Features:

Terry Egger leaves financial problems behind at Post
by Roy Malone
Terry Egger's decision to quit as publisher of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch last month has to make him feel pretty good.

He walks away with millions of dollars through various compensation schemes. He escapes the headache of having his new bosses at Lee Enterprises beating up on him for not increasing revenue. And, at 48, he can move on to another job or career.

His jumping ship follows the decision last November by Ellen Soeteber to quit as editor of the paper. She cited personal financial considerations and the lack of newsroom resources.

Both Egger and Soeteber were kept on by Lee when it bought Pulitzer Inc. last year for $1.46 billion. Within two months of taking over, Lee launched a buyout of 130 employees, including 41 in the newsroom.

Lee has a reputation for wringing big profits out of its chain of newspapers, mostly in smaller cities. The Post, while profitable, is not profitable enough for Lee's goals, especially when all that debt must be paid off.

So Lee set a target of 2-to-3 percent for advertising revenue growth at the Post. Unfortunately, the newspaper industry's ad revenue is in the doldrums right now, and the Post came in with a negative 2 percent compared to last year, worse than other Lee papers. And the Post's declining circulation is a continuing problem.

Since Lee took over, it's been nothing but turmoil at the Post. Even readers complain about the layout and typographical changes and selection of front-page feature stories that seem inappropriate for a big city newspaper.

Egger set May 19 for his resignation. He has something of a golden parachute in that his employment contract protects his severance pay for two years. He apparently is exercising the right to resign in the 13th month after the Lee/Pulitzer merger and still collect a year's salary plus bonus-worth at least a $1 million, according to a Bill McClellan column on Egger's departure.

What Egger's salary is no one will say, either at the Post or Lee, where Egger is a vice president. His salary at the Post in 2003 was $411,923 with a bonus of $194,174. In 2004 his total compensation was more than $2 million, counting $687,038 in salary, long-term incentives of $1,371,113 and other compensation of $16,816. His former boss, Robert Woodworth, had total compensation of $5.6 million in 2004.

Lee only reports compensation of its top five executives and Egger's is not listed. Calculating what he will walk away with is hard to do, but the St. Louis Business Journal took a guess at $5 million. That may be low.

From various company reports and government filings, these figures were gleaned: Egger got $3.2 million in cash for stock-based compensation when Pulitzer was sold. He got a Lee retention bonus of $675,000 and a $75,000 transaction incentive. He could get as much as $900,000 to cover taxes associated with his extra compensation. Add a $195,000 bonus in lieu of 2004 stock options, a $112,5000 performance bonus and $263,013 from his supplemental pension plan.

His common stock in Pulitzer was valued at $11.4 million. There's probably more, such as his several thousand shares of Lee stock, but company executives and spokespeople are guarded in providing information. Egger himself wouldn't be interviewed about his financial bonanza.

This kind of lucre is not bad for Egger, who grew up in poor circumstances and lived in public housing. Most people at the Post say Egger's been a good boss, though he lacked experience on the news side. He grew up in Rock Island, Ill. His first newspaper job was at a small paper in California. He joined the Tucson Newspapers in Arizona where he became vice president of advertising. He was brought to the Post in 1996 by then-Chairman Michael Pulitzer and was made general manager. He became publisher in 1999.

He often told staffers he didn't think the Post would be sold, at least "not for 45 years." But his boss, Woodworth, was streamlining Pulitzer for sale. This was the goal of Michael Pulitzer and Emily Pulitzer. She was the largest stockholder and is the widow of former chairman Joseph Pulitzer, Jr. He died in 1993.

Egger is friendly (has beers with a few of the writers) and staffers say he has handled himself well, with a few exceptions. During contract talks with the St. Louis Newspaper Guild, Egger proposed an open shop for Guild membership, which would weaken the union's bargaining strength. It didn't fly.

He stayed in the background last summer when 124 staffers signed a letter of protest over Soeteber's suspension of investigative reporter Carolyn Tuft for alleged errors in stories about the finances of televangelist Joyce Meyer. Staffers said the paper bowed to pressure by Meyer and made up reasons to print an "apology" for Tuft's stories. Tuft is pursuing a grievance over the suspension; stories about Meyer were stopped.

Egger's resignation comes at a time when the Guild is complaining that the advertising staff is getting a "flogging" for not bringing in more revenue under a commission system that is illogical and doesn't work. A Guild newsletter said, "Our commission salespeople are not paid a commission on what they sell … their salaries can drop significantly from one year to the next even if their overall sales revenue increases."

The salespeople are paid $400 a week plus a chance at a bonus based on their sales, but they are expected to bring in more revenue each year.

It's becoming more common, the Guild said, "for someone to go from earning $60,000 in one year to earning less than half of that in the next because he or she couldn't exceed revenue brought in during sales periods the previous year."

While the ad sales people are suffering financially, they are also subjected to discipline for not producing more. "Many good salespeople are leaving," and others are being burned out, the newsletter said.

Jeff Gordon, Guild president, said the union is meeting with management to encourage a fairer system for the salespeople. "These people drive the revenue at the newspaper," Gordon wrote.

The reduced staff, slumping ad revenue, smaller paychecks for salespeople and weakening of the newspaper's quality are headaches Egger will soon not have to worry about. Who can blame him for leaving? As McClellan wrote: "Paid to stay and paid to leave."

"This industry is not in real trouble," Egger was quoted in the Post. "It's just a matter of the sales cycle. It won't stay down forever."

Mary Junck, chairman, president and chief executive of Lee, said Egger's decision to leave was voluntary. "He's done a good job."

Egger in turn praised Junck as being "a very special newspaper leader … an even better human being."

Junck said a replacement will be named for Egger. The Post has always had an executive to represent it in the community. Egger belongs to various civic groups and is active at St. Patrick Center for the Homeless.

Will the new publisher be someone from Lee's headquarters in Davenport? When Soeteber quit, her replacement as editor was Arnie Robbins, who had been managing editor.

Egger, with a wife and three children, hasn't said what he'll do next, except that he might return to teaching; he taught college courses in California.

"I have found myself yearning for another good, new chapter in my life," he said.

Staffers speculated he might do newspaper consulting, or join Woodworth, who moved on to the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

Roy Malone, a long-time reporter, is retired from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Post neglects coverage of Women's History Month
by Kimberly Wilmot Voss
Sociologist Gaye Tuchman has pointed out that to be in the news is to matter. It leads to discussion, analysis and sometimes changes in politics and society. When the media do not cover an issue or group, the message is that discussion, analysis and potential for change will not occur.

Media researchers annually report that newspapers overlook news about women and women as sources. With that largely documented, I hoped that for at least one month-March-women and their role in history would be covered in newspapers.

My hopes were high as the St. Louis Post-Dispatch had done such a strong job of addressing February as Black History Month. (The fact that the history of these two groups is confined to two months is in itself problematic, but that is not my point here.)

After all, there is a distinct parallel between the struggle for civil rights and the struggle for women's rights in this country. Covered correctly, the history month concept would include not just great names but the victories won and the battles still being fought.

Despite my hopes, the Post largely overlooked Women's History Month. In March the regular profiles and the insightful issue stories that were featured in February for Black History Month did not continue and there were only a few calendar items.

An easy measure can be found in an advanced search for stories relating to the historical emphasis of each month. A search of the Post's own archives using the term "women's history" (appearing anywhere) comes back with six matches in the month of March. A search of its own archives using the term "black history" (appearing anywhere) comes back with 73 matches in month of February.

A search of the Post using the academic search engine Lexis-Nexis for the respective months found 49 matches for "black history" in February and one match for "women's history" in March.

It would be easy to simply report that Black History Month mattered significantly more to journalists at the Post-the numbers speak for themselves. As has long been shown, reporters and editors have wide latitude in determining what goes in the paper and where it is placed. It is a matter of determining what is news and, by default, what is not newsworthy.

My criticism is meant to spawn solutions. Let's consider that the Post journalists are following the typical model of news values taught in journalism schools across the country: conflict, human interest, impact, proximity, prominence and timeliness. Coverage of women's history easily could have been included based on the events and issues of March 2006.

In other words, by simply making a connection to current events and Women's History Month, readers would gain a better understanding by seeing the context of the issue. And this could be done by not falling back on the media's stereotypical roles of women as victims, wives or mothers.

For an example of what shouldn't be done, note the March 30 story "Mom has her first business under her belt"-there had to a better angle to the business story than the woman's familial position.

There were some stories that seemed especially well connected to the month that could have added a women's history sidebar or angle. Below are a few examples of where the Post could have used Women's History Month to improve coverage.

Conflict: Late in the month, the Post ran an Associated Press story that begs a historical component: "Senator Apologizes for Sexually Suggestive Remarks." The headline is a bit misleading as the senator was basically forced to make amends and even in his apology there is little remorse over the statement to his younger, female, first-year colleague.

Specifically, he questioned her natural hair color, said that the 46-year-old woman looked 16 or 17 and asked if she would go "on a township road with me later on tonight."

The political climate that is often hostile to and excludes women (there are 14 women in Illinois' 59-member senate) has long historical roots that would have provided context. The same concept could have been applied to the March 29 business story, "The advance of women on corporate boards is glacial."

Human interest: All of those little events that appeared as calendar items in the Post could have been covered as feature stories and could have addressed women's history.

According to the March 8 events listing titled "Meramec celebrates Women's History Month," among numerous events at St. Louis Community College-Meramec, there was a free presentation of Eve Ensler's "The Vagina Monologues;" a roundtable discussion about International Women's Day featuring female educators from Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America; and a lecture on "First, Second and Third Wave Feminism" that included the fight for suffrage, the women's liberation movement and the latest incarnations of women's activism.

All of these could have turned into great features. And this is just from one campus. There were numerous activities at each of the area universities that could have been covered.

Impact: Perhaps no specific issue impacts women more than that of personal safety in our society. Women are continually victims of sexual crimes. In America, a woman is raped every two minutes, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. The FBI estimates that only 37 percent of all rapes are reported to the police. The U.S. Justice Department statistics are even lower, with only 26 percent of all rapes or attempted rapes being reported to law enforcement officials.

The Post's March 23 story about the mayor's task force on the police department's handling of sex crimes could have been accompanied by a sidebar on the historical problem of not only sex crimes but how law enforcement has addressed the victims.

Proximity: During the month of March, it was announced by NYSE Executive Vice President Grace Vogel that new rules were being examined to ban entertainment that is considered inappropriate or excessive, pointing to strip clubs specifically. Final versions of the rules will soon be before the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Brokerage firms that don't enact or enforce these policies could face actions ranging from censure to expulsion. Many women in the field have complained that they were either excluded from business-related discussions by not attending events at strip clubs or went and felt uncomfortable. These are the kinds of barriers that have historically prevented women from promotions. This story had an easy local hook.

Recently, the notorious New York City strip club Scores settled a lawsuit over a contested $241,000 bill racked up by Robert McCormick, the former CEO of St. Louis' Savvis Inc. He later resigned amid an investigation into the bill, which was charged to his corporate American Express card.

Prominence: One of the most important women in the second wave of the women's liberation movement, Betty Friedan, died recently. While there were a few editorials, for as prominent as she was, it would be expected that more would have been written. Friedan, author of the "Feminine Mystique" and founding member of the National Organization for Women, which spawned thousands of women to question their roles in society, would have been a natural to cover in March.

After all, compare coverage of Friedan's death to that of Coretta Scott King (who too often was defined by her role as a widow rather than a civil rights pioneer in her own right) and you'll find a striking difference. For additional news value, Friedan had local ties as a native of Peoria. The lack of coverage is symbolic of how the media value women.

Timeliness: On March 25, the Post included a story on a court ruling about female firefighters: "On Friday, they won a landmark decision from a federal appeals court in St. Louis that says fire departments must provide female members with appropriate physical facilities and gear."

According to the plaintiffs, Anne Wedow and Kathleen Kline, who were among the first three women to join the Kansas City Fire Department in 1977, were met with such hostility that one male cadet said, "If you want to be a guy so bad, we'll all chip in and you can get surgery."

According to Jennifer K. Brown, vice president and legal director of Legal Momentum, it was the first federal appellate level ruling to define inadequate equipment and facilities as unlawful sex discrimination.

Women continue to be the minority in fire and police departments, but journalists need to explain the progress that has been made and the battles that still need to be fought. Rather than celebrating a few small barriers that have been broken, reporters should ask why more isn't being done to reach equality in these male-dominated fields.

The above examples are only a few of the many examples where a historical reference would have provided context to stories that already existed. It's not just about the tokenism of addressing a month-it's about including women and thus improving journalism.

The Post clearly ignored March as Women's History Month. How about improving the coverage of women for the rest of 2006?

Kimberly Wilmot-Voss is an assistant professor in the department of mass communications at Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville.

Home-towner Russ Mitchell rises at CBS
by Ellen F. Harris
When he was a boy in Rock Hill, Russ Mitchell pretended to be the third baseman for the Cardinals. Today, as a CBS News anchor, Mitchell works under performance pressures similar to those of a major league ball player. And like a star athlete, Mitchell does it with such grace he makes it look easy.

Mitchell, 46, was named anchor for the CBS Sunday Evening News early this month.

"If you had told me 14 years ago that I'd be at CBS News anchoring essentially three broadcasts a week and reporting for prestigious programs like 'Sunday Morning,' I'd have thought you were nuts," Mitchell said by phone from his office at CBS, in Manhattan.

He has sat in the anchor chair for 23 years, including a five-year stint at the St. Louis CBS affiliate, KMOV (Channel 4), where he co-anchored the weekend news before leapfrogging over larger markets to the network in 1992.

In addition to his new position on Sunday nights, his assignments are co-anchoring the Saturday Early Show, being a primary anchor of the Saturday Evening News, reporting for special events, "48 Hours" and Sunday Morning. He also substitutes for Bob Schieffer, who is the interim weeknight anchor until Katie Couric arrives.

"I've worked really hard to get here," Mitchell said.

Along the way he's won a slew of national awards, including an Emmy and one from Sigma Delta Chi, a journalism honor society.

"I don't do it alone," he said. "CBS has the resources, anything you want right at your fingertips. Some of the best people help you out."

He recently aired a two-part profile of former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

"Newsmakers have their guard up. You try not to ask them the questions they've been asked thousands of times," Mitchell said, citing his interview with former President Bill Clinton.

"What I hoped for was a snapshot of a man with a very interesting life and who is very smart and understands that mistakes were made along the way and he's moved beyond that," Mitchell said. "No, I didn't get anything new. You don't need to get the nugget each time. What's equally important is showing a sense of who this person is."

That happened with Lisa Marie Presley, whom he interviewed last year.

"She wasn't going to talk about anything," Mitchell said. "We went over and over. She would let some information out and then crawl back into her shell. When the piece aired, you got the sense of how she guarded her privacy."

Mitchell studies the masters of television interviews, Ed Bradley and Mike Wallace.

"It's interesting how methodical they are, almost like surgeons, at getting to the heart of the subject in two or three minutes, from people who had no intention of telling them," he said.

Would Mitchell like to join them on "60 Minutes"?

"If anyone tells you they don't want to go to '60 Minutes,' they're lying," he said.

He likes the mix of hard news and "fluff" for "the flexibility to do as many things as I'm able to do. I want to be versatile. I think that's the key these days."

Another key to his success in the era of attack anchors is that Mitchell is Mr. Good Guy. He rarely used the words "I" or "me" and never brags during an interview. While in St. Louis he was known never to backstab nor steal credit.

Mitchell has been high on news since high school.

"I'd been invited to attend a journalism workshop at the University of Missouri at Columbia where for two weeks we did reports for the local TV station," he said. "I was hooked from that moment on."

He graduated from Mizzou with a journalism degree in 1982, when he took his first job with KMBC-TV in Kansas City. A year later, he was an anchor at WFAA-TV in Dallas, 1983-85. He came back to St. Louis as a reporter for KTVI (Channel 2).

After 25 years in broadcast news, he still gets a high from a breaking story.

"I still love spot news," Mitchell said. "There is nothing like being in the middle of a big story breaking around you. What TV does best is bring the story around you.

"I wish for everyone that we have consistent challenges on our jobs. I find new things I haven't tackled so much fun. Saturday we had a technical problem that I'd never dealt with before. I love thinking on my feet. Oh, I love it," he said, his voice picking up. "The real sign of a great anchorperson is when the teleprompter goes down and bombs are going off around you and you have to keep your cool."

Mitchell returns to St. Louis several times a year to visit family and friends.

"I love New York, but this is my hometown," he said. "I still miss things. I miss the people. St. Louis is a very comfortable place to be."

Ellen F. Harris is the author of two books, has written for The New York Times and Newsweek online and teaches journalism at Washington University.

Review:
St. Louis Hawks recall purity of sports era
Reviewed by Don Corrigan
"Full Court: The Untold Stories of the St. Louis Hawks" Reedy Press 2006
by Greg Marecek
Once upon a time, there were no $10 million players in pro basketball, no prima donnas endorsing products for big bucks, no $300 million teams. Greg Marecek remembers that time-the era of the St. Louis Hawks.

Marecek, well-known St. Louis sports specialist, recently released "Full Court: The Untold Stories of the St. Louis Hawks." It's a recollection of a simpler and more loveable game of professional basketball, a time when St. Louis had its own National Basketball Association (NBA) franchise.

For local baby boomers, whose dads once took them to see the Hawks in action at the Kiel or the Arena, the book will bring back fond memories of Bob Pettit, Lenny Wilkens, Cliff Hagan, Zelmo Beaty and more. For younger sports enthusiasts, the book will raise some troubling questions: How did we lose our team?

Will we ever get basketball back in St. Louis?

"For someone who grew up going to Hawks' games, it seems strange that a whole generation has not known pro basketball in St. Louis," said Marecek, who is a past owner and now a consultant with KFNS (590 AM) sports radio. "But the coming of the Hawks to St. Louis may be the most important sports story in St. Louis history."

That statement may sound like the hyperbole of an over-eager author out to sell his sports book, but Marecek makes the case that the basketball Hawks helped put St. Louis on the map as a great U.S. sports town.

"The Hawks came at a time when the baseball Cardinals were the only pro team in town, and they were limping," Marecek said. "We were on a downward spiral.

"But the Hawks came and succeeded so well, it made St. Louis attractive for football and it made it possible for the Blues as an expansion team here."

Marecek covers a lot of ground in his richly illustrated "Full Court," with anecdotes, interviews and facts gathered from the team's players. He shows how certain "twists of fate" propelled the Hawks to become a perennial power in the NBA for more than a decade, from 1955 to 1968.

In addition to paying homage to the superstar players, who performed at salaries ranging from $10,000 to a whopping $25,000, Marecek notes the pivotal roles of management figures and, of course, the voice of the Hawks-broadcaster Buddy Blattner.

"The players will tell you that Buddy Blattner was key in making the Hawks big in St. Louis," Marecek said. "He had a velvet voice, and he still has it. He brought an on-air vocabulary to the game that fans who listened to him will never forget."

Nicknames that stuck
During the course of more than 2,000 hours of play-by-play coverage, Blattner created nicknames that stuck-in a good way-they were never belittling or insulting. Those monickers provide one of the fun appendices in the book, as baby boomer Hawks' fans will recall:

-- Bob Pettit as "Big Blue." Known also as "The Bombardier from Baton Rouge," Pettit will be celebrated forever for his 50-point championship-game performance in 1958 in an NBA doubleheader in a packed Kiel Auditorium.

-- Cliff Hagan as "Lil' Abner." Tagged with the name of the popular comic strip character, handsome Hagan captured the fancy of fans with his patented hook shot and his squared-up jumpers.

-- Ed Macauley as "Easy Ed." This nickname actually originated during Macauley's famous playing days at St. Louis University, but stuck in his NBA career because he made the challenge of shooting hoops look easy.

-- Dugie Martin as "Tornado from Texas." Although Martin was often the smallest man on the court, he was a great performer from the University of Texas.

-- Alex Hannum as "Sgt. York." He was a bruiser who played a tough, physical game. According to Blattner, Hannum was a "take no prisoners" kind of player.

-- Clyde Lovellette as "Boom Boom." A deputy sheriff in the off-season, he drew fast on the basketball court and always outgunned his opponents.

As a sportswriter, syndicated nationally, and sports radio owner for more than three decades, Marecek thought he had heard it all. In the process of researching his book, however, he picked up tidbits that he shares with readers.

For example, Boston Celtics Owner Walter Brown balked at trading "Easy Ed" to St. Louis against his wishes. Macauley agreed to come back to his home turf when his young son, Patrick, was stricken with severe spinal meningitis.

The New York Knicks served as a "go-between" to get Slater Martin to the Hawks from Minneapolis. And a St. Louis sportswriter played a covert role in the conniving to get the much-needed ball handler to St. Louis.

Lenny Wilkens, who has entered the NBA Hall of Fame as both a player and a basketball coach, was brought to St. Louis by then-general manager Ed Macauley.

Wilkens' response to Macauley's $7,000 job offer: "That'll be fine."

Why did they leave?
Marecek ends his book attempting to answer those nagging questions: Will we ever get an NBA team back in St. Louis? How did St. Louis lose the Hawks in the first place?

"I feel that racism in St. Louis played a role," said Marecek of the Hawks' loss. "When black stars like Bill Russell came to town with the Boston Celtics, and there was no restaurant downtown that would serve them-that hurt St. Louis in a number of ways."

Marecek recalled the story of a trio of Boston stars, Bob Cousy, Coach Red Auerbach and Bill Russell, who couldn't get served in the restaurant across from the Sheraton-Jefferson Hotel because of Russell's color.

As the Hawks acquired more black players, some fans made it known that they were dropping their season tickets. "Why don't you just change your name to the Globetrotters?" wrote one angry fan to the Hawks' front office.

"Racism played some role, but neither the players nor management think that was important in the loss of the Hawks," Marecek said. "More important was that the city would not fix the Kiel up, even as the city promised to refurbish the Arena for the Hockey Blues."

Does St. Louis ever have a chance of acquiring an NBA team again?

Marecek thinks "yes." He said he's seen polls of local fans who say they'd rather go to an NBA game than to an NHL hockey game by a factor of 2-1.

"I am sure there's an NBA team that would consider coming to St. Louis now," Marecek said. "I would like to see us get the Hawks back from Atlanta. It would be great to see them back in St. Louis."

Don Corrigan is a professor in the School of Communications at Webster University and also edits three weekly newspapers.

Columns:

Early Edition:
Losing their Voice
by Ed Bishop

Either Michael Lacey is crazy or a whole lot of people I know are. Lacey is the head guy at New Times, the company that bought the Riverfront Times several years ago and, more recently, bought the Village Voice. In fact, New Times recently changed its name to Village Voice Media, Inc.

The Village Voice is the oldest and most revered alternative newspaper in the country.

Through the mists of time, you may remember way back when the RFT was a real newspaper. Actually it wasn't that long ago. New Times purchased the alternative weekly in 1998. It only seems longer.

In any case, before Lacey got his hands on it, the RFT was really cooking-scooping the St. Louis Post-Dispatch regularly and publishing a half dozen or so good, alternative-journalism stories nearly every week. Also, every week, there was an insightful and often funny column by the paper's founder, Ray Hartmann.

(For the sake of full disclosure, I was the managing editor of the RFT during the 1980s. But it did some of its best work later, in the 1990s, under the editorship of Safir Ahmed. I did write some dynamite columns in 1991 and '92.)

Now Lacey is trying to do to the Village Voice what he did to the RFT.

For some strange reason, Lacey thinks alternative newspapers-including the Village Voice-shouldn't contain political reporting, especially left-wing political reporting. It's even stranger when you consider the Voice was founded back in the 1950s just for that purpose.

Anyway, in the last several months, some of the biggest names in alternative journalism have been forced out of the paper-first, outspoken media critic Doug Ireland, then, longtime cartoonist Jules Feiffer and, most recently, political reporter Sydney Schanberg, a Pulitzer Prize winner best known for his book "The Killing Fields." All in the name of de-politicizing the Village Voice.

Then, in mid-April, James Ridgeway was out-and-out fired.

Ridgeway was the newspaper's Washington columnist. From Three Mile Island to the breakup of the old Yugoslavia to 9/11, his coverage defined the Village Voice and helped define leftist perspectives. He scooped every reporter in the nation with his insightful reporting on neo-Nazi and militia groups long before Ruby Ridge and Timothy McVeigh.

The end came when one of his stories was moved off the front cover to be replaced by a report on the opening of a fundamentalist Christian church in midtown Manhattan. Ridgeway protested and that contributed to getting him sacked.

By the way, the church-opening story was not unlike the bizarre "human interest" stories that often grace the cover of the RFT.

Speaking of the RFT, I'm not sure who reads the weekly newspaper today. It might be a wonderful paper for readers interested in things I don't understand. On the other hand, I do know that its pages are not filled with real alternative journalism, at least not in the sense that it has a recognizable point of view.

Occasionally the new RFT will run a story that draws praise from the folks I know. Mostly, though, the folks I know complain about the RFT as if I were somehow responsible.

But getting back to the Village Voice: In response to Ridgeway's firing, 20 staffers-including Nat Hentoff, Tom Robbins and Michael Musto-wrote an open letter to New Times management, I mean Village Voice Media, Inc. management, imploring them to reverse their decision. They called Ridgeway's discharge "shameful" and a "terrible message" to the other journalists working at the Village Voice.

They pulled their punches.

"Shameful?"

More like stupid and black hearted.

At least that's the way it would've been reported in the old Riverfront Times.

---

Correction: Last month I wrote that a recent Sunday edition of the Post had only one story on the front page. I said it was about a man running in a Republican primary who'd had an operation to become a woman. I wrote, however, that he still looked like a guy wearing a woman's outfit and a wig. Well, it was a man wearing a woman's outfit and a wig. You see, the guy never had the operation.

I regret the error.

In my defense, the story kept referring to the man as "she" and never adequately explained that, so far, the fellow has avoided the knife.

Letters:
No letters this month

Politics & Media:
A rising issue
by Terry Jones

What's the most important problem facing this country today?" The Gallup Poll has been asking that open-ended question every month for decades. In April, the war in Iraq topped the list with 25 percent of the respondents naming it. No surprise there.

What is astonishing is what finishes second: immigration/illegal aliens at 19 percent. That's well ahead of the next two: fuel/oil prices (11 percent) and the economy (10 percent). A year ago, immigration was an asterisk, the standard symbol for less than 0.5 percent. Now it is near the top of the chart.

A Fox News poll, also done in April, has 60 percent replying that illegal immigration is a "very serious" problem and another 30 percent saying it is a "somewhat serious" problem. The distribution remains much the same for Democrats, Republicans and Independents. In the same survey, 13 percent say immigration will be "the most important (issue) in deciding their vote for Congress this fall," fourth behind the economy (20 percent), Iraq (19 percent) and health care (17 percent) and ahead of Social Security (9 percent) and terrorism (9 percent).

An April Pew poll shows that immigration has captured the public's media attention. Asked, "What is the first news story that comes to mind when you think about what's been in the news lately?" Iraq is first at 31 percent but immigration is second at 15 percent.

What has catapulted immigration to the front burner on the nation's public policy stove? Reality is part of the explanation, of course. The number of illegal immigrants now tops 10 million, close to one out of every 25 U.S. residents. The immigration issue also has multiple facets. If illegal immigrants are expelled, who will pick the crops? If they stay, under what conditions, if any, can they qualify for U.S. citizenship? Should there be a guest worker program?

The list is long.

But other issues have greater numbers (more than 40 million Americans, for example, have no health insurance) and equal, if not greater, complexity (e.g., what would constitute racial justice in America and how can it be achieved?). But more than most issues, immigration has one key made-for-media ingredient: conflict. So immigration is pushing other policy choices off the front pages and the cable news shows.

Better yet for the media, it is conflict along multiple dimensions-division within each political party, especially the Republicans; division between President George W. Bush and the House of Representatives; division among ethnic groups; division between those who employ undocumented aliens and U.S. citizens who might want those jobs; division between states with high levels of illegal immigrants and those with few in this category.

It is also conflict with pictures (tens of thousands demonstrating in cities across the country), narratives (families seeking the American dream) and characters (Congressman Tom Tancredo).

Greater media coverage spawns more public opinion polls. A tool that works well for matters where the public has had considerable time to reflect, such as approval/disapproval of a sitting president, yields more ambiguous information when it asks citizens about an issue-immigration in this instance-where a majority of Americans hasn't thought much about it and doesn't have first-hand experience of it.

In such situations, most respondents will still answer questions about the policy. It's in the news, they regard themselves as informed citizens, and so they should have a point of view. But, for most, the answers will depend considerably on how the survey frames the question. What values are invoked and what suggestive adjectives are employed? As a result one can find questions that have strong majorities supporting a crackdown and others where equally large proportions back amnesty.

The ABC News/Washington Post poll asks "Do you think the United States is or is not doing enough to keep illegal immigrants from coming into this country?" John and Jane Q. Public believe that the federal government rarely works at optimum level (think Katrina) so 75 percent reply that not enough is being done.

The CBS News poll asks, "Would you favor or oppose allowing illegal immigrants who have done the following to stay and work in the United States: paid a fine, been in the United States for at least five years, paid any back taxes they owe, can speak English and have no criminal record?" Americans believe in redemption and Horatio Alger so 74 percent favor allowing such individuals to remain.

Confront a sample with competing statements appealing to different values, as a late April Greenberg Quinlan Rosner poll did, and they split down the middle: 52 percent opted for "immigration has gone too far and many of today's immigrants are not learning the language or assimilating into American culture" while 44 percent chose "our country was founded by immigrants and we benefit from the diversity of immigration."

When the media spotlight lands and remains on an issue, as it has on immigration, the elected officials think they should talk more about it and, especially in an election year, consider new policies to address it. This often happens, however, before the public has had enough time to deliberate. 2006 should bring more dialogue that can inform action, not a rush that might produce ill-advised policy changes.

Terry Jones is professor of political science at UM-St. Louis.

Off the Record:

In the Yahoo!-skow?
Yahoo! announced in mid-April the hiring of the PR firm of Porter Novelli to help it burnish an image tarnished by cooperation with Chinese government censorship.

Three days later, Reporters Without Borders announced that Chinese dissident Jiang Lijun was arrested after his identity was provided to the authorities by Yahoo!'s Chinese subsidiaries. Jiang joins Shi Tao and Li Zhi as fellow victims of Yahoo's cooperation.

"Little by little we are piecing together the evidence that Yahoo! is implicated in the arrest of most of the people that we have been defending," said Reporters Without Borders.
-Dan Hellinger

No comment
When St. Louis Post-Dispatch publisher Terry Egger announced his retirement in late April, the St. Louis Business Journal's Web site ended its story this way: "Arnie Robbins, who succeeded Soeteber as editor, was out of town and could not be reached for comment on Egger's departure."

In this day of cell phones, e-mail, instant messaging, voicemail and other technological advances, it's hard to believe someone can't be reached (especially the editor of a major metropolitan newspaper). Today's technology means it's time to come up with a better excuse when you don't want to talk.

Reporters writing those lines should remember that as well. Otherwise, readers might assume they didn't try very hard to reach their sources.
-Tripp Frohlichstein

Kudos to a critic
David Bonetti, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's art and architecture critic, was right-on in his opinion of the new downtown stadium. Bonetti pointed out that once again, St. Louis looked backward, not forward, with a public building. The city, historically afraid to take an adventurous step, sought the future in years past and designs past, and accepted whatever HOK offered.

HOK's last original design was Lambert Field, more than 40 years ago. I have not yet been to the stadium, but I'm offended at the garish advertising scenario spelled out on the outside walls. A money-making scheme adopted from the Rams' tactics at the Ugly Dome, this one is equally tacky.
-Joe Pollack

Patriotic propaganda
The American Advertising Council is pitching for the public to show support for American troops in Iraq with a "public-service" advertising campaign in print, radio and online. It urges people to go to the Defense Department's Web site and send a message to show support. The San Francisco Chronicle asked, "Is it a genuine message of gratitude or poorly designed advocacy for the war in Iraq?" The founder of Venables, Bell and Parners was among those PR executives who object.
-Dan Hellinger

Public enemy No. 2?
According to Colonel Derek Harvey, who served as a military intelligence officer in Iraq and was responsible for handling Iraq intelligence for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, U.S. government propaganda is deliberately inflating the importance of Abu Musa al Zarqawi.

"Our own focus on Zarqawi has enlarged his caricature, if you will-made him more important than he really is, in some ways," Harvey said.

The goal, he said, is to diminish the insurgency in the eyes of Iraqis, but the results blow back into the American media. In a briefing prepared for Army General George W. Casey, Jr., the top U.S. commander in Iraq, the "home audience" is identified as one of the six major targets of war information.
-Dan Hellinger

USA needs PR
According to O'Dwyer's PR Daily on April 25, the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), which handles acquisitions for federal agencies, is "actively soliciting proposals from PR firms to be added to its list of pre-qualified contractors." Currently, 171 PR firms registered with GSA, and, as cited in Weekly Spin, the government spends an estimated $4.8 million on public relations services, not counting those for "integrated marketing and advertising," for which it spent $82 million and $25 million in 2006.
-Dan Hellinger

Channels:
Local news you may be able to count on
Kudos to KTVI (Channel 2) for continuing to expand its local newscasts. At the end of April, Channel 2 added a Saturday morning newscast (probably much to the chagrin of kids who watch the Fox children's programs that morning). Channel 2 now provides morning news seven days a week.

"Our viewers have asked for local news seven mornings a week, and we are happy that we can now provide that," said Brad Remington, Channel 2's news director.

This brings Channel 2's local newscasts to an impressive 22 hours of locally produced morning news every week.

The one odd thing about the Saturday morning news is how it fits into the program schedule. Channel 2 will air "GI Joe: Sigma Six," "Magical Do-Re-Mi" and "Winx Club" prior to the news and "Awesome Adventures" following the Saturday morning show. The newscast will have to be "destination viewing."

In other words, viewers won't flow into the news from the preceding programs nor will they flow to programs after the newscast. They will come from another station specifically to watch Channel 2.

Channel 2 also expanded its Saturday 5 p.m. newscast to an hour.

You have to be impressed as the station continues to prove it is dedicated to producing the most complete local news.

As for the hosts of these programs, Andy Banker and newcomer Shawn Lindsey will anchor on Saturday. Paul Shankman co-anchors the Sunday morning news with Lindsey, who will also report for weekday morning newscasts.

Lindsey comes to Channel 2 with more than 10 years in the broadcast industry. She spent the last five years as the primary anchor in Lubbock, Texas. Lindsey won the Texas Associated Press best anchor award in both 2004 and 2005. She is making a huge jump to St. Louis-ranked as the 21st largest market-from Lubbock-the 146th.

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I know it seems like every month, I complain about WeatherPlus, Channel 5's effort to provide complete local weather coverage-an effort that continues to fail. Therefore, I will make this the last time in a while that I'll whine about the program.

In essence, Channel 5 just isn't getting it when it comes to WeatherPlus. I turned on WeatherPlus just before 2 p.m. April 15. A severe thunderstorm warning was in effect as Mike Roberts (on tape) told viewers that he expected no severe weather in our area today.

He also (correctly) predicted rain would form to the west of St. Louis around 1 p.m.-information about an hour late. When will Channel 5 learn it should keep the material updated, especially as weather conditions change?

I was hopeful later in the month when the next severe warnings were issued, and it looked like the station was trying to do it right. As music played, WeatherPlus provided regular radar updates and other information for a short time.

Unfortunately, it didn't last.

They switched to national weather segments and blew it technically because the music continued to play, rather than the narration of the weathercaster.

Channel 5 is running a promo that says WeatherPlus is "always on, always local and always accurate." I'd say the slogan should be, "Always on, often local with lots of commercials and sometimes accurate."

I hope my next commentary on WeatherPlus will be that Channel 5 has finally made it a useful tool, not a failed promotional gimmick.

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Just as Channel 2 brought in a new anchor, Channel 5 renewed the contract of an old anchor. Art Holliday, who has been with Channel 5 since 1979, has a new contract for at least three years. As usual, specific terms were not disclosed. He will continue to anchor morning newscasts with Jennifer Blome.

And speaking of Blome, she still needs to work on how to interview Channel 5 regular guest Juli Niemann. In a recent broadcast, Blome failed to ask Niemann, a business expert, to clarify business terms that average people don't understand.

Even worse, Niemann tends to ramble. On that same broadcast, Blome asked Niemann to compare the severance packages between Ford and GM. She gave so much detail as she rambled from point to point (about Ford, GM and even Delphi), no one could follow her.

I decided to show her responses to professional stockbrokers-even they didn't understand her responses.

Her first answer took a whopping 1:33. Her second answer about legislation affecting consumers took an incredible 1:10.

It falls on Blome to cut a live interviewee off after no more than 30 seconds. Blome will better serve viewers by putting herself in their shoes. If an interview is too complicated or long-winded, it is her obligation to help viewers by asking questions and interrupting.

---

Also, a correction: In the last issue, we incorrectly noted KMOV (Channel 4)'s new weathercaster's last name. It is Steve Timberlake.

Tripp Frohlichstein owns Media Masters and consults with business, government and non-profit organizations. He will not comment on any television coverage if it involves his clients.

Sports & Media:
NFL counts out average Joe
by Joe Pollack
No sports entity has been more successful than the National Football League in its relations with television.

NFL teams, regardless of how much they believe in the philosophy of the "No Fun League," have made many millions of dollars in rights payments from television networks, and the marriage that Pete Rozelle originally brokered and Paul Tagliabue has continued has brought amazing riches to both parties.

But the NFL, like baseball, now cares less and less for the individual ticket buyer. For example, look at the stadiums where the Rams and Cardinals play (we'll try to avoid free plugs for beer and brokerages today). They have many luxury boxes, the revenue of which is not shared with visiting teams.

The new stadium, smaller than the old one, is proof that Cardinals' ownership doesn't care who sits in the "cheap seats," now an oxymoron. They want the rich folks, who also don't complain much and usually don't stick around to see who wins the game.

The NFL is now going a step farther, and it's a step that is a bow to the national TV types (ESPN and the networks). The rules are not yet firm for this season, but the NFL owners recently voted unanimously to keep local TV cameramen off the sidelines during games.

This may not be a hardship to fans, but it is to smaller television stations and to communities that may have reared a football star. For years, Jefferson City or Columbia or Springfield (both Illinois and Missouri) stations covered St. Louis' pro football teams, not for overall game action, but for specific stories on players who grew up in the area or went to school there. This would provide material for feature stories, B-roll to accompany interviews and archival material.

No more.

Now, the small-city station can use only what the network shoots.

The NFL, pious as ever, said the action was taken to stop "unauthorized use of game footage," to protect its rights holders (those who pay money) and to have less clutter on the sidelines. The last excuse is simply ludicrous, given the terrible job of sidelines crowd control that the NFL does, and does because owners and coaches want to impress their friends by allowing them in the bench area.

This growing amount of control of photographic images by professional sports teams is becoming a major issue. The LPGA tried to limit photographic access by asking photographers and news organizations to sign waivers giving up the rights to pictures taken during tournaments "to control the images of its players."

Most news groups (like the Associated Press) refused; some had press credentials denied. There was loud furor, and finally the LPGA relented, and things returned to normal.

This would not be a St. Louis problem, since St. Louis is host to golf tournaments with the frequency of a solar eclipse. However, I applaud this attitude, which means that local golfers would rather play than watch others play.

The Society of Professional Journalists (as active in St. Louis as golf tournament sponsors) has rebuked both the NFL and the LPGA, an action as meaningful as watching paint dry.

The NFL moves slowly, but it doesn't overlook much when it comes to finding new sources of income. This seems like just one more example.

Joe Pollack is a former St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist.

Ad/PR:
PR's take on VNRs
by Rick Stoff

The media have time and space to fill, and often fewer reporters to do the filling. Public relations practitioners have material that can help reporters fill those news holes. What's the problem with video news releases?

"The problem is not that the public relations profession is sending out video news releases. They are only controversial when the media don't identify the source of the information they are using," said Liese Hutchison, a member of the St. Louis University communications department faculty and ethics officer for the St. Louis Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America.

Video news releases, or VNRs, are brief videotaped stories usually about 90 seconds in length, just like the typical TV news piece. Like a written press release, the VNR attempts to sell the media on a story that will provide desired exposure to a business or organization.

The VNR is a modern version of the basic written press release. Some ages ago, PR practitioners realized that the odds of a story placement increased if a photograph or other art element accompanied the written text. In the TV age, moving pictures became the obvious extension of the old 8x10 glossy.

A VNR may include "B-roll," bits of video and audio that the news editor may combine into the station's own version of the story. B-roll often is distributed without a packaged story.

The video news release issue popped back into the news last month with a report from the Center for Media and Democracy. The center said it found that 77 television stations had used 36 video news releases over a 10-month period "without disclosure to viewers." In some cases, the center said, TV stations used releases in their entirety, either with the provided voice narration or with an anchor reading from a provided script.

Hutchison said she has received no questions or complaints about VNR usage from local PRSA members.

"We have been doing this for a couple of decades that the technology has been available. The controversy is not from the public relations point of view but from the media use point of view. If it is a bad thing, it is not PR's fault. The media need to be honest with their public and let them know where these images come from."

The issue of material sourcing and responsibility has grown with dispersal of advertising revenue across an expanding universe and the resulting effects on media staffing. "The media have changed so much," Hutchison said. "There are fewer reporters trying to do as many or more stories. They need PR practitioners to help them with the stories they prepare for their viewers."

"Using VNRs is about saving money and feeding the beast," wrote Joe Flint of The Wall Street Journal on April 26. "While there is nothing inherently wrong with reporting a story based on a press release, many television stations are using the VNRs alone in lieu of original reporting."

The national PRSA organization lists three principles in its statement on VNR use. First, "A VNR is the television equivalent of a press release and, as such, should always be truthful and represent the highest in ethical standards."

Second, "Producers and distributors of VNRs and the organizations they represent should clearly and plainly identify themselves." And, finally, "Television stations airing VNRs should identify sources of the material."

A key issue in the ethical use of VNRs is the identification of people providing on-screen narration or off-screen voice-overs. One of the most controversial VNRs in recent memory was issued on behalf of the U.S. Department and Health of Human Services two years ago. Its narrator identified herself as a reporter.

The Center for Media and Democracy said its study found several instances in which such narrations were broadcast without further identifying the "reporter." It stated that a South Bend, Ind., station introduced a General Motors video as coming from "Fox's Andrew Schmertz." Schmertz worked for a PR firm that worked on the video.

To avoid this potential to mislead viewers, "PRSA recommends that organizations that prepare VNRs should not use the word 'reporting' if the narrator is not a reporter."

If television stations identified the sources of press release videos, there may not be a problem.

"We think it is a non-issue," Hutchison said. "For a long time the print media have used our press releases word-for-word and sometimes put bylines on them. There hasn't been a word raised about that."

How about "Thank You?"

Rick Stoff, a former St. Louis Globe-Democrat reporter and editor, now practices public relations through his own firm, Stoff Communications.

AM/FM:
Reality radio
by Joe Sonderman

If you are a middle-aged conservative white guy, you've probably never heard the funniest and most thought-provoking morning show on St. Louis radio.

Dee Lee, the morning host on KATZ (100.3 FM, "The Beat"), settles in for an interview and declares, "I want to be the black Howard Stern." He's got the talent to do it, but don't tune in if ribald humor sometimes based on both black and white stereotypes offends you.

On a recent morning, Lee and his co-hosts, Ebony and Jessie Taylor, unveiled the results of their regular "Paternity Test Tuesday" segment. The male participant is relieved to learn he has not fathered a child, and tells his ex-girlfriend, "You just tryin' to get a nigga's cheese!"

From there, the conversation turns even more graphic, with liberal use of sexual slang. It would be offensive to some, but it was hysterically funny, while prompting reflection on the issue of babies born out of wedlock.

Minutes later, Lee is on the phone to an auto accessories store, posing as an old woman. He asks the clerk if they sell those "wheels that spin even when the car isn't moving"-spinners. The character claims she was sitting at a light and, thinking the vehicle next to her was moving, hit the gas and got hit.

He plays a parody song to the tune of "I'm in Love with a Stripper," re-titled "I'm in Love with a White Girl." The song is based on the stereotypical black male wearing baggy pants, content to let his girlfriend provide the cash. On Lee's birthday, more than a dozen people cram into the studio, including rap tycoon Russell Simmons. Lee can land stars such as Nelly, L.L. Cool J, R. Kelly and Jay Z. And he isn't afraid to ask the tough questions that people expect, such as asking Simmons about his divorce.

Another morning finds Lee declaring, "We would be better off if we dealt with a man being the king and treating his wife like a queen." The host adds, "A man should provide a roof over their head and what the family needs and a woman will serve his needs." He says that woman is the "higher being" and controls men's emotions and adds that men cheating and drinking "won't make a woman want to make dinner." The phones light up.

It's an example of what Lee calls "reality radio," discussing issues everyone can relate to, particularly relationships. As for "Paternity Test Tuesday," Lee points out that the show isn't poking fun at the couples. The show provides the paternity test and offers services like counseling to the participants.

His sincerity is evident as he outlines the philosophy behind the show. Lee says reality shows are the hottest thing on TV now, so he decided to bring the concept to the airwaves. He says the crew brings their lives to the show. Lee says he lost a relationship because he cheated and saw "some stuff you are not supposed to see" at a young age.

He scoffs at the suggestion that St. Louis is a conservative town that rejects edgy radio shows, saying, "If you only hang out at the Galleria, it's conservative." Lee says you will see a different St. Louis at clubs such as Toxic Formula and Plush.

Lee is quick to credit his co-hosts, Ebony and Jessie Taylor, saying the show would be "shit" without them. He says the audience relates to Ebony because she is a single mother and is not afraid to take a stand. He knew Jessie from the comedy circuit and says they know each other so well that they finish one another's jokes.

He doesn't like the current crop of morning shows with canned bits and forced laughter. No one on the show, he says, will laugh at a lame joke.

Lee says his show isn't just for the urban audience, and he is correct.

"I don't care what color you are; the issues we're going to talk about will relate to you."

On race, he says, "We don't play the race card; we play the reality card." He is hoping to land a syndication deal and says "the humor is life based; it is not based on a particular market."

The show can take a very serious turn, as it did when death row inmate Marlin Gray called in. Gray was just hours away from his execution in connection with the deaths of Julie and Robin Kerry on the Chain of Rocks Bridge in 1991. Lee believes that topic sent a message "that we are a serious morning show."

Lee also discussed some of the racially charged stories recently in St. Louis radio. DJ Kaos and Sylli Asz, his predecessors on "The Beat," were fired after a July 13 broadcast when a discussion ensued about confronting police officers. The discussion came just days after Kirkwood Sergeant William McEntee was killed.

Lee relates to both sides, saying he has respect for law enforcement but has been mistreated by the police. He says there are "certain topics that you must be careful about addressing" and thinks it may have been a mistake to have that discussion so soon after the shooting, when emotions were still raw.

Lee says Kaos and Asz are "cool people" in person, but he points out the reality of corporate radio-a host will get fired when advertisers start walking. Lee feels the tricky part is making a show so hot that new advertisers will be eager to sign on when others pull ads.

Lee also discussed the controversy over KTRS (550 AM) host Dave Lenihan, fired after he mistakenly used the word "coon" in a conversation about Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. He doesn't think Lenihan used the word on purpose.

"He didn't set his mind to call her a coon," Lee said, "you can hear the stumble (on the tape)."

But, he believes the word must have "passed through" Lenihan's head at one time or another.

According to Lee, Lenihan either thought "please don't call her a coon," or "she's nothing but a coon." Lee thinks Lenihan should have stopped right then and there to apologize right away. He thinks sincerity gives people more desire to forgive and forget.

Lee laughs and compares it to being with another woman. He then shows off his spanking-new APE sneakers, a gift, he says, from online listeners at an Army base in Japan. He cites the shoes as an example of his audience's loyalty.

Comedian Guy Torry, who appears on sister station KMJM (104.9 FM), enters the room and Lee looks around at the three white people with him and says, "get in here, I need protection." Instead of being offended by the remark, I laugh. Lee makes you feel comfortable, like there are no barriers-which may be the reason he is headed for stardom. He says his goal is to "let people know we are who we are. We are here, check us out." That's good advice.

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It would have been nice to get through one month without discussing the ineptitude of KTRS management, but they just keep topping themselves. In what amounts to a complete reversal, the station has ousted the morning team of Scott Hasick and Casey Bartholomew, who were brought in after the Christmas-week massacre that left most of the old staff looking for work.

Of five new hosts brought in by program director Al Brady Law less than five months ago, only afternoon driver Keith Kramer and sports host Tim "Monty" Montemayor remain. George Woods will take over the KTRS morning show.

"We will continue listening to our audience and fine-tuning the KTRS format to create the best station on the dial," said KTRS General Manager Tim Dorsey in a press release. "George is ideal for St. Louis and will be very popular with our listeners, both old and new."

Woods worked at KCMO in Kansas City but had been out of work since June 2005 and started up his own Internet station. He appeared on air at KTRS during the transition period after long-time personalities such as Wendy Wiese, Bill Wilkerson, Jim Holder and Randy Karraker were fired.

The station plans a return to "a classic morning news and information format," which is basically a repudiation of the in-your-face style that Law insisted would work in St. Louis. Law also has egg on his face after blowing out mid-day host McGraw Milhaven, only to re-hire him a few months later.

While it's a good move to get rid of Scott and Casey, the station already had a "classic morning news and information format" before the deal giving the Cardinals a majority stake in the station and the arrival of Law. Woods is a decent host, and at least knows something about Missouri and perhaps St. Louis.

But with the failure of the original line-up and the edgier style instituted by Law, it should be obvious now that KTRS' problems can't be blamed on the talent. The blame lies farther up, and Kramer and Montemayor should be very nervous.

Another former KTRS host is back on the radio, even if for just a short time. Dave Lenihan, who let a racial epithet slip while talking about Condoleezza Rice, is back on the air. He took his place behind the mike April 24 at KRMS (1150 AM) in Osage Beach/Lake of the Ozarks. He will hold down the 3-6 p.m. shift Monday through Friday, at least for a couple of weeks. KRMS owner Dennis Klautzer hoped he would take the position permanently, but Lenihan plans to remain in St. Louis. The Rhodes scholar is working on post-doctoral research at Washington University.

Klautzer is well known to anyone in St. Louis who loved the top 40 sound in the 1980s. He went by the air name Casey van Allen on KHTR (103.3 FM, now KLOU). Klautzer calls Lenihan a "genius" and adds that "the press on this has been wonderful!

"What has happened, I think, is everyone relates to him because we all have said something we are not proud of and we all have had a boss that has treated us unfairly. That's the connection. He's real smart-I mean real smart-a very sensitive man."

Klautzer says audience reaction has been positive.

"The tragedy is that KTRS wanted to be hot/shock talk and when one of the talents got them national press they backed off!" he said. "If KTRS had just spent a few hours getting to know David and the kind of person he really is, it would have been evident that what was said was a slip and managed the miss-speak like most responsible radio managers would."

He invokes the name of the late general manager of KMOX and KHTR: "Where are Robert Hyland's radio values and his respect for talent he taught us?"

Lenihan, a former host at WGNU (920 AM), had been with KTRS at his "dream job" for just two weeks when the roof caved in. On March 22 he was making a point that Rice would make a great NFL Commissioner when he used the word "coon." Lenihan said he meant to say landing Rice as commissioner would be a great "coup."

He apologized immediately but was fired within minutes. The host was even suspended from his teaching job at Logan College of Chiropractic. Lenihan joined the NAACP, which accepted his apology, and he got his teaching job back. Rice also accepted his apology.

Joe Sonderman is a former radio and TV traffic reporter, music director and on-air personality. He also works part-time for Clear Channel-St. Louis.

Radio History:
Before Texas Bruce
by Frank Absher

"There was a joint across the street from KMOX, a tavern. We used to hang out in that tavern."

The speaker is Harry Gibbs. He's talking about how he got started in the radio business with the help of his friend Chuck Barnhart.

"Chuck was one of the most talented guys I've ever known. He was remarkable. He used to go on the air about 5:30 in the afternoon on KMOX and he would do a one-man soap opera. He played all the parts, and he did it strictly by winging it. He didn't write it. I used to go down there and bum with him.

"He was a copywriter. He was a show producer. Whatever you needed he could do. I needed a job bad and I had narrated this housing show on KMOX with Chuck."

Barnhart, along with St. Louis Post-Dispatch drama critic Jack Balch, took up Gibbs' cause and pitched him to one of their acquaintances.

"They talked to Mike Henry at WTMV and they said 'You've gotta take this guy.' They bugged him every day. They'd call him and ask if he'd hired me yet. He finally said 'Okay. Send this paragon of everything over to see me.'"

The broadcast career of Harry Gibbs is usually associated with his many years on KSD-TV (Channel 5) as Texas Bruce, host of the Wranglers' Cartoon Club. Few people realize he started here in radio in the late '40s.

WTMV, at that time, was an interesting place. Located in East St. Louis' Broadview Hotel on the mezzanine, the station, according to Gibbs, was much more free-wheeling than the business is today.

"Mike had employed quite a few people who really needed work. Ray Schmidt, the sports guy, was one of those Mike referred to as his 'crippled children.' Ray would get pretty well loaded and he had a habit. In the middle of his sports cast, when he came to a stopping place, he'd put his head down on the table and sleep a little bit."

Staff members in the small but mighty radio station were expected to wear many hats. "There was a program that I did at 11 in the morning," Gibbs said. "It was just a sort of a thing where I talked to myself for an hour. It seemed like forever. I'd just open the mike and wing it. I was talking to anybody who was listening.

"I also wrote copy for the whole station. I can still remember writing 'Merry Christmas' spots for the funeral parlor. Anything that they were going to put on the air, I wrote. I had a sort of an office right next door to the men's john and everybody went through there at one time or another."

The radio business itself was very loose compared with later years. Gibbs' voice could often be heard on several different stations in the same week, often on the same day. "I'd sit in that little office and write copy and then I'd come back across the river and do 'Land We Live In,' and then eventually the Pet Milk program."

Musicians were the same way, with their groups playing on whichever stations found sponsors for them. And the pay was so low that anyone who had a family to support would take whatever work was available.

So when the opportunity to do a show on a network came along, Gibbs grabbed it. The show, sponsored by Pet Milk, was a conception of Gardner Advertising, headquartered in St. Louis. They wrote all the scripts, hired the talent, bought the time on the networks and produced the show at local radio studios. Mary Lee Taylor was heard on NBC and CBS during its run.

Harry Gibbs remembers that the Mary Lee Taylor Show started out as a women's program that gave out recipes, but then Gardner decided to expand the offering. "They'd decided that the Mary Lee Taylor thing, which was just recipes, needed to be goosed up, so they threw this 15-minute soap opera into it."

And that meant more work for St. Louis actors. "I was Jim and Tommye Rodemeyer was Sally. Little Eddie Stemmler played Spud. Sue Cost was Mary Lee Taylor."

Since the show was heard nationally, the work schedule was a lot more complicated than one might imagine. "We would do a broadcast from the KMOX studios in the morning for every market from St. Louis east. Then we'd come back in the afternoon and do it for everything west. Then we'd go to Technisonic Studios and do one special show for Utah, where Pet Milk was marketed under the name of Sego. That show was transcribed and shipped out."

And in those days of wearing many professional hats, it was necessary to become a chameleon, adapting to one's surroundings to meet the needs of station management. In addition to his appearances on a weekly network program, Harry Gibbs also found himself hosting a women's show on another St. Louis station.

"There was a time when I was doing a morning talk show on KSD. Then I'd head over to KWK for a noon show sponsored by Biederman's. The concept was that women in the listening audience would come to the studios with the most useless thing they could find in their house and then describe it on the air. The winner would get me for the rest of the day. I did all kinds of chores-whatever they wanted-and then would take them to the Chase for dinner.

"My favorites were two little girls from East St. Louis who won. They wanted to go to the Forest Park Highlands. I rode that roller coaster so much that I could practically drive it from memory by the end of the day."

After several years of a professional roller coaster in St. Louis radio, Harry Gibbs jumped at the chance to host a kids' show on the newest medium-television.

Frank Absher is a St. Louis radio historian. St. Louis radio history is available online at www.stlradio.com.

Late Edition:
Post ignores AP report on Taum Sauk collapse
by Charles Klotzer

On April 12, Christopher Leonard, business writer at the Associated Press (AP), reported that an AmerenUE bonus policy may have contributed to keep the Taum Sauk reservoir from being shut down for repairs, which may have averted the Dec. 14 collapse.

The report appeared in Columbia and Jefferson City-even in Seattle, Salt Lake City, Washington, D.C., Jonesboro, Ark., and many other cities-but not in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, although it was posted on the Post's stltoday.com.

The AP story stated that when Ameren officials "faced the prospect of closing the Taum Sauk reservoir in the months before its December collapse, they had more than just safety to consider. That's because Ameren's annual bonus policy strongly favors keeping plants running over closing them for safety concerns.

"A two-months-long Associated Press investigation revealed a policy for plant managers that pays out 60 percent of annual operating bonuses for generating profits, meeting budget and keeping plants open. Twenty percent is given for safety issues like avoiding lost-time accidents. The remaining 20 percent is tied to pollution control."

Company officials denied that the policy played any role in the disaster. But the AP investigation found that company managers delayed critical repairs for months at Taum Sauk before the collapse, and "were ever conscious that closing down the plant, or even reducing its production, would crimp profits."

"Months before the collapse," writes Leonard, "Taum Sauk superintendent Richard Cooper warned Ameren managers in an e-mail that water level gauges were malfunctioning, making it difficult to determine how much water was in the 55-acre basin." Cooper wrote that the reservoir had overflowed and that such overflowing could cause collapse.

In spite of additional warnings, the reservoir was never shut down for repairs. The AP report details how the plant was put to use beyond original intentions.

When SJR questioned one of the Post editors involved in the coverage of the Taum Sauk collapse, the editor had reservations about the accusations in the AP story. The AP story suggests that the possibility of lower bonuses may have caused Ameren officials to keep Taum Sauk operating instead of shutting it down for necessary repairs.

However, the Post editor contends, Cooper, a key Ameren official who was likely to be affected by the bonus policy, was the one to warn Ameren officials about the overflowing and other shortcomings.

That contradiction within the AP story moved Post editors not to publish the story. Obviously, that concern did not stop editors at the Post's stltoday.com from posting the AP report on their site.

I do not want to imply that the Post's failure to publish the AP report reflects an attempt to protect Ameren. Some Post reports and editorials were critical of Ameren.

On April 8 and May 2, the Post's Jeffrey Tomich reported that the Taum Sauk reservoir may have been poorly designed and constructed, according to a report from a consultant hired by the utility. Among others, the study reported that the reservoir may have overtopped on Sept. 25, although "back up sensors did not sound an alarm."

A story in the editorial section on April 12 cites the 144-page report by Ameren's consultant that the "key problem was the emergency shut-off system" which failed. The story questions why Ameren (then Union Electric) failed to correct "a long string of failures at Taum Sauk Reservoir." These defects "suggest that there is an accountability problem within Ameren."

A Post editorial April 23 reports on Reporter Jeffrey Tomich's search for more information about the collapse, which was denied by federal energy regulators. The editorial points out withholding such information because of concern about terrorist attacks is absurd, the reservoir is empty.

Nevertheless, the Post failure to publish the AP story shows a concern to be excessively careful in dealing with corporate interests. The AP story did not base its report on just Cooper or a few officials at Ameren. It discussed the financial interests of various levels at Ameren, the interplay of communications between energy traders and officials, orders to hold repairs for weekends when the loads were lower, and it also reported about Cooper's concern that lowering the operating level by one foot would have cost Ameren generating-potential.

While the Post concern has limited merit, in balance, the power of the AP report would have justified its publication. The St. Louis public was not served by this omission.

Charles Klotzer is the founder and editor emeritus of the St. Louis Journalism Review.