Everyone from William Bennett on the right to Noam Chomsky on the left agrees that during the last 30 years the United States has gone through a devastating process usually referred to as the "dumbing down of America."

High school students are ignorant of the most basic historical and scientific facts. News reporting is shallow and geared toward entertaining rather than informing. Illiteracy rates have soared. And universities across the country are practicing what's called "grade inflation"-rewarding mediocre work with As.

We live in a nation where intellectual curiosity is seen as pretentious and elitist, and ignorance is viewed as authentic and democratic. Take the current president. It would be difficult to think of an American president more untalented, inarticulate, unread and graceless than George W. Bush. Yet political pundits tell us that Americans are more comfortable with him coming into their living rooms via their television sets than that know-it-all Al Gore.

Just being a "regular guy" seems to qualify a person for high national office more than a command of details. Logical deduction and critical thinking are seen as virtually unAmerican.

All of which brings me to gun control.

As I write this, the Washington D.C.-area sniper remains at large. A debate is currently raging over whether the government should build a national ballistics database that would allow police to identify what gun fired a particular bullet without having the gun in hand. Naturally, the National Rifle Association opposes it.

After getting past the red herring of whether such a database would work, the argument once again boiled down to the bizarre claims that the NRA and its supporters make for the Second Amendment.

To wit: A national database of gun "fingerprints" would be nothing less than a registry of all gun owners and their guns. This, in turn, could be the first step in a government move to confiscate all guns-they would know where the guns are and who owns them. And this should not be tolerated because-and here's the NRA's bizarre claim-the Second Amendment allows individuals "to bear arms" as a last resort in the defense of liberty against the tyranny of government. In other words, the NRA says, the right to own a gun protects individuals against a possible tyrannical government.

The logic of this is mindboggling.

Even if every other guarantee of our individual liberty were to fail, if every right in the Bill of Rights were abrogated except the right supposedly embedded in the Second Amendment, then citizens and their assault rifles, cop-killer bullets and speed-loading magazines would form the last-gap defense against a monstrous federal government and its military?

I don't know. I think if it came down to the NRA versus the 82nd Airborne Division, I'd have to go with the parachute boys.

In other words, rifles wouldn't be enough.

So, if the Second Amendment really means what the NRA says it means-that the average citizen has the right to be armed against a tyrannical government-then every law-abiding citizen has a right to own a tank or two and maybe a couple of tactical nuclear missiles.

Only in a country where 32 percent of graduating high school seniors could name the three branches of government but 68 percent could name the Three Stooges would such logic be taken seriously. In any other country the present leadership of the NRA would be laughed out of office.

I'd guess that most members of the NRA don't think that anyone without a criminal record should be allowed to own a hydrogen bomb. But, I'd also guess that most NRA members haven't really thought about the logic of their argument. That kind of thinking is not only unmanly but undemocratic. Better to live in some paranoid dream world where self-armed patriots fight the evil government than endorse a law-enforcement plan that would make the country a little safer.

Like I said earlier, sometime about 30 years ago the idea of democracy shifted from trying to raise up everyone to trying to find the lowest common denominator.

Recently on MSNBC, a reporter said the bomb attack in Bali "killed a lot of Australians and other Europeans."

It's scary.

If you agree with Thomas Jefferson, who once wrote that "no people can be both ignorant and free," you shudder for your country.

Letters:

Half-baked analysis
SJR: We regret that Roy Harris' insightful lecture about the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's extraordinary past became an opportunity for SJR contributor Roy Malone to launch into stale and simplistic complaints about what's happened since.

In introducing Harris, we said that Post history had at times been a sensitive subject-sometimes dismissed as irrelevant, sometimes glorified in a way that it seemed like we mere mortals hardly deserve to work there. Our hope was to get beyond those extremes to more useful questions-How can we apply the wisdom of the past to the very different challenges we face now? What can we learn that might help us do extraordinary work today? Harris' careful research and entertaining presentation offered much food for thought along these lines.

Apparently not for Malone. His article launched into a litany of complaints that cast blame on the paper's top leadership (editors are inept, Joseph Pulitzer Jr. was shy, Michael Pulitzer lives in California, the staff is forced to endure hardships that include no more retirement stories, etc.). That kind of half-baked analysis may soothe the egos of the rest of us who share or have shared responsibility for the newspaper's quality. But it will take honest soul-searching among all of us, not loose finger-pointing at some, to move forward.

Malone was wrong also when he said that Ellen Soeteber agreed to Harris' Post appearance only after he'd been scheduled to speak at the Missouri Historical Society. To the contrary, Harris' Post lecture was scheduled first, and she welcomed the efforts of the Millstone Lecture Series organizers to make the arrangements. Soeteber authorized Harris' use of a meeting room at the newspaper and donated the services of newsroom secretaries to help assure that the program would be a success.

Richard Weil, Bill Freivogel, Margie Freivogel
Millstone Lecture Series organizers and Post editors

Speaking up
SJR: I saw your story about radio news, and I read it with interest.

I opposed the Telecommunications Act of 1996 which encouraged huge amalgamations of corporate entities controlling stations.

And, as stations have merged, there are fewer and fewer reporters covering the news.

Thanks for speaking up.

Paul Simon
Former U.S. Senator

Off the Record:

Weather wear
Always eager to spot trends early on, SJR believes that meteorologists-as-models is going to be a biggie in the coming months.

Leading indicator? KMOV (Channel 4) meteorologist Kent Ehrhardt in the October 2002 Lands' End catalog, who shows off a stylishly full-cut (Lands' End's adjective is "functional" but who's quibbling?) Squall Parka in Indigo Blue. He's accompanied by weather guys from Philadelphia, Milwaukee and Madison, WI.

The whole movement would appear to have been initiated by the newly slimmed-down Al Roker, who did a series of ads for a line of foul weather gear that appeared in The New York Times Magazine.

Who's next? Cindy Preszler strutting in boots from the new May Company house brand?
-Ann Lemons

Congrats to WEW
In the 30 years since the West End Word came into being, the paper has continued its mission to promote a sense of community and to give city residents a voice.

Meanwhile, St. Louis City is still struggling with population and property value decreases.

The fate of St. Louis City aside, though, the paper has continued to offer news, features, arts and entertainment and-something not too well represented in other St. Louis media-education coverage.

Flaunting its current crisp, clean format, the Word published its 30th anniversary issue Aug. 28-Sept. 3. The issue, like its predecessors, continued to show the paper's place in society and upheld its mission.

And, an important aspect for all media, advertising is still strong in the Word-including classified listings for property rental and purchasing.
-Erica Burleson

Pay-to-write
How does a newspaper in Columbia make a buck these days? By charging a fee to some who submit letters to the editor. The Columbia Daily Tribune, a 19,000 circulation daily, is charging for letters to the editor regarding political candidates or ballot initiatives submitted in the two weeks before election day. The fee is based on length: $10 for up to 100 words, or $25 for 250 words, and 30 cents for each additional word. The Tribune's smaller competitor, the University of Missouri-sponsored Columbia Missourian, does not charge a fee for letters.
-Ed Bishop

Irving Lee Dilliard 1904-2002

A Eulogy
By Robert Tabscott

Wynken, Blynken and Nod one night
Sailed off in a wooden shoe,
Sailed on a river of crystal light,
into a sea of dew.
'Where are you going and what do you wish?'
The old moon asked the three.
'We have come to fish for the herring fish
That live in this beautiful sea;
Nets of silver and gold have we!'
Said Wynken
Blynken
and Nod.

Eugene Field

Two great Americans took leave of us on Oct. 10. Both drew large circles to embrace their worlds-one was a filmmaker, the other a journalist. One framed pictures, the other drew in words. Both, in one way or another, called St. Louis home.

Charles Guggenheim and Irving Dilliard were fellow travelers, "who came to fish for the beautiful fish that live in this beautiful sea."

The eulogy or "funeral praise" is the oldest and in some ways least valued of our literary forms. However much neglected, the eulogy is surprisingly elastic, stretching beyond the pulpit to embrace memorial tributes, reminiscences, newspaper and magazine reflections, or captured in shared stories-"Do you remember the time … ?"

As a powerful medium for human feeling, it may not be surpassed. It is a rite of passage-here, there or anywhere.

I remember reading Robert Louis Stevenson's tribute to his friend, James Ferries, at once an essay on friendship, a meditation upon the meaning of failure and a story about a gifted boy who threw his life away. Then there is David's magnificent lamentation for Saul and Jonathon, who were murdered by the Philistines. "In life they were lovely and gracious and in death they were not parted. They were swifter than eagles, stronger than lions. I grieve for you … you were very dear to me. How the mighty have fallen. The weapons of war have perished."

We do not think of Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address" as a funeral oration, though it was, " … for in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract … "

And so it is that the giving of eulogies began the first time one person stood in the memory of another and tried to say in so many words who that person was and what his or her life was about. And I would offer that the first testimony ever given, according to the poets, was by God himself at the funeral of Abel, who had been murdered by his brother Cain. It all took place in the Garden of Good and Evil.

"The blood of your brother Abel cries to me from the ground."

Eulogies at their best are always double portraits that deepen the hearing and reading of them. Winston Churchill's analysis of Lawrence of Arabia could just as easily have described Churchill himself: "He was not in complete harmony with the normal … The multitudes were swept forward till their pace was the same as his. In this heroic period he found himself in perfect relation both to men, nature and events."

Why do you think, then, that Irving Dilliard was able to write so poignantly about Ellen Knauft, Viet Nam, Learned Hand and Hugo Black, George Anastopolo, Elijah Lovejoy, John Peter Altgeld, Eugene Field, Langston Hughes, his own beloved Collinsville and "St. Louie?" For, you see, we love and admire in others what we wish for ourselves. And this is where we reach for metaphor for Irving Lee Dilliard's life begs for biography.

The people of Illinois have long been blessed by a tradition of men and women deeply committed to the cause of freedom: The Lovejoys-Elijah and Owen, Abraham Lincoln, John Peter Altgeld, Jane Addams, Adlai Stevenson, Paul Simon, Jesse and Charlene Cannon and Irving Lee Dilliard are only a few among many in the course of this history whose lives portray the patriots' dream.

And what more can I say? Irving Dilliard planted in many gardens as a journalist, the law, history, octogenarian and philosopher of the common good. He was a keeper of small improbable things who walked with great men and women and "never lost the human touch."

He witnessed to a generation that there was room for intelligence and idealism in public life, that politics, the law, education and religion were not just a way to live, but a way to live greatly, that each of us might share in the joy of the age.

Dilliard had verve. It was not the first time we had seen this quality in public life, nor the last. But how rare it is in those who find their way to power and prestige these days. It was Dilliard's philosophy that we are more than the sum of our deeds and fears. Such integrity ennobles citizens to a greater principle for it claims that charity of the spirit and the reach of the heart are our best hope for peace among us. The sweep of his editorials in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch embraces all of that.

Irving Dilliard never received a Pulitzer for his work, though he made several possible for his colleagues at the paper. And in all the years I knew him, I never heard him belittle a fellow traveler or to lament the oversight of the prize. He lived beyond all of that and his peers knew his power and his might, knew that he was deserving of the highest accolades.

Witness the historian, Bernard DeVoto, who assessed the state of journalism in the U.S. in a 1953 Harpers Magazine article: "What makes a national newspaper is the editorial page. No other in the country is good enough to be compared with [the Post]. At present, it is the work of six writers: Irving Dilliard, the editor of the page; Robert Lasch; Ernest Kirschten; Rufus Terrall; James Lawrence; Charles Pendergast; and the fine artist and great cartoonist, Fitzpatrick.

"One reads the page," DeVoto concluded, "knowing that the people who write it have an extraordinary knowledge of American life, which makes the Post the finest practitioner of liberal journalism we have ever had."

But that is only a part of it. Twice in my life I have seen private libraries that fascinated me, collections that bore the signatures of the individuals who collected them. One was in Quincy, Mass., the haunt of John Quincy Adams, the 19th century president, congressman, and anti-slavery man.

The other gallery, many miles and a lifetime away here in Collinsville in the modest home of Irving and his beloved Dorothy and their two daughters, Mary Sue and Doris on Paw Paw Hill. It has been said that he had the finest collection on the Supreme Court as anyone about. William O. Douglas, the stalwart judge on the highest bench said of Dilliard, "He was the finest writer to ever cover the court." Walter Lippmann agreed. But those were the days, my friends, when journalism was at its best in American life.

You must know that Irving was forever a child-a gatherer of precious things that would remind him of the world he had embraced across the years. Wherever he stayed in hotels around the world he brought home the stationery from his room but, as he said, "I never took a Gideon Bible." Stamps he collected in troves to be pasted on the envelopes he had scripted with an editor's touch. Little things like that: no socks, jump-up-and-kiss-mes, flag pins, stories, autographs, pencils-quirks, perhaps, but he never threw anything away. So it should come as no surprise that when the Eugene Field house was about to be torn down in the wake of urban renewal in St. Louis in the 1950s, he intervened and through a series of editorials spurred the public response to save the home of the gingham dog and the calico cat. And it was the same commitment for the preservation of the giant landmark, Brooks ketchup bottle in Collinsville, which was almost empty and he helped to fill again.

What more can I say? Now, he belongs to the ages and will forever be honored and remembered for the vigil he kept "o'er the land of the free and the home of the brave." And never was his patriotism "my country right or wrong" but a solid determination to see what must be seen, to hear what must be heard, and to write what must be written to preserve freedom and human dignity on this wide and heaving sea, which is what he did in 1956 when in a series of editorials in the Post he wrote, "Viet Nam is a war to stay out of." The artist, Fitzpatrick, illustrated the three-part piece and received a Pulitzer. Dilliard is remembered for his clairvoyance.

As he frequently did over the years, Irving Dilliard would meet up with old friends at special places. On one occasion on a spring day in 1959, down by the Mississippi River, he sat on a bench with Langston Hughes, the black poet, who was on tour promoting his new book of poems, Shakespeare in Harlem. There, he autographed a copy for the Dilliard family, "At this place where the town began, I meet up with my old friend. With sincere regards to the family, Langston Hughes."

But there is more. You will remember that the Mississippi was the setting for Hughes's first poem written many years before titled, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers." It is metaphoric of the influence of the lives of two great writers.

I've known rivers:
I've known rivers, ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep, like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans and I've seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I've known rivers,
Ancient, dusky rivers.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

So it was in the life of Irving Dilliard. His soul was deep then. It takes time for a great mind to settle back into the light and the eternal word from which it arose. So we give him back to the mystery from which he came.

The British poet, Stephen Spender, captured the essence of Irving's life: "I think continually of those who were truly great ... those who in their lives fought for life, wore at their hearts the fire's center. Born of the sun, they traveled a short while toward the sun, a left the vivid air signed with their honor."

Sports/Media:

Steer clear of Armey
By Joe Pollack
MEMO TO: Bernie Miklasz and Brian Burwell, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
RE: Coverage of the Rams
If you value your jobs, it seems that you had best begin to take it easy on Charley Armey, the general manager of the Rams. It's probably OK to continue the assault on Mike Martz, Georgia Frontiere, John Shaw, Ken Zygmunt, Rick Smith or anyone else in the organization, but steer clear of Armey.

Why?

Well, Charley's brother, Dick, who lives in Flower Mound, Texas, is a powerful member of the House of Representatives, or will be until he retires in January, and he is sensitive about the media and how it depicts his relatives. He also has a long memory.

Back in March, Dick's son, Scott, a former judge in Denton County, north of Dallas, ran in the Republican primary for dad's Congressional seat (obviously a favorite tactic among Texas politicians) and was whupped (that's Texan for whipped) by Michael Burgess, a political novice. Last month, Armey tried to add an amendment to an appropriations bill for military construction, obviously a strong favorite to zip through Congress.

The Armey Amendment, obviously a vital ingredient in military construction, would force the giant Belo Corporation to divest one of its North Texas media properties. In addition to owning KMOV (Channel 4) in St. Louis, Belo owns the Dallas Morning News, the Denton Record-Chronicle and WFAA-TV, in Dallas. Terry Holt, Armey's spokesman (not related to the Rams' Torry Holt), told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram-with a straight face-that "Mr. Armey's main concern is for the people in his constituency. He is sending a signal that we have to be vigilant when there is only one outlet for information."

The Morning News, in addition to its regular political coverage of the primary, had been carrying on a year-long investigation, printing stories about Scott Armey's judicial record, and the elder Armey told a Washington publication that the Morning News had a "vendetta" against him and was taking it out on his son, who "did not deserve to be treated with the vicious unprofessionalism of the Dallas Morning News."

Armey, whose business experience was as an exterminator before he ran for Congress, failed in his attempt. He is not a member of the conference committee considering the bill, and another Texas Congressman, Democrat Chet Edwards of Waco, objected to even adding it to the bill, saying, "No member of Congress, much less the majority leader, should endanger the military construction bill to carry out a personal vendetta."

Robert W. Decherd, chairman and chief executive of Belo, issued a strong statement-stronger in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram version than in The New York Times.

The former carried, "We are extremely disappointed that Congressman Armey would attempt to use the legislative process and the Federal Communications Commission punitively to harm Belo, its employees and the many communities that depend on our company. There is no substantive reason of explanation for this unprecedented attack."

The Times said, "His misuse of congressional leadership powers for personal retaliation toward Belo is not in keeping with the positive results Congressman Armey has procured for his constituents during his long tenure."

Martin Frost, a Democratic representative from nearby Arlington, Texas, said, "I think it's sad that Dick Armey is leaving on such a vindictive and petty note. It's sad to see him do this after a reasonably distinguished career."

Anyway, if you guys are not careful, and if Charley Armey slips during a conversation with his brother and tells him you're casting aspersions on the family, Dick may call our his own army (Armey's Army. Get it?) and force the Post to divest itself of its primary sports columnists, or even to close down and leave town.

And remember, forewarned is forearmed.

Yours truly ...

---
Is there a doctor in the house?
It would seem that there are many, given the advertising by medical schools and hospitals on the walls of our arenas, each touting themselves as "official team physicians," a title that no longer is earned, but simply purchased.

But few of them seem to get it right the first time. A couple of weeks ago, the Post sports section looked like morning report at a hospital, with the lead headline noting, "[J.D.] Drew Undergoes Knee Surgery," and the second story headed, "Blues, [Chris] Pronger Weigh Options for Wrist."

There's an the old slogan among surgeons, "You can't heal without stainless steel," but it apparently has been ignored too often, perhaps because coaches and managers prefer to have a player at half-speed rather than on the sidelines until complete and proper healing is accomplished. Athletes fear leaving the lineup in case a substitute turns into a star and he never returns.

But the Drew and Pronger cases are just the latest on the St. Louis sports scene. Postponing surgery, in effect, sidelines these athletes for a season and a half, or maybe two, instead of just half a season. With all the splendid medical techniques and rehabilitation methods available in St. Louis, it seems strange that local teams too often seem to be waiting for miracles.

---
There never will be a final word on Tony LaRussa, but I think he did a superior job of managing the Cardinals in 2002. And he did it during what had to be the longest and most painful season ever endured by a major league team.

Media/Law:

Web means more work for lawyers
By Ken Jones
Jealousy is a sin that afflicts many journalists. It emerges when we come across an especially fine piece of someone else's writing. "What I wouldn't give to write something like that," I find myself saying often.

My jealousy flared again when I read a recent New York Daily News article about the legalities of "upskirt" photography, a popular type of Internet porn. The opening graph said, "Ladies, beware: Pictures of your underwear are probably fair game if the shots are being taken in a public place, even if you're still wearing them."

Translation-photos are being snapped from ground level as women walk unsuspectingly over hidden digital cameras. And legally, there's not much you can do about it.

The Daily News article is pointed, fresh and witty, definitely a novel way to start a story about law and the web.

But, it's not entirely accurate. The article says that few states have outlawed upskirt pictures, citing only California, Ohio and Florida, with Wisconsin currently preparing legislation.

But Missouri was definitely one of the first to attack the problem in the state's invasion of privacy law. The 1995 statute makes it a crime if a person "knowingly uses a concealed camcorder or photographic camera of any type to secretly videotape, photograph, or record by electronic means another person under or through the clothing worn by that other person for the purpose of viewing the body of or the undergarments worn by that other person without that person's consent."

The Missouri statute succeeds where other states fail, because it specifically addresses the upskirting phenomenon. Prosecutors in other states have had to rely on general voyeurism laws, which are based on protecting an "expectation" of privacy-someone taking pics when you're in a place you think is private, such as your home, a bathroom, or a dressing room.

But since upskirting occurs in public, where there's no expectation of privacy, the old laws don't cover it. The article quotes a Washington court that overturned two upskirting convictions: "Although [the defendants'] actions are reprehensible, we agree that the voyeurism statute, as written, does not prohibit upskirt photography in public."

As an attorney specializing in First Amendment law commented in the Daily News article, "Usually, the charges don't stick. Your right to privacy primarily depends on your location, not your anatomy. It's not illegal to take photographs of people in public. If you're in public, you don't have a legitimate expectation of privacy. The courts are still trying to sort that out."

The Missouri General Assembly's proactive approach-anticipating these loopholes in the existing statutes and addressing an issue before it becomes a widespread problem-is an example of legislative functioning at its best.

The upskirting issue illustrates another important fact-the Internet revolution is creating a lot of legal questions, which is why intellectual property law is such a hot field. Copyright problems, cybersquatting and questions of interstate jurisdiction are just a few of the issues that occupying a growing segment of legal professionals.

And, new questions seem to arise every day. One of the more interesting ones involves search engines and the websites they decide to include-or ban-from their databases.

The issue came to light recently when the Associated Press reported that Google, a popular search engine, doesn't allow access to sites that deny the Holocaust or promote white supremacy. That policy is in effect for Google users in France and Germany, where laws strictly ban "hate speech."

According to the AP article, a Google spokesman said, "The company must occasionally remove sites to avoid legal liability." On German Google, 65 sites were removed, and 113 were removed in France.

One source of liability for a search engine could be a lawsuit from someone claiming a website is defamatory or contains copyrighted material-for example, "When the Church of Scientology International complained of copyright violations at a Norwegian site run by critics."

On the other side, First Amendment activists see the removal of websites as a form of censorship, although no state action is involved. (A good source for news on Internet legal questions is ChillingEffects.org, which monitors free-speech issues.)

In all the conflict caused by the media revolution, one thing is clear, as usual-there is going to be more work for lawyers.

Channels:

Larry Conners gets taken
By Tripp Frohlichstein
In the same radio program in which a spot aired promoting Larry Conners as one of the area's most respected journalists, Conners did not live up to his billing as he let a guest get the best of him.

On Oct. 8 (during his 2 p.m. program), "Dr." Ted Broer turned Conners' KMOX radio interview show into a blatant commercial for his nutrition products.

Broer claims to be a "doctor" promoting the right kind of eating. How do you find out about what to eat? Over and over Broer avoided specific answers and instead promoted his website and 800 numbers-two 800 numbers, no less. Conners did not pursue Broer to get him to answer questions more directly.

To make Conners' hosting even less credible, I had listened for 20 minutes before it was revealed the possible huckster was not a medical doctor but a doctor of nutrition (whatever that means). He proceeded to list other degrees.

A check on the Internet revealed even that might be untrue. He is described in several places as a licensed Christian nutritionist. His books are available on several "Christian" book sites (along with some more standard sites like Amazon.com).

What about the validity of his degrees? According to one Internet posting, a check with the University of Florida where he claims to have gotten his Ph.D. in science turned up nothing. The university said it hadn't heard of him.

A Google search also turned this up. The source is "Iowa State University Extension, electronic communication, Nov. 19, 1997." It reads: "Ted Broer is a radio and TV 'nutritionist.' He speaks at conferences, and has authored two books, Eat, Drink & Be Healthy and Fit at Forty." The question is: Is Broer credible?

Patricia Steiner at Iowa State University posed this question to nutritionists nationwide via the Purdue food and nutrition specialist mail group.

Wanda Koszewski, Ph.D., R.D., assistant professor and extension nutrition specialist in the Department of Nutritional Science and Dietetics in Lincoln, Neb., replied that she was familiar with Broer's tapes. Broer gave the following list of the top foods to avoid:

1. bacon, sausage and ham;
2. shellfish-it will kill you because of the toxins;
3. margarine and shortening-forms a plastic around your cells;
4. Nutrasweet-it is a neurotoxin;
5. junk food;
6. mayonnaise;
7. caffeine;
8. chloride and fluoride-causes brain cancer in children;
9. MSG;
10. dairy foods-the National Dairy Council has been brainwashing us;
11. alcohol; and
12. aluminum-causes Alzheimer's.

After reviewing the tape (and the list), it became clear that Broer's ideas are not science-based and that he falls under the "quack" category.

At the end of the show, Conners offered a weak disclaimer acknowledging Broer had used the program to pitch his for-profit enterprise. But, Conners added that listeners also got some valuable information-not much in the 40 minutes I heard.

Before I am too critical of Conners, the program's producer who booked Broer is also to blame for not checking out the guest or how he might perform on the air.

Larry Conners is a good journalist. He (and his producer) should have handled the situation with more honesty. Either tells the guest during a break to kill his commercials or he would end the interview early.

Conners has had several good shows but needs to know when he has a loser of a guest and how to do something about it.

---
Speaking of radio, St. Clair County Transit needed to change its radio ad. Airing prior to a game when the Rams were 0-5, the copy read, "The Rams are on their way to another exciting successful season."

---
Still speaking of radio, I was pleasantly surprised upon listening to KMOV (Channel 4) sportscaster Steve Savard's play-by-play of the Rams and Seahawks on the radio.

The Rams, given their poor start, were assigned a television play-by-play crew that was, to put it nicely, awful. They seemed ill prepared and often confused about the game of football-especially this game. I can't even remember the names of the crew. So, I decided to listen to the game on KTRS.

A while back, I was critical of Savard's abilities on radio. Things have changed, big time. Savard, perhaps because of experience, was solid in his call of the game as well as filling in the time between plays (including during a lengthy injury time-out). I had a better sense of the kind of plays the teams were running and where on the field the teams were. He got the names right this time too. He was a pleasure to listen to, and I'd now heartily recommend him when the Rams don't have the top TV announcers assigned to the game.

---
In our seemingly monthly edition of the Elliott Davis saga, we return to St. Clair County Executive John Baricevic. Last February, KTVI (Channel 2) "You Paid For It" reporter Davis confronted Baricevic at a public meeting about Mid-America airport. Davis wanted to know how much it was costing St. Clair County since Pan Am had "left the building." Baricevic got so angry at Davis, he called him "Rufus" instead of Elliott. Rufus is widely considered a derogatory term referring to a lazy African American.

Baricevic told Davis he would talk to him only if he called ahead for an appointment. Baricevic confirmed that to me in an interview at that time.

Apparently, he didn't mean it. Davis wanted to do a follow-up on the still-empty Mid-America airport in St. Clair County and the fact it would be turned into a cargo facility. But Baricevic reneged, saying he would not talk to Davis.

The irony is that Davis was doing a positive story suggesting that turning Mid-America into a cargo airport was a smart move. He interviewed omnipresent stockbroker Julie Niemann about the move, which she supported. She even stood up for the county's original decision to make it a passenger airport.

My only question was why Niemann? How does she qualify to talk about the airport and its use? He should have come up with a better, more relevant interviewee.

"We used her because she keeps track of the airline industry." Davis said. "She is recognized by our viewers. She pays particular attention to the airline industry. I have not found in 20 years of using Niemann as a source that she has misled me."

If that's the case, Davis could have better served viewers by noting that Niemann follows the airline industry, giving her more credibility.

---
Debbie Milligan has been named director of marketing and community affairs for Channel 4. Milligan had been the station's marketing research manager since March. Before Channel 4, she was marketing manager/regional resource manager for the Rouse Company in Dallas. She has also been promotion manager for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, as well as in research at KMOX radio.

I had the privilege of working with Debbie when I was on KMOX radio doing my television critiques and found her work to be exceptional. She should do well for Channel 4, the perennial number two station in St. Louis.

---
The ratings are in for October and the news is best for Channel 4.

October is a skewed month in that baseball playoffs and World Series games mess up the nighttime Nielsen numbers. So, I will ignore them except to say that CBS' stronger prime time schedule and NBC's weaker prime time schedule may tend to help Channel 4 in November. What could hurt Channel 4 is if it overdoes the Julius Hunter nostalgia. The station is planning lots of stories related to the end of Julius Hunter's anchoring career. A week would be OK but all month? People may get sick of the station's absorption with itself and turn to other stations for "real" news. Younger viewers who don't have an emotional attachment to Hunter's tenure may also be turned off.

At both 5 and 6 p.m., Channel 4 has made some slight gains over the previous year. Channel 2 slipped a tad and KSDK (Channel 5) gained at 5 p.m. and lost at 6 p.m. The headline here is that although Channel 5 still holds a substantial lead, it is less commanding than October 2001.

In the increasingly important morning race, all three stations have shown ratings gains, indicating morning news viewing continues to grow. This is why Channel 2 recently expanded its news to start earlier.

At noon, viewing is also up with both Channels 4 and 5 showing significant gains.

A rating point represents about 11,400 homes. The share is the number of homes watching a particular show at any given time compared to all homes using televisions at that time. So, if 100 homes are watching TV and 17 are ---
The regional National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) gave out its annual Emmy Awards in mid-October in front of about 475 people.

Remember, the Emmy awards are judged in other cities with different criteria than St. Louis audiences.' Thus, winning an Emmy doesn't necessarily mean being the best. The real voting is done by viewers who choose their favorites with their remote controls. In St. Louis, that means Channel 5 has the best newscast.

2002 Emmy Awards...
by Tripp Frohlichstein

The regional National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) gave out its annual Emmy Awards in mid-October in front of about 475 people.

Remember, the Emmy awards are judged in other cities with different criteria than St. Louis audiences. Thus, winning an Emmy doesn't necessarily mean being the best. The real voting is done by viewers who choose their favorites with their remote controls. In St. Louis, that means Channel 5 has the best newscast.

But maybe not in Missouri, at least the way the Emmy judges saw it. They voted a Kansas City station the top news station. Channels 2, 4 and 5 were entered in the best news category but lost to KMBC. The local stations also lost to KMBC in the best individual newscast category.

In other key categories, Channel 5's Dan Gray won the Emmy for best anchor. He deserves it. Gray has been a St. Louis fixture for many years and is a solid performer.

Channel 2's Chris Higgins took best weathercaster while Channel 4's Tim McKernon was named best sportscaster. These results are interesting in that none of the "main" weather and sportscasters won. This may be that either the "main" people didn't enter in the first place or were just seen as inferior by the judges.

Jamie Allman certainly earned his Emmy in Journalistic Enterprise (along with two other awards in different categories) as did Elliott Davis in the Investigative category for a "You Paid For It" segment.

By my unofficial count, Channel 2 won seven Emmys out of 27 nominations or 26 percent.

Channel 4 won 13 Emmys out of 45 nominations or 29 percent-four of those went to photographer Jon Davis.

Channel 5 won seven Emmys out of 35 nominations or 20 percent.

KETC (Channel 9) won two Emmys out of four nominations or 50 percent.

KPLR (Channel 11) won two Emmys out of six nominations or 33 percent.

Kansas City stations won 11, including two of the four top prizes.

Channel 4 submitted more entries than any other station.

And, the winners are …

2002 MID-AMERICA EMMY AWARD RECIPIENTS

STUDENT PRODUCTION
"alt.news 26:46"
Otto Arsenault, Producer
Jody Leggio, Producer
Southern Illinois University-Carbondale

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT
"Take a second, Make a difference"
Bob Hamrick, Creative Director/Copywriter
Diane Johnson, Art Director
Jo Anne Lofland, Broadcast Producer
Sullivan, Higdon & Sink
For the Kansas Health Foundation, Wichita

ON-AIR STATION PROMOTION-NEWS
"Football Friday Fakes"
Dan Timpe, Promotion Director
Paul Keener, Director of Marketing
KFVS
Cape Girardeau

ON-AIR STATION PROMOTION-PROGRAMMING
"Randy Liebler Compilation"
Randy Liebler, Promotion Producer/Writer
Tom Zupanci, Director
Brian Cunningham, Editor
KPLR
St. Louis

ON-AIR STATION PROMOTION-IMAGE
"In-Depth Weather Image Campaign"
Angela Burkett, Promotion Writer/Producer
Doug Raines, On-Line Editor
Matthew Henry, Graphic Artist
KSHB
Kansas City

LIGHTING DIRECTION
"Stadlman Compilation"
Ran Stadlman, Lighting Director/Producer
Metro Sports
Kansas City

AUDIO
"Missouri's Tallgrass Prairie: An American Original"
Dan Zarlenga, Audio Recording & Mixing
Sandra Levy-Smith, Original Score
Cathy Barton and Dave Para, Music & Vocals
Missouri Department of Conservation
Jefferson City

MUSIC
"Missouri's Tallgrass Prairie"
Sandra M. Levy Smith, Composer
Smith/Lee Productions, Inc.
St. Louis

ANIMATION
"Iowa City Jazz Festival"
Jason Vardaman, Animation
David Welsh, Editor/Producer
KCRG
Cedar Rapids

HOST/PERFORMER (OTHER THAN NEWS)
Heidi Glaus
"Heidi Glaus Compilation"
KSDK
St. Louis

COMMUNITY OUTREACH PROGRAM
"Let Freedom Sing"
Pam Smith, Producer
Renee Van Erp, Producer
Richard Eller, Executive Producer
KSHB
Kansas City

CHILDREN'S-LONG FORM
"Critter Rock"
Peg Craft, Producer
Jan Syrigus, Composer/Choreographer
Missouri Department of Conservation
Jefferson City

CHILDREN'S-SHORT FORM
"Kids Making a Difference: Children of the Holocaust"
Jacqui Poor, Producer/Director/Editor
Tim Wagner-US Art, Inc., Videographer/Field Director
Natalie Hall, Reporter/Writer
Mary Hall-Ries, Field Producer/Associate Producer
Elementary Explorer
St. Louis

PERFORMING ARTS/ENTERTAINMENT
"Rare Visions & Roadside Revelations"
Michael Murphy, Producer
Randy Mason, Producer
Don Mayberger, Camera Guy
KCPT
Kansas City

RELIGIOUS
"Mayberry"
Hillary Wiccai, Reporter
Jonathon K. Davis, Photographer
KMOV
St. Louis

ART DIRECTION/DESIGN-SAME DAY NEWS
"The Pulse"
Richard Witzofsky
KSDK
St. Louis

ART DIRECTION/DESIGN-PRE-PRODUCED/NEWS
"The Jump"
Richard Witzofsky
KSDK
St. Louis

ART DIRECTION/DESIGN-OTHER THAN NEWS
"Cardinal Open 2001"
Marvin Brown, Art Director
Jim Burcke, Producer
Ron Kilkenny, Art Director
KPLR
St. Louis

SCENIC DESIGN
"Brighten Your Life Campaign (Series)"
Kim West, Producer
Jennifer Snyder, Art Director
KETC
St. Louis

EDITOR-SAME DAY NEWS
Mark Hadler
"Mark Hadler Edit Composite"
KMOV
St. Louis

EDITOR-PRE-PRODUCED NEWS
Andrea Torrence
"2001 Yearender"
KMOV
St. Louis

Jon King
"Jon King Compilation"
KSDK
St. Louis

EDITOR-OTHER THAN NEWS
Otto Arsenault & Jody Leggio
"Punkin' Chucking"
WSIU
Carbondale

PHOTOGRAPHER/VIDEOGRAPHER-SAME DAY NEWS
Steven Harris
"Harris Compilation"
KMOV
St. Louis

PHOTOGRAPHER/VIDEOGRAPHER-PRE-PRODUCED NEWS
Jonathon K. Davis
"Jonathon K. Davis Compilation"
KMOV
St. Louis

PHOTOGRAPHER/VIDEOGRAPHER-OTHER THAN NEWS
Kevin Muenks
"Missouri's Tallgrass Prairie: an American Original"
Missouri Department of Conservation
Jefferson City

NEWS SPECIAL

"Weathering the Storm"
Dan Timpe, Promotion Director
Paul Keener, Director of Marketing
KFVS
Cape Girardeau

NEWS FEATURE-BUSINESS/CONSUMER/FINANCE
"Master Clockmaker"
Dan Buck, Reporter
Mark Mowrey, Photographer
KSDK
St. Louis

NEWS FEATURE-HEALTH/SCIENCE/MEDICAL
"Saving Sawyer"
Christine Haas, Reporter
Todd Rogenthien, Photojournalist KTHV
Little Rock

NEWS FEATURE-CULTURAL
"Holocaust Heroine"
Bev Chapman, Reporter
Jason Rhodes, Photographer
KMBC
Kansas City

NEWS FEATURE-EDUCATION
"A Wrestler"
Anne Steffens, Reporter
Bill McCormac, Photographer
KMOV
St. Louis

NEWS FEATURE-ENTERTAINMENT/HUMOROUS
"Garage Band"
Eric Hanson, Reporter
Jeff Christian, Photographer
Dave Busiek, News Director
KCCI
Des Moines

NEWS FEATURE-POLITICAL
"Underground Government"
Jamie Allman, Reporter
Jerry Santos, Photographer
Andrea Torrence, Editor
Theresa Yohn, Executive Producer
KMOV
St. Louis

PROGRAM FEATURE-PUBLIC AFFAIRS
"Phantom of the Opera"
Becky Reichardt, Producer
Rebecca Rahm, Executive Producer
Kelly Peach, Producer
KSDK St. Louis

PROGRAM FEATURE-CULTURAL
"The Sound of Dreams"
Carole Adornetto, Executive Producer
Dale Carpenter, Producer/Writer/Videographer/Editor
Arkansas Educational Telecommunications Network
Conway

SPECIAL
"Cael Sanderson: Portrait of a Champion"
Douglas M. Brooker, Producer/Director/Writer
Iowa Public Television
Johnston

LIVE EVENT SPECIAL
"Rams Pre-Game Live"
Martin Kilcoyne, Sports Director
Jarrett Shustrin, Producer
Tyrone Frison, Director
KTVI
St. Louis

DOCUMENTARY
"When the Bough Breaks"
Jill Evans Petzall, Producer
Deeds Rogers, Director
Beacon Productions, Inc.
St. Louis

DISCUSSION/INTERVIEW
"In the Loop"
Jim Kirchherr, Host
Alvin Reid, Host
Anne-Marie Berger, Producer/Director
KETC
St. Louis

"Extra Edition"
Steve Perron, Producer
Jamie Allman, Anchor
KMOV
St. Louis

INFORMATIONAL

"alt.news 26:46"
Michael Cioni, Producer
Ian Vertovec, Producer
Jody Leggio, Producer
Otto Arsenaut, Producer
WSIU/WUSI
Carbondale

SPORTS REPORTING
"Blues on the Runway"
Tim McKernan, Sports Reporter
Gary Womack, Photographer
KMOV
St. Louis

SPORTS FEATURE
"Girl Bullrider"
Craig Cheatham, Reporter
Jonathon K. Davis, Photographer
KMOV
St. Louis

SPORTS PROGRAM
"Hometown Heroes: 'Bullet' Rogan & Hilton Smith"
Ryan Stadlman, Producer
Metro Sports/Time Warner Cable
Kansas City

SPORTS SPECIAL
"Cardball: 2002"
Martin Kilcoyne, Sports Director
Dave Jobe, Producer
KTVI
St. Louis

SPORTS ANNOUNCER (LIVE PLAY-BY-PLAY)
Joe Buck
"Joe Buck Play by Play"
Fox Sports Net Midwest
St. Louis

NEWS SERIES
"Emily's Journey: A New Beginning"
Mandy Murphey, Reporter
Dave Sharp, Photographer
John Ross, Photographer
KTVI
St. Louis

GENERAL NEWS
"Modern Marijuana"
Kristi Widmar, Reporter
Brandi Paulson, Editor
Don Proctor, Photojournalist
WDAF
Kansas City

INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING
"You Paid For It - Hillsdale"
Elliott Davis, Reporter
Larry Washington, Photographer
KTVI
St. Louis

DIRECTOR-(LIVE)-NEWS
Joe Grawitch
"Joe Grawitch-Director/Live News" KTVI
St. Louis

DIRECTOR (LIVE)-OTHER THAN NEWS
Tom McClocklin
"Cardinals Baseball-1st Game After 9/11 Attacks"
Fox Sports Net Midwest
St. Louis

DIRECTOR (PRE-PRODUCED) Anthony Ladesich
"Kansas City Crossroads Compilation"
KSHB
Kansas City

WRITING-NEWS
Bev Chapman
"Writing Composite"
KMBC
Kansas City

WRITING (OTHER THAN NEWS) Peg Craft
"Missouri's Tallgrass Prairie: An American Original"
Missouri Department of Conservation
Jefferson City

JOURNALISTIC ENTERPRISE
"The Allman Reports"
Jamie Allman, Reporter
Steve Harris, Photographer
Jon Davis, Photographer
KMOV
St. Louis

SPOT NEWS
"Little League Shooting"
Matt Sczesny, Reporter
Bill McCormac, Photographer
Mike Alexander, Photographer
KMOV
St. Louis

LIVE SPOT NEWS
"Granite City Tornadoes"
Nancy Pasternak, Reporter
Lynn Hensel, Photographer/Editor
KTVI
St. Louis

INDIVIDUAL NEWSCAST-PRODUCER
Marlene Cross
"KMBC 9 News at 10"
KMBC
Kansas City

WEATHERCASTER
Chris Higgins
KTVI
St. Louis

SPORTSCASTER
Tim McKernan
KMOV
St. Louis

ANCHORPERSON
Dan Gray
KSDK
St. Louis

TELEVISION NEWS-MARKETS 100+
No Nominees

TELEVISION NEWS MARKETS 50-99
"KY3 News"
Jeff Benscoter, News Director
KY3 News Staff
KYTV
Springfield, MO

TELEVISION NEWS MARKETS 1-35
"KMBC 9 News"
Michael Sipes, News Director
KMBC
Kansas City
Media/Politics:
Polls reported poorly
By Terry Jones

Public opinion polling can help illuminate how political campaigns are faring and why voters are shifting but, as practiced by the St. Louis media, it continues to contain errors of omission and commission.

This electoral season the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, KMOV (Channel 4) and KSDK (Channel 5) have each conducted three polls as of Oct. 20. The Post and Channel 4 combination poll continues to use Zogby International while Channel 5, once again, is going with Survey USA. Most of the focus has been on Missouri's U.S. Senate race between Democrat Jean Carnahan and Republican Jim Talent.

As perhaps befits rip-and-read electronic journalism, the Channel 5 poll reports tell you the least about how the results have been obtained. Using the Channel 5 website (www.ksdk.com) as my source, I found that the station gives the candidates' performance (Carnahan 51 percent/Talent 43 percent on Sept. 26, Carnahan 48 percent/Talent 48 percent on Oct. 9, Carnahan 50 percent/Talent 47 percent on Oct. 18), a few demographic (e.g. results by gender) and geographic (e.g. St. Louis and Kansas City) breakdowns, and the margin of error (+/- 3.8 percent for the first poll and +/- 4.2 percent for the next pair).

What is left out? First is the universe being sampled. Is it all adults 18 or over, all registered voters, or all registered voters likely to participate in the Nov. 5 election? Since only about one-half of the state's registered voters are likely to turn out for the Senate contest, one hopes that the poll screened for likely voters.

Second is the methodology employed to gather the data. If you assume Survey USA used live interviewers to make the telephone calls-a natural inference since that is the accepted approach for the major survey research operations-you would be wrong. Instead, Survey USA is an automated enterprise. When respondents answer, they hear a recorded phone message, usually a taped professional announcer. The message sails into the questionnaire, asking the listener to respond by pressing the appropriate number on his or her touch-tone phone.

Although this technology offers considerable cost savings, it is presently regarded as highly suspect by the professional polling community. Among concerns raised are coverage (e.g. rotary phones) and response quality (e.g. errors by pressing the wrong number are more likely than saying the wrong response). Survey USA is vigorously marketing its approach (for the pitch, see www.surveyusa.com), but until there is more experience with this methodology-including independent third party assessments by reputable survey research specialists-it is shakier than the standard approach.

Two other omissions are common for both the Channel 5 and Post surveys. Although each is careful to mention the sampling error for the overall sample, each fails to note that the error becomes larger when discussing percentages based on a portion of the sample. The Oct. 18 Channel 5 report on the 10 o'clock news, for example, had an underlying banner specifying that the margin of error was +/- 4.2 percent. That was fine for the first chart, showing the overall results, but incorrect for the next two tables which displayed the results separately for men and women. The +/- 4.2 percent banner remained even though, as common sense would indicate, the sample size for either gender was about half the total. That means that the margin of error for, say, men was +/- 6.3 percent, half again as high. Post articles also discuss difference by gender, age and other factors, never mentioning that the boilerplate margin of error given at the end of the article is considerably higher for subsample estimates.

Neither outlet's poll attempts to measure the firmness of each candidate's backing, what political insiders call "hard" and "soft" support. The polls ask only one question about the trial heat, failing to follow up with just one more query: "How certain are you that you will vote that way: very certain, somewhat certain or not very certain?" or "How likely are you to change your mind between now and election day: very likely, somewhat likely or not very likely?" If the outlets paid for just one more question, they could differentiate between each candidate's firm vote share and the proportion still up for grabs. That practice, common among internal campaign polls, both measures more precisely where each candidate stands and helps identify which types of voters remain in play.

Finally, moving to overt acts, the Oct. 9-11 Zogby item on Constitution Amendment No. 1 apparently committed a major survey research violation-asking two questions at once-and, in the process, misstated the ballot proposal. The Oct. 13 story states "the 'home rule' amendment would allow the City of St. Louis the opportunity to reorganize its government by transforming seven elective city-wide posts-such as recorder of deeds and sheriff-into positions filled by mayoral appointments." If that were the wording in the actual survey question (implied but not explicitly given in the story so, indeed, another omission shortcoming), it asks voters both whether they favor expanding the City electorate's home rule authority (the actual issue on the ballot) and whether, if they had the option, they would restructure the seven county offices (not on the Nov. 5 ballot). If respondents oppose one of the two questions (say eliminating elective county offices) and favor the other (expanding home rule), they misrepresent part of their position if they give a substantive answer.

Radio History:
In 1925, radio was seen and heard
By Frank Absher
Radio, in its early days, put on a show for the eyes as well as the ears. This is not a story about the famed "theater of the mind" created by the writers and sound effects departments. Rather, it's a story about what people saw when they visited a radio station.

When announcements were made of the advent of St. Louis' "Super Station," the original plans called for lavish studios to be built on the top floor of the Ambassador Theater building, but when the studios for KMOX opened in late 1925, they were located on the second floor of the Mayfair Hotel downtown. The nation's economy was strong and some of St. Louis' most successful companies were investors in KMOX. The transmitter, complete with two towers, had been installed in what was then the far western part of the suburbs, in Kirkwood on Geyer Road. Chief engineer H. R. McLean oversaw the construction. An eleven-room building between the two towers housed the equipment.

The KMOX reception area at the Mayfair was decorated with tapestries and muted lighting to signal to all visitors that they were entering an area unlike anything they had seen before. The walls of the broadcast studios were lined with heavy draperies to deaden the sound and eliminate any possibility of echo. Microphones in those days lacked sophistication, so the studios were designed to improve the broadcast sound in every way possible.

Greater St. Louis, the Chamber of Commerce Magazine that was the forerunner of today's RCGA Commerce, noted in its December 1925 issue: "The walls of the studios are draped with beige and burnt umber damask bordered with delft blue, while the heavy carpet over the padded floor is delft with a small figure carrying the tones of the drapery. The furniture is of pleasing design and is luxurious." Drapery material was also hung from the ceilings of the two on-air studios, gathered in the middle to produce a tent-like effect.

The station's owners had spent $18,000 on a Kilgen organ. Mrs. Arthur Utt was the first KMOX organist, but she was soon replaced by Ruth Hulse Nelson, whose job was to perform daily organ recitals over the airwaves. Her popularity later grew when her show was picked up by the CBS radio network. There was also a grand piano in the KMOX studios, which was played by "Torchy" during the noon hour each day. Her performances of requests mailed in by listeners made hers one of the market's most talked-about radio shows.

And the performers also knew the value of visual impact. Many dressed in formal clothing for their programs even though few people saw them. Some felt the "classy" appearance improved their performance. Others knew they'd occasionally be seen by some members of the public who were touring the station or by potential clients, and a few had studio audiences for their programs.

Studios were designed with public viewing in mind. Soundproof windows lined the walls of the individual radio studios in the 1920s so people could watch performers on the air. There was also a large lounge area at KMOX where special guests could occasionally mingle with radio performers.

Six years after its inaugural broadcast, the station's studios were moved from the Mayfair Hotel to the Mart Building. Despite the fact that the nation was in the midst of an economic depression, the Mart Building studios were even more lavish than those at the Mayfair.

AM/FM:
Noory increases work load
By Lynn Venhaus
So much for cutting back. George Noory's not only going national as the full-time host of "Coast to Coast AM" on Jan. 1, but has also returned to his weeknight hosting duties on KTRS (550 AM) until the end of the year.

After five years, Noory, "The Nighthawk," broadcast what he thought was his final 9 p.m. to midnight shift at The Big 550 on Sept. 26, but returned recently at the request of station general manager Tim Dorsey.

"Tim asked me to please do the show until the end of the year, and with many hockey night preemptions, I said OK. Some nights, I'll be on for seven hours with both shows, but what the heck," Noory said.

On Oct. 23, Art Bell announced his retirement, effective Dec. 31, and named Noory his replacement on the syndicated "Coast to Coast." Already a guest host for Bell since April 28, 2001, Noory currently takes the reins of the midnight to 5 a.m. shift on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. Bell broadcasts his overnight shifts from his Nevada home Sundays, Mondays and Tuesdays, with guest host Barbara Simpson filling in Saturdays. Bell had cut back because of ongoing back injury problems. Bell plans to occasionally fill in for Noory once the torch is passed.

"I'm proud to be selected and more importantly, proud to join the ranks of St. Louis broadcasters who have made it nationally," Noory said.

Premiere Radio Network's "Coast to Coast" program is carried on 525 stations, including KTRS, and is the most listened to overnight program in the country.

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Some other deserving local broadcasters have received national recognition. The cheery WIL (92.3 FM) morning team of David Craig, Elaine Everett and newswoman Monica Adams were nominated for Major Market Morning Show of the Year by the Country Music Association. The CMA Awards will be given out during a CBS telecast on Nov. 6, and the trio plan to be there, although they already know they didn't win.

"The CMA has announced that the morning show from KYGO in Denver is the winner in the major market category this year," said David Craig, who has been a finalist four times now ('98, '99, '01 and '02) with various morning show partners.

"Being named a finalist makes us all very happy. Winning the award would make me extremely happy," Craig said. "Winning an Arbitron is certainly more important than winning an award, but getting a nice 'thumbs up' from your peers in the industry is gratifying."

The down-to-earth, comfy crew is one of St. Louis' ratings winners in the a.m., with Everett on board the past three years. Previously a much-traveled veteran, Craig joined WIL in 1988 and is a native of Birmingham, Ala.

---
We have to wait a few more weeks to find out who is "The Chosen One"-the play-by-play announcer with the unenviable task of officially replacing the late legend Jack Buck in KMOX's Cardinals' broadcast booth and at functions throughout town. A decision on the most hotly contested radio job in St. Louis is near, according to operations manager Tom Langmyer.

"We would like to have things wrapped up by the end of November," he said.

The new guy will be paired with booth mainstay Mike Shannon, the former player turned color man for more than three decades. More than 100 people reportedly expressed interest in the position.

It all boils down to what KMOX wants. Does management want a national name, one they perceive to bring immediate credibility and some hefty credentials to the post? Or do they want to go with someone who's already familiar to listeners-who's filled in on occasion or has made a name locally?

It also depends on who's available. As some previously thought heirs, apparent are not interested. Joe Buck doesn't want it, preferring his television duties at Fox that allow him more family time. Those who get misty-eyed about the possibility of Bob Costas returning aren't living in reality, for the beloved local resident and network star has NBC and HBO commitments. Chip Caray, grandson of Harry and a native St. Louisan, is content to broadcast for the Chicago Cubs. ESPN's Jon Miller, who also broadcasts for the San Francisco Giants, is staying put.

The incumbent Joel Meyers, who was only hired part-time, wound up being the go-to guy after Buck's death. His family's in California, and he also broadcasts football, basketball and golf. He might be in the running, but most people believe he won't be back, despite helping out KMOX in a very tough jam. He probably has as many detractors as he has supporters, but no one can deny he tried.

Candidates with local ties include KMOX alum John Rooney, who currently does Chicago White Sox games; Steve Stewart, a former St. Louisan who filled in this season when Meyers was on the road with other broadcast commitments; St. Louis sportscaster Bob Ramsey, who also filled in, but not as often; and Mike Carver, the River City Rascals announcer.

Other names mentioned include Cincinnati broadcaster Dan Hoard, Tampa Bay Devil Rays' play-by-play man Charlie Slowes, and minor-league announcer Rich Burk. Although local guys Bob Carpenter, Randy Karraker, Steve Schlanger, and Dan McLaughlin have done Cardinals' work before, the local experts believe they are not in the running. (Nor have they given any public indication they want the job, either.)

Whoever gets the job is going to have to endear himself to the vast Cardinal Nation rather quickly. He must live here, show up at numerous appearances, and be on-air at KMOX in non-sports capacities, too. The glare of the spotlight and the scrutiny of the fans will be intense. The person's plate is going to be very full, but he or she will have one of the premiere broadcasting jobs in all of sports.

Of all the qualities he or she possess, I would think chemistry with Shannon is paramount, as is a conversational style. This off-season is certainly going to be an interesting one.

---
Even though he was axed from KLOU's morning show in mid-September, Brian McKenna remains part of the station's Rams' coverage team. He is also hosting and producing several pre-game shows on KDNL (Channel 30) before ABC's "Monday Night Football" featuring the Rams vs. the Chicago Bears Nov. 18 and against San Francisco Dec. 30 as well as an ESPN game Dec. 15 against Arizona.

McKenna may be showing up on local radio soon but could not say anything before this column's deadline.

The KLOU dismissal was termed a budgetary move by management. "The situation with Brian was purely one of economics-that's why Brian is still on the Rams' broadcast," said Mike Wheeler, chief program director for Clear Channel. "We're hoping to see Brian fully back in the fold at some future date. No other changes are planned."

Rumblings that a higher-up thought McKenna's chit-chat was too blue for the morning couldn't be substantiated and a perceived rift with morning producer Karen Kelly was the subject of much talk but not confirmed. He chose not to comment about Kelly but did relay the official reasons he was given. However, he did say Kelly would often admonish him to "keep it clean."

McKenna, an athletic bachelor who appears to be St. Louis' answer to Jimmy Kimmel of "The Man Show," admits he was often frank. "I'm a truthful person on the air," he said. "Everyone had their role to play. Karen was the nice girl, Smash was the radio veteran and I was the unpredictable goofball."

McKenna said that management told him it wasn't because of his performance, but rather a financial reason.

"I was told that they were eliminating the position. That's the story. The ratings and revenue were up, and the sales staff was selling me a lot. I was stunned, but I will be OK because I have a great family, a beautiful girlfriend, wonderful friends and my faith," he said. "By the way, Smash went to management and said he would take a pay cut. What a guy! Everyone at KLOU was great to work with and for. That includes my bosses. I wish them all the best."

Smash said McKenna's loss was a "tough one." For now, the station is going with Smash and Karen as a duo in the morning.

"I tell you, that guy was one of the best partners I've ever had. It's rare that you have the chemistry that happens from day one, and we had chemistry from the git-go," Smash said. "He was one of the hardest working guys, too. He was non-stop. He was on top of the game and very community-oriented. He always had an opinion one way or the other."

Concerned that some charity events he'd lent his name to wouldn't get promoted properly, McKenna made public pleas in the media. He described the St. Louis radio response as "unbelievable." He said many disc jockeys from various stations contacted him about helping. "That made me feel better," he said.

McKenna began his radio career in 1991 and has mainly worked in sports, at the old KASP, KTRS, KFNS and WGNU. He'd been at KLOU since October 2000.

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Laurie Mac is the new producer of K-HITS (96.3 FM) morning show, "J.C. and U-Man." She previously worked for Clear Channel, doing the news for KLOU, KSLZ (107.7 FM) and The Bull (KSD 93.7 FM). Before that, she was part of the morning show team at KRRY (101 FM) in Quincy, Ill., and had worked as an actress until the radio bug bit in April 1998. She's a graduate of Webster University, with a degree in acting, which is how she wound up in St. Louis after growing up near Atlanta.

"I am thrilled with my new role as producer, and with all the people here at K-HITS-on-air staff, management, sales, everyone!" Mac said. "I really believe J.C. (Corcoran) is the most talented guy in St. Louis radio, so, of course, it's wonderful to be a part of his show. And John Ulett and Jennifer Sparks are class acts as well-all three of them are extremely talented, and have also been very welcoming and supportive. I really couldn't ask for a better situation."

Corcoran described her as "sharp, very creative, and great to have around. Plus, with her background, she can fill in on news for John or traffic for Jennifer Sparks. What a catch!" he said.

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KMOX has beefed up its news department with the addition of Brett Blume, Kelly Hatmaker, Megan Lynch and Rachel Komeshak. Blume is a previous KWMU reporter. Hatmaker is the new assignment editor and came from WBNS-TV in Columbus, Ohio. Lynch was made full-time after working at KMOX part-time, and Komeshak, a news editor, is now reporting on the weekends.

Late Edition:
Once again: Ten stories that puncture the deadly silence of U.S. mass media
By Charles L. Klotzer
Each one of the following stories should instill in our readers as much fear as any threat by terrorists. They detail how what we know depends on a few centers of power; how education may be sold to the highest bidder; how the U.S. is as involved in Latin America as during the most repressive period a few decades ago; how small farms are being destroyed; how thousands of our citizens are forced to live on streets; how the nefarious influence of oil pitted Americans against European arms; and much more.

The only aspect that is more depressing than these revelations is the deadly silence of our mass media. The media research group Project Censored at Sonoma State University, California assembled these most under-covered "censored" news stories of 2001-2002. The research group is composed of nearly 200 faculty, students, and community experts who reviewed more than 900 nominations for the 2003 awards. The top 25 stories were ranked by the Project's national judges, including Michael Parenti, Robert McChesney, Robin Andersen, Norman Solomon, Carl Jensen, Lenore Foerstel, me and some 20 other national journalists, scholars and writers. "We define censorship as any interference with the free flow of information in American Society," states Peter Phillips Director of the Project, "Corporate media in the United States is interested primarily in entertainment news to feed their bottom-line priorities. Very important news stories that should reach the American public often fall on the cutting room floor to be replaced by sex-scandals and celebrity updates."

1. FCC Moves to Privatize Airwaves For almost 70 years, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has administered and regulated the broadcast spectrum as an electronic "commons" ostensibly on behalf of Americans. The FCC issues licenses to broadcasters that allow them, for a fee, to use, but not own, one or more specific radio or T.V. frequencies. Thus, the public has retained the ability to regulate, as well as influence access to, broadcast communications. However, several years ago, the conservative Progress and Freedom Foundation, in their report, The Telecom Revolution: An American Opportunity, recommended a complete privatization of the radio frequencies, whereby broadcasters with existing licenses would eventually gain complete ownership of their respective frequencies and could then develop them in markets of their choosing, and sell and trade them to other companies. The few non-allocated bands of the radio frequency spectrum would be sold off as electronic real estate to the highest bidders. With nothing to regulate, the FCC would eventually be abolished. The reasoning behind this radical plan was that government control of the airwaves has led to inefficiencies, but in private hands, the frequencies would be exchanged in the marketplace and the forces of free-market supply and demand would foster the most creative (and, of course, most profitable) use of these electronic "properties."

The proposal was considered too ambitious (i.e. capitalistic) for the populist Clinton Democratic administration. However, in February 2001, months after a more "pro-business" president took office, 37 leading U.S. economists requested, in a joint letter, that the FCC allow broadcasters to lease in secondary markets the frequencies they currently use under their FCC license. Their thinking: With this groundwork laid, full privatization would follow and then other nations would be encouraged to sell off their frequencies to the global media enterprises.

FCC Chairman Michael K. Powell, son of Secretary of State Colin Powell, recently compared the FCC to the Grinch-a regulatory spoilsport that could impede what he termed a historic transformation akin to the opening of the West. "The oppressor here is regulation," he declared.

The FCC's positions are shaping up to be virtually identical to the ones being drawn up in corporate boardrooms. In April 2001, Powell dismissed the FCC's historic mandate to evaluate corporate actions based on the public interest. That standard, he said, "is about as empty a vessel as you can accord a regulatory agency." In other comments, Powell has signaled what kind of philosophy he prefers to the outdated concept of public interest: During his first visit to Capitol Hill as chairman, Powell referred to corporations simply as "our clients." These concerns are being championed by the Democratic Media Legal Project, which argues that even the existing commercial media system, aided by the Telecommunications Act of 1996, is unconstitutional because it limits diversity of viewpoints, omits or misrepresents most social, political and cultural segments and is unaccountable to the public.

The course of wireless broadcasting is approaching an unprecedented and critical crossroad. The path taken by the United States, and by the other industrialized nations that may follow our lead, will profoundly influence the ability of the citizenry of each country to develop or continue to exercise and enjoy the personal freedoms and rights we have come to expect, including probably the two most fundamental and powerful rights enjoyed by human beings-self governance and privacy.
-Laura Huntington
Sources: Media File, (Autumn 2001 volume 20, #4) by Jeremy Rifkin; (May / June 2001) by Dorothy Kidd / London Guardian, (April 28, 2001) / Mother Jones, (Sept./Oct. 2001) by Brendan L. Koerner

2. GATS and the Privatization of Everything
A global trade agreement being negotiated this year will seek to privatize nearly every government-provided public service and allow transnational corporations to run them for profit.

The General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) is a proposed free-trade agreement that will attempt to liberalize/dismantle barriers that protect government-provided social services. These are social services that the government provides in the name of public welfare. The GATS was established in 1994, at the conclusion of the "Uruguay Round" of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). In 1995, the GATS was adopted for inclusion into the newly created WTO. Corporations plan to use the GATS to profit from the privatization of educational systems, health care systems, child care, energy and municipal water services, postal services, libraries, museums and public transportation.

If the GATS achieves its December 2002 goal, it will lock in the privatized, for-profit model for the global economy. GATS/WTO will also make it illegal for a government with privatized services to ever return to a publicly owned, non-profit model. Any government that disobeys these WTO rulings will face sanctions. What used to be areas of common heritage, such as seed banks, air and water supplies, health care and education will be commodified, privatized and sold to the highest bidder on the open market. People who cannot afford these privatized services will be left out.

The services sector is the fastest growing sector in international trade. If GATS is implemented, corporations will reap windfall profits. Health care, education and water services are the most potentially lucrative. Global expenditures on water services exceed $1 trillion each year; on education, they exceed $2 trillion; and on health care, they're over $3.5 trillion. Already, the WTO has hired a private company called the Global Division for Transnational Education. This company plans to document policies that "discriminate against foreign education providers." The results of this "study" will be used to pressure countries with public education systems to relinquish them to the global marketplace.

The future of accountability for public services and sovereign law is at stake with the GATS decision. Foreign corporations will have the right to establish themselves in any GATS/WTO country and compete against public institutions, such as schools and hospitals, for public funds.

The current round of GATS negotiations has identified three main priorities for future free-trade principles. First, GATS officials are pushing for "National Treatment" to be applied across the board. "National Treatment" forbids governments from favoring their domestic companies over foreign-based companies. This idea already applied to certain services, but GATS will enforce it to all services. This will create an expansion of corporate access to domestic markets and further diminish democratic accountability. What is more shocking is that Western countries are planning to make it illegal for "developing" countries to reverse this exclusive access to their markets.

Second, GATS officials are seeking to place restrictions on domestic regulations. This will limit a government's ability to enact environmental, health and other regulations and laws that hinder "free-trade." The government would be required to demonstrate that its laws and regulations were necessary to achieve a WTO-sanctioned objective, and that no other "commercially-restrictive alternative" was available.

Third, negotiations are attempting to develop the expansion of "Commercial Presence" rules. These rules allow an "investor" in one GATS country to establish a presence in any other GATS country. The "investor" will not only be allowed to compete against private suppliers for business, but will also be allowed to compete against publicly funded institutions and services for public funds.

This potential expansion of GATS/WTO into the day-to-day business of governments will make it nearly impossible for citizens to exercise democratic control over the future of all public services.
-Chris Salvano
Source: The Ecologist, (Feb. 2001), by Maude Barlow.

3. U.S. policies support mass murder in Colombia
Over the past two years, Colombia has been Washington's third largest recipient of foreign aid, behind Israel and Egypt. In July 2000, Congress approved a $1.3 billion war package for Colombia to support President Pastrana's "Plan Colombia." Plan Colombia is a $7.5 billion counter-narcotics initiative. In addition to the financial support, the U.S. also trains the Colombian military.

Colombia faces 30,000 murders each year. It is reported that around 19,000 of these murders have been linked to illegal, right-wing paramilitary groups. Many leaders of the paramilitary groups were once officers in the Colombian military, and were trained at the School of the Americas. According to the 120-page Human Rights Watch Report, "The 'Sixth Division': Military-Paramilitary Ties and U.S. Policy in Colombia," Colombian armed forces and police continue to work closely with right-wing paramilitary groups. The government of President Pastrana and the U.S. administration have played down evidence of this cooperation. Jim Lobe, in the May/June 2001 issue of Steelabor, contends that the Human Rights Watch takes prompt, effective action to establish control over the security forces, break their persistent ties to paramilitary groups, and ensure respect for human rights. Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair contend in the July 1-15, 2001 issue of Counterpunch that the war in Colombia isn't about drugs. It's about the annihilation of popular uprisings by Indian peasants fending off the ravages of oil companies, cattle barons and mining firms. It is a counter-insurgency war, designed to clear the way for American corporations to set up shop in Colombia, with cocaine as the scare tactic. Cockburn and St. Clair examined two Defense Department commissioned reports, the RAND Report and a paper written by Gabriel Marcella, "Plan Colombia: the Strategic and Operational Imperatives." Both reports confirm that the U.S. needs to step up its military involvement in Colombia. In addition, the reports also state that there were several admissions about the paramilitaries and "their links to the drug trade, regarding human-rights abuses by the U.S.-trained Colombian military and about irrationality of the crop fumigation.

Throughout the past two years, Colombia has witnessed human rights atrocities committed by the U.S.-trained Colombian military and linked paramilitaries. Trade unionists and human rights activists face murder, torture and harassment. It is reported that Latin America remains the most dangerous place in the world for trade unionists. Since 1986, 3800 trade unionists have been murdered in Colombia. It is also reported that no prosecutions followed these murders. "In 2000 alone, more trade unionists were killed in Colombia than in the whole world in 1999."

Another problem resulting from this drug war is the health consequences of aerial fumigation. Since January 2001, Colombian aircraft has sprayed herbicides containing glyphosate over Colombian fields in order to kill opium poppy and cocoa plants. Glyphosate kills the food crops that Colombians depend on for survival, as well as harm their health. The fumigation has killed fish and livestock and has contaminated water supplies. Aerial fumigation is continuing in Colombia.

The U.S. provides slightly over $1 billion dollars of military aid for "Plan Colombia," yet it is more of a war-plan against citizens maintaining their way of life and those who are fighting for social justice. U.S. aid is not improving the conditions in Colombia, only supporting the government and right-wing paramilitary groups. According to Jesse Isbell, an American member of the international steelworker delegation that visited Colombia, "the U.S. says one thing to the American public when in reality it is something totally different. Our government portrays it as a drug war against cocaine but all we are doing is keeping an ineffective government in power."
-Lauren Renison, Adam Cimino, Erik Wagle
Sources: Counterpunch, (July 1-15, 2001), by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair / Asheville Global Report, (Oct. 4, 2001), by Jim Lobe / Steelabor, (May/June 2001), by Staff / Rachel's Environment & Health News, (Dec. 7, 2000), by Rachel Massey.

4. French book links Bush to Bin Laden family
A French book, Bin Laden, la verite interdite (Bin Laden, the forbidden truth), claims that the Bush Administration's oil interest may have halted investigations into terrorism and stimulated planning for the war against Afghanistan.

The authors, Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie, are French intelligence analysts. Dasquie, an investigative journalist, publishes Intelligence Online, a respected newsletter on economics and diplomacy. Brisard has worked for French secret services. In 1997, he wrote a report on the Al-Qaeda network. In 1996, highly placed intelligence sources in Washington told the London paper, The Guardian: "There were always constraints on investigating the Saudis." The authors allege that under the influence of U.S. oil companies, George W. Bush and his administration initially halted investigations into terrorism, while bargaining with the Taliban to deliver Osama bin Laden in exchange for economic aid and political recognition. The book goes on to reveal that former F.B.I. deputy director John O'Neill resigned in July 2001 in protest over the stopping of the investigations. A quote from O'Neill says, "The main obstacles to investigate Islamic terrorism were U.S. oil corporate interests and the role played by Saudi Arabia in it." The restrictions were said to have worsened after the Bush administration took over. Intelligence agencies were told to "back off" from investigations involving other members of the Bin Laden family, the Saudi royals, and possible Saudi links to the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Pakistan.

An FBI file coded 199, which indicates a case involving national security, records that Abdullah bin Laden, who lived in Washington, originally had a file opened on him "because of his relationship with the Saudi-funded World Assembly of Muslim Youth-a suspected terrorist organization."

The BBC reiterated a well-known claim made by one of George W. Bush's former business partners that Bush made his first million dollars 20 years ago from a company financed by Osama bin Laden's older brother, Salem. This reveals that both president Bushes had lucrative stakes along with the bin Ladens in Carlyle Corporation, a private company that has grown to be one of America's largest defense contractors.

Brisard and Dasquie contend that the government's main objective in Afghanistan was to consolidate the Taliban's regime to gain access to the oil and gas reserves in central Asia. Brisard and Dasquie report that the Bush government began negotiations with the Taliban directly after coming into power and representatives met several times in Washington, Islamabad, and Berlin.

There were also claims that the last meeting between the United States and Taliban representatives took place only five weeks before the attacks in New York and Washington.

Back in February 1998, Congress was already discussing ways to deal with Afghanistan and make way for an oil pipeline at the hearing before the Sub-Committee on Asia and the Pacific of the Committee on International Relations of the House of Representatives. Indiareacts.com has reported that in June 2001, that the U.S. government had told India there would be an invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001. By July 2001, the BBC was aware of the planned invasion and it was mentioned in an article by George Arney. Jane's Defense News reported word of the planned invasion even earlier. Long before the September 11 attacks, the United States had already decided to invade Afghanistan in the interest of oil.
-Donald Yoon -Nelson, Faculty evaluators
Sources: Pulse, (Jan. 16, 2001), by Amanda Luker / Times of India, (Nov. 8, 2001), by Rashmee Z. Ahmed / The Guardian (London), (Nov. 7, 2001), by Greg Palast and David Pallister.

5. U.S. intentionally destroyed Iraq's water system
The United States bombed Iraq's water system and then used sanctions to prevent reception of necessary supplies for water purification, resulting in the deaths of thousands of innocent Iraqi children. Documents have been obtained from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), proving that the Pentagon was monitoring the degradation of Iraq's water supply, in direct violation of the Geneva Convention.

After the Gulf War, the United Nations applied sanctions against Iraq, which denied the importation of specialized equipment and chemicals, such as chlorine, for purification of water. There are six documents that have been partially declassified and can be found on the Pentagon's website at www.gulflink.osd.mil. These documents include information that prove that the United States was fully aware of the costs to civilians, especially children, by upholding the sanctions against Iraq's water supply.

The primary document, dated January 22, 1991, is titled, "Iraq Water Treatment Vulnerabilities." This document predicts what will take place when Iraq can no longer import the vital commodities to cleanse its water supply. It also states the possible epidemics and disease outbreaks that may occur because of pollutants and bacteria that exist in unpurified water. The document acknowledges the fact that without purified drinking water, the manufacturing of food and medicine will also be affected. The possibilities of Iraqis obtaining clean water despite sanctions along with a timetable describing the degradation of Iraq's water supply were also addressed. The remaining five documents from the DIA also confirm the Pentagon's monitoring of the situation in Iraq. In more than one document, discussion of the likely outbreaks of diseases and how they affect "particularly children" is discussed in great detail. The final document, "Iraq: Assessment of Current Health Threats and Capabilities," is dated, November 15, 1991, and discusses a counter propaganda strategy blaming Saddam Hussein for lack of safe water in Iraq.

The United States' insistence on using this type of sanction against Iraq is in direct violation of the Geneva Convention. The United States for nearly a decade has "destroyed, removed and rendered useless" Iraq's "drinking water installations and supplies."

Although two Democratic Representatives, Cynthia McKinney from Georgia and Tony Hall from Ohio, have spoken out about the degradation of Iraq's water supply and its civilian targets, no acknowledgment of violations has been made. The U.S. policy of destroying the water treatment system of Iraq has been pursued for more than a decade. "The United Nations estimates that more than 500,000 Iraqi children have died as a result of sanctions, and that 5,000 Iraqi children continue to die every month for this reason."
-Adria Cooper
Source: The Progressive, (September 2001), by Thomas J. Nagy.

6. U.S. Government pushing nuclear revival
An element in the U.S. government is blazing a trail for a nuclear weapon revival. New weapons are being designed in unsafe, dangerous facilities. The group proposes a "mini-nuke" capable of burrowing into underground weapon supplies and unleashing a small, but contained, nuclear explosion. The new bombs would cost billions and would require the construction of pit production facilities at the Los Alamos testing center. The movement may signal the end of arms control around the world.

The group proposing this nuclear revival is comprised of nuclear scientists, Energy Department officials, right-wing analysts, former government officials, and a congressionally appointed oversight panel. The group wants to ensure that nuclear development is continued by the U.S. for the next half-century to deter attacks by other countries that have or are trying to get nuclear weapons.

Achieving this goal would take far more than just refurbishing the existing weapons and developing new ones. A decade-long effort, that would cost in the $8-billion range, would be needed just to bring old production sites up to standard. Billions more would be needed to produce and maintain a new generation of nuclear weapons. This plan has not been presented to the public for their consideration or approval.

These "mini-nukes" would be highly accurate bunker busters that would have the ability to penetrate underground stockpiles of weapons.

Princeton theoretical physicist Robert W. Nelson has studied the question for the Federation of American Scientists. Nelson concluded "no earth-burrowing missile can penetrate deep enough into the earth to contain an explosion with a nuclear yield even as small as 1 percent of the 15-kiloton Hiroshima weapon. The explosion simply blows out a massive crater of radioactive dirt, which rains down on the local region with an especially intense and deadly fallout." These figures are taken at optimum conditions, where weapons are placed in a specially sealed shaft in a well understood geological environment. The "mini-nukes" will be expected to penetrate into deeply hardened targets in unyielding conditions. Nelson also concluded that a 10-foot missile could only be expected to penetrate 100 feet into concrete and steel, a depth far too shallow to contain even a very small explosion.

The "Panel to Assess the Reliability, Safety, and Security of the United States Nuclear Stockpile" has recommended spending $4 billion to $6 billion over the next decade to restore the needed production capabilities of plutonium pit plants in the United States. The Energy Department is currently spending $147 million on pit production at Los Alamos this year and is requesting $218 million for 2002. A renovated Los Alamos will be capable of producing up to 20 pits a year by 2007. Last year the Energy Department received $2 million to design a new pit plant capable of producing 450 cores of plutonium a year. The Energy Department has put little money into maintenance and much more into the expensive stockpile stewardship program.
-Sasha Von Meier, Faculty Evaluator
-Erik Wagle, Student Research
Sources: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, (July/Aug.. 2001), by Stephen I. Schwartz / Corporate News Coverage: Los Angeles Times, (Mar. 27, 2002) / USA Today, (Mar. 18, 2002).

7. Corporations promote HMO model for school districts
For decades, public schools have purchased any number of products and services from private companies - from textbooks to bus companies. But in the last decade, privatization took on a whole new meaning, as for-profit companies hoped to get involved in education at a higher and qualitatively different level. In the process they plan to compete with publicly run schools and change the very definition of public education. The growth of for-profit companies running public schools is an essential but not exclusive component in the education privatization movement. Another aspect is the funneling of public dollars directly to private schools, including religious schools, through taxpayer-supporter vouchers.

School vouchers proposed by Bush in his Title I plan to increase federal education spending rewards schools that do well in annual standardized testing. His plan calls for yearly standardized testing in reading and in math of every student in the country in grades three through eight. "School districts and states that do well will be rewarded," Bush states in his education agenda, No Child Left Behind. "Failure will be sanctioned."

Determinations of success and failure will be based on one number: aggregate standardized test scores. The effect of Bush's testing plan will be nothing less than a total reconstruction of curriculum and instruction across the country. Schools serving poor and minority students will be under pressure to boost scores fast. The truth is, curriculum today is far tougher than in 1980, with 50percent of students taking core curriculum at the ACT college level. For whites it's 53 percent, blacks 46 percent, Hispanics 41percent, Asians 56 percent and Native American 46 percent. In Wisconsin, where vouchers were supposed to rescue Milwaukee's poor, ghetto, public-school children, 40 percent of the kids being financed have never been in a public school.

Testing is not the only harmful provision of the Bush education plan. Immigrant students take another hit when it comes to bilingual education, for which Bush wants to freeze funding in 2002, despite surging enrollment of Latinos. Angelo Amador, a national policy analyst for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, says that with the elimination of bilingual education funding, states with high-stakes testing have pushed low-performing Latino students into special education classes or out of school altogether in an effort to keep their test scores high.

Why does Bush feel the need to use testing to determine financial support for our schools? Simple. Tests are simply more cost effective than fully funding schools. Standardization's real goal is to build support for the preferred privatized, union-free alternatives: private schools, charter schools managed by for-profit management companies, and taxpayer-funding school vouchers designed to get more kids out of the public school system. Since only public school students take the standardized tests, kids whose parents can afford private schools don't have to agonize year after year about potential failure. In turn, test supporters, including many state legislators, add to the followers for standardization and the privatization of our public school system, because they and their children aren't involved.

The Wall Street term for private companies that wish to manage public schools is Educational Management Organizations (EMOs). Proponents of privatization say that if you like HMOs, as many on Wall Street do, then you'll love EMOs. The industry's backers are fond of comparing public education to the healthcare industry of 25 years ago, before the nationwide ascendancy of HMOs. "Education today, like healthcare 30 years ago, is a vast, highly localized industry ripe for change." Mary Tanner, managing director of Lehman Brothers, told a 1996 Education Industry Conference in New York City. "The emergence of HMOs and hospital management companies created enormous opportunities for investors. We believe the same pattern will occur in education."

For-profit companies, such as Edison Schools, Inc., based in New York City are already raising complaints. Privatization opponents say that public education should serve and be run by the public, especially teachers and parents, while shareholders are running for for-profit companies. Fundamentally the decisions to be made are about money, not education reform.

While President Bush's plan to standardize the education system seems to inspire schools to reach higher goals in exchange for funding, the move to private ownership and corporatization only inspires the almighty dollar.
-Perry Marker, Tom Ormond, and Elaine Sundberg
Sources: Multi-National Monitor, (Jan./Feb. 2002), by Barbara Miner / The Progressive Populist, (Nov. 2000), by Frosty Troy / North Coast West, (Winter 2000), by Dennis Fox / In These Times, (June 2001), by Linda Lutton.

8. NAFTA destroys farming communities
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are responsible for the impoverishment of and exodus of small farms in Mexico and Haiti. NAFTA is also causing the economic destruction of rural farming communities in the United States and Canada. The resulting loss of rural employment has created a landslide of socio-economic and environmental consequences that will only worsen with the continued dismantling and deregulation of trade barriers.

When NAFTA came before Congress in 1993, U.S. farmers were told that the agreement would open the borders of Mexico and Canada, enabling them to sell their superior products and achieve previously unknown prosperity. Corporations operating throughout the Americas, such as Tyson and Cargill, have since used the farming surplus to drive down costs, pitting farmers against each other and prohibiting countries from taking protective actions.

Since the enactment of NAFTA, 80percent of the foodstuffs coming into the U.S. are products that displace crops raised here at home. NAFTA has allowed multinational middlemen to increase production in Mexico, where they can profit from much cheaper labor, as well as freely use pesticides banned in the U.S.

In both Mexico and Haiti, NAFTA policies have caused an exodus from rural areas forcing people to live on city streets, accepting low-paid labor and sweatshop conditions. Farmers in Mexico, unable to compete with the large-scale importation and chemical-intensive mass production of U.S. agricultural corporations, are swimming in a corn surplus that has swelled approximately 450percent since NAFTA's implementation. Haiti's deregulation of trade with the U.S. has destroyed the island's rice industry in a similar manner. Resulting urban slums are contributing to the breakdown of cultural traditions and public authority, making the growing masses increasingly ungovernable.

The Mexican government clashes violently with any organized dissent towards NAFTA. Protests in Chiapas and in Central Mexico have lead to the reported arrest, injury and death of dozens of activists. Community leaders like Minister Lucius Walker, executive of the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization, state that, "The biggest challenge facing all of us in this new millennium is to build a citizens' movement to counter the corporate captivity of the Americas."

The 1993 NAFTA agreement has created the desolation of small farming communities, added loopholes to environmental precautions and exploited poor people throughout the Americas. With the scheduled 2009 lift on tariffs and import restrictions, as well as Bush's proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) adding 31 more countries to the NAFTA agreement, many additional farming communities are in danger.
-Adam Cimino
Sources: Fellowship of Reconciliation, (Dec. 2000/Jan. 2001), by Anita Martin / The Lowdown, (Sept. 2001), by Jim Hightower.

9. National housing crisis
The housing crisis affects nearly six million American families and will only grow worse. 1.5 million low-cost housing units have recently been lost. Millions of children are growing up in housing that is substandard, unaffordable and dangerous.

A new crisis in affordable housing is spreading across America. What was once a problem relegated to low-income families along the East and West coasts, is now affecting the middle class all across the country. Middle-class working Americans today are having just as much trouble finding affordable housing as low-income families did 10 years ago.

In San Francisco, the Department of Housing and Urban Development is financing subsidized housing for public school teachers. California business groups complain that the states housing shortage deters the hiring of skilled workers, and chambers of commerce are linking affordable housing development to continued economic growth.

Julie Daniels earns $28,000 a year working full-time as a certified nursing assistant in Stamford, Conn. A member of Local 1199, Daniels and her three children have been unable to obtain affordable housing within traveling distance of her job. The family's only available housing option has been a homeless shelter, and the prospects for Daniels obtaining a safe and affordable home remain grim.

Still, politicians refuse to add federal funding housing to their campaigns. Low-cost housing programs are slowly being drained of their funding. More than 100,000 federally subsidized units have been converted to market-rate housing in the past three years. Both major parties seem unresponsive to low-cost housing, while the $5-billion Federal Housing Administration surplus, is tied up in Washington amongst party bickering.

Homelessness has become the ending point in the housing crisis for many families across the nation. The economic slowdown, the events of September 11 and the welfare reform of 1996 have pushed many hard-working Americans into the street. In New York alone it is estimated that 30,000 people are living in shelters, not including those on the street. In Chicago there have been 20,000 units of public housing destroyed, leaving 50,000 on the street. A proposed solution to this dilemma is to address the lack of living wage, adequate health care and affordable housing. Yet these issues have not been fully addressed. The U.S. government is spending less on affordable housing and it has caused a crisis that is being felt all over the country.

In an era when there is only one apartment for every six potential renters in this country, Congress has taken no action that would address this problem. Corporate media have only covered this issue locally. Few corporate media reports have recognized that this is an issue on a national level.

Sparking national action to end the housing crisis would require at least two major developments. First, organized labor must strengthen its national housing advocacy. Second is the need for the mobilization of thousands of non-profit housing development corporations, community-based organizations, student groups and neighborhood associations who build and/or support affordable housing.
-Eduardo Barragan
Source: In These Times, (Nov. 2000), by Randy Shaw

10. Global powers compete in Macedonia
The CIA destabilized the political balance in Macedonia to allow easier access for an American-British owned oil pipeline. Political instability in the region was designed to prevent Macedonia from entering the European Union (EU), and to strengthen the dollar in a deutschmark-dominated region.

Without Macedonia in the EU, U.S. oil companies would have an advantage over their European counterparts to build oil pipelines. These actions intend to exercise economical control of national currencies, and protect American oil companies such as BP-Amoco-ARCO, Chevron, and Texaco against Europe's Total-Fina-Elf. The power game is designed to increase Anglo-American domination in the region by distancing Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Albania from the influence of EU countries such as Germany, Italy, France and Belgium. It's an effort supported by Wall Street's financial establishment, to destabilize and discredit the deutschmark and the Euro, with hopes of imposing the U.S. dollar as the sole currency for the region.

The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and the National Liberation Army (NLA) were trained in Macedonia by British Special Forces and equipped by the CIA. British military sources confirm that Gezim Ostremi, NLA Commander, was sponsored by the UN and trained by British Special Forces to head the Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC). When Ostremi left his job as a United Nations Officer to join the NLA, the commander remained on the UN payroll. Attacks within Macedonia by the NLA/KLA last year, "coincided chronologically with the process of EU enlargement and the signing of the historic Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA)" between the EU and Macedonia. These attacks paved the way for further U.S. military and political presence in the region.

In a strange twist the CIA, NATO, and British Special Forces provided weapons and training to the NLA/KLA terrorists, while at the same time, Germany provided Macedonia's security forces with all-terrain vehicles, advanced weapons, and equipment to protect themselves from the NLA/KLA attacks. U.S. military advisers, on assignment to the KLA/NLA through private mercenary companies, remained in contact with NATO and U.S. military and intelligence planners. It was Washington and London who decided on the broad direction of KLA-NLA military operations in Macedonia.

Following the August 2001 "framework peace agreement", 3,500 armed NATO troops entered Macedonia with the intent of "disarming Albanian rebels." Washington's humanitarian efforts for the NLA/KLA suggested its intent is to protect the terrorists rather then disarm them. Vice President Dick Cheney's former firm, Halliburton Energy, is directly linked with the AMBO's Trans-Balkans Oil Pipeline.

Last year's conflict in Macedonia is a small part of a growing rift between the United States and European interests in the Balkans. In the wake of the war in Yugoslavia, Britain has allied with the U.S. and severed many of its ties with Germany, France and Italy. "Washington's design is to eventually ensure the dominance of the U.S. military-industrial complex in alliance with the Anglo-American oil giants and Britain's major defense contractors. These developments evidently also have a bearing on the control over strategic pipelines, transport and communications corridors in the Balkans, Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union."
-Michel Chossudovsky
-Elizabeth Burch, Phil Beard, John Lund, Faculty evaluators
-Alessandra Diana, David V. Immel, Student researchers
Sources: www.emperor-clothes.com, (June 14, 2001) / www.globalresearch.ca, (Aug. 22, 2001) / www.freespeech. org, (July 26, 2001).

Features:
Missouri editors fear Ashcroft
By Don Corrigan
The Bush Administration is not just engaged in a war on terrorism. Editors and publishers at this year's fall convention of the Missouri Press Association (MPA) learned that this administration "has launched a systemic attack against government openness."

Several convention speakers at the annual state news meeting in the Ozarks echoed similar themes about a new secrecy in government. Press members were urged to challenge roadblocks thrown up to impede the people's right to know.

Tim McGuire, former editor of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, cited the national Law Journal's checklist of actions taken since Sept. 11 to block information that should be public. Among the instances:

- The White House refuses to disclose records relating to Vice President Cheney's energy task force including meetings with Enron officials. Congress has been denied access and at least one public interest organization has filed a lawsuit.
- President George W. Bush invoked executive privilege in December 2001 to close prosecution documents concerning the FBI's handling of mob informants in the 1960s.
- Bush issued an executive order in 2001 that prevented disclosure of past presidential records just as information concerning President Ronald Reagan and President George H. W. Bush was scheduled to be made public.
- The President awarded Health and Human Services classification authority for the first time in the agency's history, reversing a trend favoring a reduction in the number of bureaucrats able to classify information.
- Attorney Gen. John Ashcroft issued an agency-wide memorandum on Oct. 12, 2001, advising federal agencies to lean toward withholding information whenever possible, reversing Attorney Gen. Janet Reno's openness policy issued in 1993.

McGuire said those few among the press, politicians and the public, who might speak out against the restrictions have been cowed by the administration. McGuire said they are fearful of being branded as "unpatriotic" in an atmosphere in which the nation is constantly portrayed as under siege.

"Too many politicians and commentators are telling us that the government should be able to do anything it damn well wants to crush the enemy," McGuire said. "These people are forgetting that we are a nation of laws. And they are forgetting history.

"The First Amendment of the Bill of Rights was written in a time of war," McGuire emphasized. "It was written when Americans did not agree on England's role in our society. It was written at a time when no one was really certain about who was on which side."

Hiding weaknesses
McGuire said a gullible public has bought into the notion that we should not discuss in the news media any vulnerabilities to terrorism in our infrastructure. He said disclosures of weaknesses, for example, in our nation's water supplies and plants have been cited as aiding and abetting the enemy.

McGuire insisted that our enemies are certainly aware of infrastructure vulnerabilities without help from the press. He contended that these vulnerabilities will only get fixed when enough people know about them to become outraged.

"It is only patriotic if we get our problems out in front of the American people so the people can solve them," McGuire said. "There is no patriotism in hiding our problems-there is only danger."

To prove his point, McGuire asked MPA members who they thought was more patriotic between the choice of Colleen Rowley or Robert Mueller with the FBI. Rowley is the FBI agent in the Minneapolis office, who grew tired of FBI head Mueller's excuses, and fired off a 13-page letter explaining that FBI headquarters had squelched efforts that might have unearthed the 9/11 terrorism plot a month before it was hatched with deadly results.

Revelations by Rowley show that information about terrorists and flight training was not shared within the agency nor beyond. The so-called dots of the plot were there to connect to potentially stave off disaster. But the dots were not shared or properly analyzed, culminating in one of the nation's greatest intelligence failures.

"We've read in recent weeks of Rowley's whistle-blowing," McGuire said. "It is now becoming clear that the intelligence community of the United States missed a lot of signals prior to Sept. 11.

"It is equally clear that the government is committed to plugging those leaks in the system and to creating a better intelligence operation now," McGuire said. "Colleen Rowley meets my definition of a patriot."

Docile reaction
Also speaking at the fall MPA convention was Charles Davis, executive director of the Freedom of Information Center at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. Davis has admonished the press for not expressing outrage at increasing information blackouts by government.

Writing in the IRE (Investigative Reporters & Editors) Journal this past spring, Davis lamented, "The docile reaction from reporters and newspaper editorial boards, who seem reluctant to enter the fray.

"This administration just loves secrecy," Davis told an MPA audience. "This president is, perhaps more than any other president in the history of this republic, consumed with secrecy."

Davis' sentiments have been echoed recently by Watergate figure John Dean, who called the Bush Administration "startlingly Nixonian" in it passion for secrecy. Journalist Bill Moyers was quoted recently in the American Journalism Review as stating, "Not only has George W. Bush eviscerated the Presidential Records Act, he has clamped a lid on public access across the board."

Davis told Missouri journalists there is much worse to come. He said the secrecy provisions that will apply to the proposed Department of Homeland Security are draconian.

"The Department of Homeland Security will combine agencies to form a giant of 70,000 professional grade employees and 280,000 employees total," Davis said. "This is going to be the bureaucracy of all bureaucracies. It will be vast and it will have vast powers. It will have unprecedented powers to operate in secrecy."

Davis aimed much of his barrage against secrecy at Missouri native son, Ashcroft. Davis said it's ironic that Ashcroft, who once had a reputation of being hard on criminals, has recently become very passionate about their privacy rights.

"He's suddenly gotten very concerned about the privacy rights of inmates," Davis said. "Journalists across the country have been clamoring for the names of detainees and inmates after 9/11. There is a legitimate public interest in knowing who is being held. It's basic to how we protect our freedoms.

"But the Attorney General is arguing that the Justice Department doesn't want the names out, because the individuals might be scarred later in life," Davis said. "Well, if you are a prisoner and you think you are being held wrongly, the last thing you are concerned about is your privacy. You want a plane flying up in the air dragging as sign saying: 'Hey, I've been imprisoned and I shouldn't be here.'"

Davis said Ashcroft also has been heavy handed in throwing the veil over immigration procedures and immigration hearings. Davis said Ashcroft is now closing the hearings with the justification that national security may be at stake.

"All of the hearings can now be closed," Davis said. "The Justice Department has shown complete arrogance with this stance. Mr. Ashcroft apparently missed the media access rights lessons when he went to law school."

Davis said all journalists should care about the new mania for secrecy in this country, because it will affect their jobs whether they report in Washington, D.C., or in small towns in outstate Missouri.

'Time for journalists to express outrage'
By Don Corrigan
Charles Davis, executive director of the Freedom of Information Center at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, told members of the Missouri Press Association (MPA) that they have a duty to express outrage at increasing information blackouts by the federal government.

"The new approach to information requests by our government and by our Justice Department is: Why are you interested? Why is this your business?" Davis explained. He said the attitude is a 180 degree turn away from open government and cooperation with a free press.

"And the terrible thing about this is that this approach is spreading down to the state and local level," Davis added. "It's spreading down because homeland security is not something that is happening in Washington, D.C. Homeland security and how it operates is now at the local level."

While Davis may be right about a veil of secrecy spreading to the state and local level, Missouri's many governmental jurisdictions have never enjoyed a reputation for being cooperative with press inquiries and requests. Results of a performance audit survey on the state Sunshine Law, released in 1999 by Missouri Auditor Claire McCaskill, showed widespread violation of state law on openness in government.

McCaskill sent certified letters to 214 governmental bodies in the state. The letters were short and the requests transparent: "I request that you make available to me a copy of the minutes of the last meeting held in the calendar year 1998. Please let me know in advance of any search or copying if the fees for such search and copying will exceed $10."

Auditors reported problems in 102 of the 214 jurisdictions: 69 ignored the request; 23 delayed answers well beyond the three-day legal limit; 10 refused outright to provide minutes of public meetings. In many cases, governments that denied requests demanded that the authors of the correspondence identify themselves better and show their need for the records.

Minutes from the jurisdictions that did comply with the state Sunshine Law revealed other problems. Some governmental bodies had gone into executive session without showing justification, raising questions about the legitimacy of the closed-door meetings.

Auditor McCaskill has complained that the Sunshine Law is often violated because enforcement powers are weak and the penalties for non-compliance are slight. At the MPA's fall convention in the Ozarks, McCaskill, a Democrat, was the only candidate to show up at an election forum for those seeking the office of state auditor.

McCaskill told MPA members that she continues to be alarmed at the level of unconcern and disregard in the state for complying with the Sunshine Law. Missouri legislators have not made strengthening the law and insuring openness a high priority. In fact, in the post-9/11 environment, there is much more concern with putting government operations and deliberations under tighter wraps.

Worm's view of journalism
By Roy Malone
When the Riverfront Times reported last month that sports columnist Bernie Miklasz was leaving the St. Louis Post-Dispatch to write for a website catering to Bruce Springsteen fans, the story was carried nationwide on the Internet.

But it was a hoax, Jim Romenesko said, and after just a few hours he deleted it from his website, Romenesko's MediaNews, where journalists in the United States and abroad get news about their business.

Romenesko operates out of the Poynter Institute, St. Petersburg, Fla. ([email protected]).When he got calls from St. Louis that questioned the Miklasz piece, he called Roland Klose, managing editor of the RFT, to verify its accuracy. "It's bullshit. Everything in the Worm column is bullshit," Klose said.

"We pulled it off and ran a disclaimer that it was untrue," Romenesko said. "New Times (the chain that owns the RFT) does that. Most of the New Times papers have that kind of column. You don't know from one week to the next what is true. It certainly hurts their credibility. It's goofy. I'm not dealing with them anymore." But Klose and his boss, editor Jim Nesbitt, say they don't pull hoaxes. The Miklasz column, written by D.J. Wilson, but without a byline, was satire, they say.

"This is perhaps a feeble attempt at entertainment and to poke fun ... I am glad we added the column and hope it gets better," Klose said. "I can't believe anyone thought it was factual." (Romenesko did.) Klose said many Post staffers were "humor-impaired."

Miklasz said he doesn't mind being the target of a joke, but "I don't think it was well-written. I think it was a miss. A lot of people at the Post wondered if it was true. I don't know how many people got the joke."

A close friend believed it was true, Miklasz said, and he sent a memo to his bosses explaining that it was a spoof. He even had to deny it when he was interviewed on a national radio show.

Miklasz said the fabrication was "no big deal," but it hurt to see himself quoted as saying St. Louis was "a town full of losers" and that he's sick of the whining and grief he gets from fans.

Nesbitt said the column played on words that are actual lyrics of Springsteen songs. "Anybody with a sense of humor can see it. Our readers are more sophisticated and hip and see the joke." Nesbitt insisted that the column greatly upset Miklasz and said he "should take some of the money he's making on KMOX radio (as a talk show host) and buy a sense of humor."

Miklasz confesses to being a "Springsteen fanatic" and he wrote on STLtoday.com about attending some of the Boss' concerts in New Jersey and Arizona. That's how the RFT got the idea for the Worm column.

The Worm was started a few months ago and unnamed staffers frequently attack the Post. A recent column called the Post editor, Ellen Soeteber, "the Nurse Ratchet of the newsroom." Klose said the column allows readers to find "all of the bullshit in one place." At the end of the column is the line: "The Worm digs deep, and it's not just dirt he's shoveling." Klose said this serves as a disclaimer when the material is bogus.
Nesbitt, who worked for a news service in Washington, D.C., joined New Times earlier this year and was made editor of the RFT. The founder, Ray Hartmann, sold the RFT a few years ago and this year bowed out as columnist. Nesbitt said he thinks he has succeeded in "establishing a different voice" than Hartmann's.

Nesbitt named his column "Speedloader," a reference to firearms, of which he says he's owned a few. He said a speedloader is attached to a handgun to provide faster loading and rapid firing. If this isn't enough to sharpen his image as a tough journalist, staffers are treated to his skull-and-crossbones flag and pictures of Confederate generals.

Some say the RFT has lost its standing as an alternative newspaper after dropping columnists, reviewers and many writers with depth of knowledge and bent for serious journalism and activism. Young adults read it mainly to find entertainment listings and sex ads. It's a bottom-line operation that tries to gain notice with a racy and sensational style. Ex-staffers say there's also a penchant for meanness in attacking certain people, often for no apparent reason.

But Klose said, "We still put out the best newspaper in St. Louis."

Newspaper Guild better financed this time around
By Joe Pollack
The Newspaper Guild, which represents more St. Louis Post-Dispatch employees than any other union, goes into negotiations this month from a different perspective than it has held before.

Since the last contract, an eight-year agreement, was signed in January 1995, the Guild, which represents reporters, photographers, many editors, librarians, advertising sales personnel, researchers and others at the newspaper, has merged with the Communications Workers of America (CWA), which puts a new face on the negotiation process. From its standing as Local 47 of the American Newspaper Guild, it has become Local 36047 of the CWA.

(A point of information: The writer was president of Local 47 of the American Newspaper Guild, and involved in the negotiations in 1994. Since October 1995, he has been retired from both the newspaper and the union.)

The CWA, a large union with thousands of members both inside and outside the communications industry, already has been providing assistance to the St. Louis local, whose web page (www.stlouisguild.org) will keep members and non-members up to date.

Herb Goodrick, executive secretary of Local 47 for more than a decade, points out that CWA has helped with newly formed steering and mobilization committees, meeting with reporters and others in preparation for the negotiation process, which can be long and arduous. The Nashville law firm of King and Ballow, which has worked for the Pulitzer Publishing Company in a number of previous confrontations with the Guild, is an experienced player on the management side in many labor negotiations. In St. Louis, it has worked in contract bargaining and represented the company in arbitration proceedings.

The Post has yet to provide its proposal to the Guild, but given its stance with other unions in the plant, it will seek to weaken the Guild's security clauses, increase the employee share of health insurance premiums, dilute jurisdiction and generally chip away at contract protection for the workers.

Negotiations probably will be long. Only a few weeks ago, Pressmen Local 38-N agreed to a contract after meeting for almost a year, and after having rejected management proposals that would have forced pressmen to do the work of mailers and, more important, would have allowed pressmen to resign from the union, avoid paying dues and still be able to not only benefit from raises negotiated by the union, but also to call on the union to represent them in dealings with the company.

"After a while, we wouldn't have had any money or any union left," John Shetterly, Pressmen vice president, told the Labor Tribune. "And the company would have hired enough anti-union employees that, eventually, there would have been a decertification of the union."

Similar demands have been made of other unions in negotiations.

Shetterly, whose union represents 110 pressmen, predicted that the next two unions to negotiate contracts, the Guild and the Platemakers, members of the Graphic Communications Workers Local 505, would see union members facing the same strategy.

As he told the Labor Tribune, "We can't understand why the new management-unlike the Pulitzers-are unwilling to work with us. They seem to want to go out of their way to pick a fight with us."

About 800 of the Post's approximately 1,100 employees are union members; the large majority, almost 600, are members of the Guild.

The CWA has proven itself a tough negotiator, willing to take a tough stance with management and to back it up with the ability to bring large segments of a community together to support the union.

"We have a lot of young staffers who have not been union members before," Goodrick said, "and we have been meeting with them and talking with them about the importance of unions and what they have brought to the workers through the years.

"Many of the younger Post people don't always realize the role of unions in improving salaries and working conditions through the years. Some of them think that raises come every year through the sheer generosity of the company. It isn't always that way."

The mayor's money machine II How Mayor Francis Slay paid back his contributors by cheating voters
By Louis J. Rose and Fred Lindecke
Mayor Francis Slay has a half-million-dollar reason for working hand-in-glove with the 17 millionaire owners of the St. Louis Cardinals to get taxpayer funding for a new Cardinal ballpark. He is paying off his campaign contributors.

A study by the Coalition Against Public Funding For Stadiums of Mayor Slay's 2001 campaign finance report shows that the Cardinals and their allies contributed $507,000 to Slay. This was 28 percent of his total $1.8 million campaign expense.

The 2002 session of the Missouri Legislature killed the Cardinal effort to obtain $430 million in taxpayer funding over 30 years for a new ballpark. In this campaign, Slay was a leader in raising the fear, and making the threat, that the Cardinals would leave downtown St. Louis if the taxpayers did not buy them a ballpark.

Slay is now leading a second effort to build a so-called privately financed ballpark for the Cardinals. As of deadline, there is no private financing for the ballpark.

But there would be $237 million of public money over 30 years in this deal, and Slay pushed through the Board of Aldermen on Oct. 18 the biggest chunk of this money-$102 million to be left in the pockets of the Cardinal owners through elimination of the 5 percent tax on Cardinal tickets. He had to act quickly, because on Nov. 5 the voters of St. Louis were going to vote on Proposition S.

Proposition S was placed on the ballot by initiative petition signed by 14,000 registered voters in St. Louis. It requires that any public financing for a new Cardinal ballpark must be submitted to a citywide vote. So if the elimination of the 5 percent tax on Cardinal tickets had been passed after Nov. 5, it would have had to go before a citywide vote.

Slay obviously is working very hard to pay off his Cardinal campaign contributors. He will be going back to them for reelection money when he runs again in 2005, so he also is earning his money for the next time around.

Slay's conduct is a classic example of how politicians use their constituents' tax money to buy campaign contributions.

In fact, SJR's headline refers back to a major story about then-Mayor Vince Schoemehl's campaign contributions published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in the 1980s. It was excellent journalism spoiled by Editor William Woo's decision to allow the mayor a front-page rebuttal.

The current study was conducted by comparing Slay's contributors to four sources:

Members of the Regional Chamber and Growth Association (RCGA), the Associated General Contractors of St. Louis (AGC) and labor unions, all of which endorsed taxpayer funding of the stadium, and law firms who represented these entities, according to the Martindale-Hubbell law directory.

The study shows that Slay received more than $266,000 from RCGA members, $41,000 from AGC members, $58,000 from unions, $92,000 from law firms, and more than $48,000 from miscellaneous sources.

Included in the miscellaneous category is $5,725 from Cardinal owners, a paltry sum considering how hard Slay has worked for them.

Some of the biggest contributors were Anheuser-Busch, $26,000; the Shaffer Lombardo law firm of Kansas City, $12,375; Guilfoil Petzall law firm, $10,200; Thompson Coburn, $11,100; Charter Communications, $10,700; the TIP Educational Fund (hotel-restaurant workers), $10,000; and Enterprise Rent-A-Car $7,140. The Husch Eppenberger law firm, which drafted legislation benefiting the Cardinal owners, gave Slay $8,275.

(This report is the result of an investigation by the Coalition Against Public Funding For Stadiums. It was conducted by Louis J. Rose and Fred Lindecke, retired reporters for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and Anne Little, a volunteer for the coalition.)

Union Contributions:

Bricklayers' Local No. 1 of Missouri
$1,125

Int'l. Brotherhood of Electrical Workers No. 4
$1,000
Teamster Local 600 Drive PAC
$2,250

Missouri State Council Fire Fighters' PAC
$1,125

TIP Educational Fund, Washington, DC
$10,000

Seafarers Political Activity
$1,000

Hoisting Engineers Local 513
$2,250

SEIU, Local No. 1001
$1,125

St. Louis Assn. of Retired Fire Fighters
$1,625

Missouri/Kansas State Council, No. 29
$2,250

Laborer's Intl. Union, Local No. 53
$1,125

Eastern Mo. Laborers' Educ. Fund
$1,125

Operating Engineers, Local No. 2
$1,975

Plumbers and Pipefitters
$1,000

Pipefitters Local 62
$1,000

Iron Workers, Local 396
$2,250

Int'l. Assoc. of Firefighters No. 73
$875

Laborers' Local 110
$1,125

Laborers' Local 42
$250

Sheet Metal Workers, Local No. 36
$2,250

Glaziers Local No. 513
$1,900

Missouri State UAW PAC
$1,125

IBEW, Local No. 1439
$2,050

IBEW No. 4
$2,000

Asbestos Workers Local 1
$875

Boilermakers, Local No. 27
$1,125

Gas Workers Local 5-6
$1,500

Missouri AFL-CIO
$3,375

St. Louis Labor Council AFL-CIO
$2,250
International Brotherhood of Teamsters
$1,125

Engine Company No. 29
$1,125

Laborers Local No. 42
$2,125

Int'l. Assoc. of Fire Fighters Local No. 73
$1,125

Associated General Contractors Contributions:

SM Wilson General Contractors
$500

Clayco Construction Co.
$2,000

TGB Inc.
$5,000

Environment Operations
$5,225

Katsinas General Contractors
$1,125

HBD Contracting, Inc.
$2,000

Spirtas Wrecking Co.
$1,125

Albert Arno, Inc.
$1,000

Hensley Construction
$2,500

Schuster Engineering, Inc.
$1,100

Associated General Contractors PAC
$1,000

SCI Engineering, Inc.
$1,050

HBD Contracting
$1,000

Welsch, Flatness & Lutz, Inc.
$2,125

Vee-Jay Cement Contracting Co., Inc.
$1,000

CDG Eng Arch & Planners
$2,500

Anthony Hooper, Instituform Technologies, Inc.
$2,125

Sidney Grossman, Jr., Grossman Iron & Steel
$4,250

Comp Check Corp.
$1,125

Budrovich Excavating, Inc.
$2,000

City Design Group, Inc.
$500

Joseph Danis, AON Risk Services
$1,125

Lawyer Contributions:

Husch & Eppenberger
$8,275

Reizman & Blitz
$6,700

Shaffer, Lombardo, Shurin, Kansas City
$12,375

Blitz, Bardgett, & Deutsch LC
$1,000

Sonnenschein Nath
$1,000

Poisinelli, White, Vardeman & Shalton
$2,450

Dankenbring, Greiman
$2,125

Schlichter Bogard & Denton
$2,250

Guilfoil, Petzall
$10,200

Bryan Cave
$8,250

Stolar Partnership
$6,275

Lashly & Baer
$7,325

Thompson Coburn LLP
$11,100

Lewis, Rice
$250

Fox & Vuylsteke
$1,125

Gallop, Johnson
$3,000

Herzog Crebs
$1,000

Dickstein & Shapiro, Washington D.C.
$6,500

Helfrey, Simon
$1,025

Regional Chamber & Growth Association Contributions:

Johnny Londoff Chevrolet
$250

Joseph Sansone
$1,075

St. Louis Rams
$2,000

Michelson Reality Co.
$1,000

Conley Insurance Group, Inc.
$1,000

Rothschild Development, Ltd.
$1,500

Kaplan Real Estate
$4,375

BLL & Associates
$6,500

Central Business Communications
$1,000

Hamilton & Company, Inc.
$3,125

Roach Consulting Corporation
$3,500

Harbour Group
$2,125

BJC Health Systems
$1,125

Grey Eagle Distributors
$2,000

Regal Riverfront Hotel
$1,000

Horner & Shifrin, Inc.
$1,500

Contemporary Group
$1,000

Anheuser Busch
$26,000

Engineered Support Systems
$7,050

Kwame Building Group, Inc.
$2,000

Creve Coeur Trucking, Inc.
$1,500

C. Hager & Sons Hinge Mfg., Co.
$2,250

Union Planter's Bank
$1,000

Fox Inc.
$1,000

S & H Parking Systems, LC
$4,625

DCM Management Co.
$2,000

THF Realty
$3,225

West Gate Partners
$1,125

Ramada Downtown at the Arch
$2,000

Mehlville Haulers, Inc.
$1,500

Crystal Springs Development Services
$1,500

DFC Group, Inc.
$3,250

Arch Construction Co.
$1,000

Vandiver Group
$1,100

Geotechnology Inc.
$3,225

Southwestern Bell MO EPAC
$3,250

Alper Audi
$1,000

Independent Concrete Pipe Co.
$1,125

HOK, Inc.
$4,250

Kowelman Engineering
$3,225 Dobbs Tire & Auto
$2,625

Maritz
$1,125

Ross & Baruzzini, Inc.
$4,500

May Department Stores
$509

Allegiant Bank
$1,000

Mary 1 Enterprises LLC
$1,100

Fred Weber, Inc.
$1,125

Afram Corp.
$2,800

General American Life Assoc. PAC
$1,125

Hermann Companies
$3,375

Fuse
$2,250

Drury Development Corp.
$4,500

Waste Management of St. Louis
$1,125

Jefferson Bank and Trust Co. PAC
$1,000

JS Alberici Construction Co.
$1,000

Kozeny-Wagner, Inc.
$750

Emerson Electric
$1,125

Iron Mountain Trap Co.
$1,125

Balke Properties
$1,000

AAIC, Inc.
$1,050

Eads Center
$1,125

Clarence Barksdale, Washington University
$1,125

KCI Construction Co.
$1,125

Schnuck Markets, Inc.
$6,750

Murphy Company
$1,225

BSI Contractor
$1,000

Imo's Pizza
$500

Jotori Dredging, Inc.
$1,125

McMahon Ford Co.
$3,350

Pasta House Co.
$1,275

Laclede Gas Co.
$2,600

Edith Spink
$1,125

Fischer & Frichtel
$1,000

Political Action Committee of Emerson
$1,125

Falcon Products
$2,000

James B. Becker Consulting
$1,075

Fox Associates, LLC
$2,000

Commerce Bancshares, Inc. PAC
$1,100

The Jones Company Custom Homes, Inc.
$4,500

St. Louis Blues Hockey Club, LP
$2,250

Central District Alarm
$1,125

Guarantee Interiors, Inc.
$1,000

AmerenUE PAC
$2,250

AMS Automotive
$1,125

Keil Center Partners, LP
$1,125

McBride & Son
$1,000

AMS Distributing, Inc.
$1,125

Lohr Distributing
$1,125

Richard Baron
$500

Jacobs Engineering Group
$1,000

Ralston Purina Co.
$1,625

Crawford, Bunte, Brammeier
$1,600

Enterprise Rent-A-Car
$7,140

Charter Communications
$10,700

McCarthy Brothers: Contractor
$4,500

Development Strategies, Inc.
$1,000

Bank of America PAC
$1,125

Breckenridge Companies
$1,625

Brown & James
$8,625

Koplar Communications
$1,000

Union Planters Comm. on Gov. Affairs
$1,000

Michael Clark
$1,125

Don Musick Construction Co.
$3,750

Sweet Traditions, LLC
$1,000

Parsons, Brinkerhoff, Inc
$1,000

Roberts Communications
$2,000

KPMG
$5,000

Pinnacle, Inc.
$2,225

Dean Morgan, Regional Commerce and Growth Assoc.
$1,000

Paric Corp.
$1,500

Site Improvement Association PAC
$1,125

Midland Oil Co.
$2,250

Brown & Associates
$1,125

Kuhlmann Design Group, Inc.
$4,125

St. Louis Assoc. of Realtors PAC
$1,750

Environmental Management Corp.
$2,084

William Tao & Associates, Inc.
$1,225

Raskas Foods, Inc.
$1,000

W. Thomas Reeves, Downtown NOW
$1,125

Miscellaneous Contributions:

Alex Aboussie
$1,000

Daly for License Collector
$2,010

Raymond Geisman
$1,000

Frederick Hanser, Cardinal Owner
$1,125

John Bardgett & Associates
$4,225

23rd Ward Regular Democratic Org. $4,000

Floyd Warmann
$1,000

Gene Warmann
$1,000

Barbara Geisman
$3,175

Richard Callow, Public Eye, Inc.
$3,125

Citizens for Jim Sondermann
$1,125

Historic Restoration, Inc., New Orleans
$6,725

Michael and Ceil Pulitzer, Cardinal Owners
$2,250

James Komorek
$2,012

Louis Hamilton
$4,150

Building & Construction Trades Council
$2,250

Mississippi Valley Bancshares, Inc., Cardinal Owner
$1,225

William Dewitt, Jr., Cardinal Owner
$1,125

Missouri Sports Radio
$1,125

Lyda Krewson, St. Louis Alderwoman
$750

James Shrewsbury, St. Louis Alderman
$1,000

St. Louis Port Council Education Fund
$2,084

Citizens for Buzz Westfall
$1,125

May Scheve, State Representative
$1,125

Important state races underreported
By Daniel Hellinger
While reporters' attentions have been fixed on the intense Senate race between Democrat Jean Carnahan and Republican Jim Talent, an intense political battle has raged for state legislative seats-and for control of the future of state politics. Not only do state legislators make laws for jurisdiction larger than several European nations, the state House and Senate are breeding grounds for future candidates in statewide and federal elections. And this year the stakes are higher than usual.

Both Democrats and Republicans view this year's election as crucial for the future balance of power in Jefferson City. Republicans have clawed their way nearly to parity with their opponents in both the House and the Senate. And, a combination of redistricting and term limits put many seats up for grabs. But, open seats meant candidates faced the challenge of building name recognition, which meant more media and more money pouring into campaign coffers.

The 2002 elections may define the partisan balance in state politics for many years to come. In the lower and upper houses combined, more than 100 seats were up for grabs.

In 2002, due to term limits, 73 members of the House were not eligible to run again, but in 2004, only 19 members will not be eligible.

The election will not only shape party fortunes but the ability of major interest groups with a stake in Missouri politics. Consider the stakes on abortion.

Anti-abortion groups steadily built up a legislative majority poised to advance more restrictions on women's right to choose, but pro-choice groups did relatively well in 2000, electing 10 of 17 candidates who attended their candidate workshop that year. With term limits taking full effect this year, many anti-abortion legislators will leave office, magnifying the importance of the pro-choice freshmen who won in 2000 and opening possibilities for both groups to realign the legislature in their favor.

Both political parties recognized the stakes and organized workshops and published handbooks to guide local candidates. The Democratic handbook distributed by TEAMMISSOURI was made available to SJR by a first-time legislative candidate disturbed by the party's lack of interest in issues and its shift toward more expensive and professional stress on fundraising, public relations and internal organization.

TEAMMISSOURI's handbook instructed candidates on preparing literature, advertising and generating news coverage, staffing and raising money. Only one page of the 75-page manual was devoted to the "House Democratic Message" of 2002. "Protecting Missouri's Future" consisted of 12 bulleted points stating broad goals, such as "securing funding for our children's education" and to "safeguard seniors from abuse and neglect," that Republicans probably could endorse themselves. For example, Democratic candidates promised, you will be reassured to know, to "promote Homeland Security Legislation."

Missing from the "message" was any comment on the issues that will most affect citizens' lives: dealing with the state's fiscal crisis, allocating funds among the competing needs of transportation, education and social services, etc. The lifeblood of democracy, citizen engagement with issues, traditionally stimulated by party platforms, replaced by a "message" crafted to make voters see a compassionate party, even if the compassion lacks any real content in regard to the issues.

Rather than try to convince voters or raise their consciousness on the issues, candidates were instructed to avoid staking out positions before they have put their finger to the wind. Early in the campaign TEAMMISSOURI advised them to "provide an agenda that acknowledges you will discuss goals" but do "not develop a final message or strategy." The reason? "Chances are, polling will not be completed by this point."

"Polling," advised TEAMMISSOURI, "should also be used to test potential lines of attack against your opponent." Candidates were advised not to confuse this strategy with "negative advocacy calls (sometimes called 'push polling')." The handbook was silent, however, on the ethics of such a tactic.

As for media, TEAMMISSOURI put the emphasis on direct mail. "Don't be 'out-communicated' in the mail box the last 10 days of the election," it advised. "Pictures matter." So does the message, but it was more important that they were researched and then checked against polling before the mail went out.

Given the nature of legislative races, it is logical that mail be preferred over mass media advertising. But the importance of media is clear in the recommended budget, and the importance of money, despite campaign finance reform efforts, just as clear.

"Democrats have to change the way we raise and spend campaign dollars," said TEAMMISSOURI. To accomplish this, the state party anticipated that the average state House campaign budget for 2002 was nearly triple that for a typical race in 1996.

In 1996, the normal cost of a campaign for a Democratic candidate was $30,000, of which $7,000 (23 percent) was spent on newspaper ads ($3,500), cable TV production ($1,500), radio ($2,000), and cable television ad buys ($1,000). Another $3500 was spent on signs, $2,000 on brochures, and $5,500 on mailing. Overall, Democratic candidates spent on average only 28 percent ($8,500) on direct communication (radio, mailing and cable TV ads) with voters.

By contrast, TEAMMISSOURI's plan was to increase the amount of money spent on communication with voters to $52,300. Campaigns were to become more professional, with staff costs rising from $3,000 to $10,500, but less money was to be spent on signs and palm cards. For the first time candidates were instructed to budget one sixth ($14,000) of their money on researching the opposition, benchmark polls and tracking polls.

Separation of church and paper
By Jim Fox
John Stewart's first byline in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch appeared in August 1951. This was not as newsworthy as the second line that appeared under his name, identifying him as "Religion editor."

In those days there were three dailies in St. Louis, the Post, the Star-Times and the Globe-Democrat. The Post and the Star were afternoon papers, the Globe was a morning paper.

The Star and Globe had "church editors," the Post did not.

Those in the know said that Joseph Pulitzer II, editor and publisher, did not want a church page or a church editor for reasons best known to him.

Then, a totally unexpected event occurred. The Post bought the Star in 1951 and hired only one or two Star-Times staffers. The others, including Stewart, were left to fend for themselves. But, sources then close to the situation contended that a number of prominent church leaders in the community went to Pulitzer and expressed their concerns over losing Stewart's perceptive and accurate reporting on the religious scene in St. Louis.

So, Pulitzer apparently relented and Stewart was hired by the Post in late summer of 1951.

He was superbly qualified for the job. He was an ordained minister with a love for fine cigars and his reporting skills were such that on rare occasions he wrote a non-church story for the paper. Thus, he began a tradition that continues today. But, the road was not always an easy one.

After Stewart retired, a number of church editors followed, some from within the staff and at least one hired from outside the staff. One potential bump in the road occurred when a church editor at the Post developed quite a reputation as a skirt-chaser. His identity shall remain anonymous, but he caused then-city editor Sam Shelton some uneasy moments.

I was assistant city editor at the time and, as most of you know, editors have a few minutes of breathing space between editions. This time was usually spent in idle conversation while cranking up for the next edition. During one of these interludes, Shelton turned to me and said rather wistfully, "Jim, some day the cops are going to raid a brothel and find our church editor among the customers. How do you think we should handle that?"

The same church editor kept reporters around him off balance. If a caller would phone in a tip for a story, he would say, "Thank you, Brother." But, he was having marital problems and if his wife's lawyer called, he would bellow into the phone, "What do you want now, you son of a bitch!"

Fortunately, the gentleman in question left the paper before any of his extracurricular activities found their way into the news columns.

Another concern was being sure the church editors remained objective, not allowing their own religious beliefs to influence their reporting.

In my view, the present church editor, Patricia Rice, is the best one since Stewart. She is an excellent reporter, totally objective and an accomplished writer. Whether she is covering such stories as the Pope's visit, the Methodist debate on gays in the church, the Lutheran concern over a pastor speaking at the World Trade Center memorial or explaining the customs of Muslims or Jews, I find her stories well done and covered as news.

But, a new dimension has been added to the Post that I think might have Joseph Pulitzer II spinning in his grave. In the neighborhood sections, at least in the one I get, the Post is printing a sermonette each week by a Baptist pastor named Tim Richards.

I am sure he is a fine fellow with the best of intentions, but I question the wisdom of having a pastor of one faith writing a weekly sermonette for the Post. Let me hasten to assure you that I am not anti-religious, although I did get kicked out of the youth choir when I attended Oak Hill Presbyterian church in my childhood and teens.

You see, my mother had given me a dime to put in the collection, but instead, I spent it on penny candy at Pettit's drug store on my way to church. I ignored the Christian admonition to share and ate all the candy before I got to church. When I stood up as part of a quartet and looked out at that sea of stern Presbyterian faces, my stomach began to rumble in fright and soon all the candy was being spewed throughout the choir loft, cleaning out the youth and adult choirs who fled in panic. The pastor was outraged at being upstaged, and I was given my walking papers.

Still, I am not against religion and am nominally, at least, a Methodist.

Yes, I am very disturbed by the paper's decision to run a sermonette instead of sticking to treating religion as news. Why is it being done? To build circulation? To fulfill an obligation to the spiritual well being of the community? Of course, the old and valid newspaper defense can be raised. You don't have to read the column. If you read it, you don't have to agree with it. Pastors, like everyone else, have the right to freedom of expression.

But, will the editors feel compelled, in time, to let leaders of other faiths write sermonettes, or will equal time have to be given to atheists or agnostics?

Religion is legitimate news as Rice has amply proven, but is preaching part of a newspaper's role, especially in an area so highly personal and sensitive as religion?

The headline on the column I noticed read, "God Doesn't Mind If You Ask Him Difficult Questions." When I was working at the Post, I am sure some ill-tempered news editor like Harold Tecumseh Meek would have come charging over to the copy desk and roared, "Get some attribution in that headline! Make it read, 'Sources Close to God Say He Doesn't Mind Difficult Questions.' Don't let the Post-Dispatch say it!"

I am sure my concerns will have little effect on Post editors, and the sermonettes will continue to appear. All I can do is pray they change their minds.

Lying anonymous ads
By Dan Hellinger
If the estimates of a reporter for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune are right, the same group that made an unprecedented $1 million ad buy targeting the late Senator Paul Wellstone spent a similar amount of money on ad buys to defeat Senator Jean Carnahan and help her opponent, Republican James Talent. However, the big spenders refuse to identify who is providing more than $3 million, by its own account, for ad campaigns in key Senate races in the campaign's final weeks.

Americans for Job Security (AJS), a business lobby formed, despite its name, to oppose positions and candidates favored by the AFL-CIO, is behind many of those radio and television ads targeting Sen. Jean Carnahan. A favorite theme of the ads is to label the "estate tax," which Republicans seek to repeal across the board, as a "death tax."

AJS is based in Alexandria, Va., and was founded in 1997 through a $1 million donation from the American Insurance Institute, which says it is no longer associated with the organization. Just whose deep pockets funds AJS today is unknown because the group uses a legal loophole to keep secret its funders.

Michael Dubke, president of AJS, told Patricia Lopez, a Star-Tribune reporter, that he had made ad buys similar to the ones taken out in Minnesota for both North Dakota and Missouri. Wellstone's campaign manager, Jeff Blodgett, speaking before Wellstone's death in a plane crash, said the ad buy would probably exceed total spending by both Wellstone and his Republican opponent in the last two weeks of the campaign.

As in the anti-Carnahan ads, the Minnesota campaign calls on voters to call their Senator to demand repeal of the estate tax in the name of saving family farms and small businesses. In fact, Democrats and Republicans both favor permanent relief for small business and farms that might be lost as a result of the tax. A Democratic supported bill would have exempted all estates under $8 million for married couples from taxes upon expiration of the current law.

AJS and administration policy are aimed at full and permanent repeal of inheritance taxes. Rep. Anthony Weiner (D., N.Y.) defended the tax recently, arguing, "If you're talking about families that have estates less than the value of $2 million, then you can turn off your show right now, because you're already exempt from the estate taxes."

Carnahan's main response has been different. Instead of defending the fairness of taxing large inheritances, she has pledged to continue working to repeal the "death tax." So successful has been the business propaganda campaign that the news media themselves now routinely refer to the inheritance tax as a "death tax."

The AJS ad campaign has generally followed the tried-and-true tactics pioneered by the famous "Harry and Louise" ads that helped sink President Bill Clinton's health care legislation in 1993. To cut through the clutter, AJS ads place the conversation in unusual circumstances. For example, in Minnesota, where much of the population is proud of its Scandinavian descent, "Lloyd" tells "Ruth" in Norwegian that Wellstone is a money-grubber for taxing the dead. "If he doesn't get it in English," according to Lloyd, "maybe he'll get it in Norwegian."

Dubke refused to tell Lopez who was funding the huge ad buys, saying, "I don't want to play their [opposition's] game." With Wellstone's death, the fate of the planned ad campaign in Minnesota was not clear, but radio stations in Missouri continued running the spots, even with the potentially unsavory implications of running ads accusing Carnahan, widowed under similar circumstances two years ago, of lacking compassion for grieving families.

National consultants, not candidates, control TV campaigns
By Bob Schaper
Inside her office at KSDK (Channel 5), national sales director Suellen Riggin listens to the fax machine beep again.

"There's another one," she says.

It's a Tuesday morning in mid-October-three weeks before the Nov. 5 election-and orders for political ads have been pouring in for weeks.

During the election season viewers are seemingly bombarded with conflicting messages on nearly every issue. But few people understand the complex, behind-the-scenes world of political advertising.

For example, who dreams up these ads and then buys the time-slots they broadcast in? How do they go from the mind of a campaign staffer to the local airwaves?

For that matter, where do they come from?

"Ninety-nine percent of our orders come out of Philadelphia," Riggin says. "That and Washington are where most of the large media firms are located."

Unlike the local sales manager, who has a sales staff based at the station, Riggin's sales executives require a coast-to-coast presence and are located in various cities.

"We use Petry Media Corporation as our national rep firm," Riggin explains. "They have people all over the country who negotiate the orders and then send them to me."

Although in many respects political ads are no different than ones for cars or fast-food restaurants, there are some important distinctions.

Unlike other media buyers who place orders throughout the week, campaigns generally buy television spots on Mondays. (Some have suggested this is a throwback to the days of weekend political rallies, when the donations were counted on Sunday night.)

Also reminiscent of past experiences-not all of them good-television stations do not extend credit to politicians.

"When it comes to political ads, everything's cash in advance," Riggin says.

But what really sets political ads apart, experts say, is their highly regulated nature. Brendan Walsh, national sales director at KPLR (Channel 11) television, says the Federal Election Commission (FEC) sets strict guidelines for the broadcast industry.

"You have files within each station that are called public files," Walsh says. "They're open to anyone who wants to come in and look through them."

The files include information about every time purchase by federal candidates, including the price it went for.

"It's all extremely above board and by the book," Walsh says. "Stations are extremely careful with how they go about handling any candidate's business."

Federal law also mandates certain pricing restrictions for candidates. Riggin says a three-tiered rate card is made available to each campaign.

"Section three is the lowest unit rate, and is pre-emptible without notice," she explains. "Section two is pre-emptible with notice. Section one is the most expensive rate."

Campaign laws give candidates a "political protection window." Within 45 days preceding a primary and 60 days preceding a general election, stations must offer candidates the "lowest unit charge" for any given time period.

"If you're Jean Carnahan and you want to buy my news, then you get to purchase what is the equivalent of the lowest unit rate in that news," Walsh says. "So, if someone is paying $400 for the news, and that's our lowest rate in there, that's what Jean Carnahan should get the spot for. That's the same on every single station."

However, candidates who choose to buy at the cheaper rate may find themselves pre-empted by advertisers who are willing to pay the more expensive section one or two rates.

And it's this competition for limited timeslots that makes the political campaign season so profitable for stations, Riggin says.

"This is a demand business," she says. "As we get closer to election day, we'll sell at section one almost all day. Campaigns don't want to be pre-empted."

That includes non-political advertisers, such as General Motors, who get caught up in the programming melee.

"Other advertisers still have to run," Riggin says.

The consultants
Before a commercial gets into the hands of Riggin or Walsh, it first has to be produced. In years past, campaign staffers scripted their own commercials, hired camera crews and bought the timeslots themselves.

But Mark Farinella, a strategist for Carnahan for Senate, says political media decisions are made less and less at the campaign level, and more by powerhouse media consultants on the East Coast.

"The campaign folks will be involved to the point where we decide women 55 to 60 will be a target," Farinella says. "Then it's up to the media firm to write scripts, produce ads and buy the right timeslots to reach those people."

Farinella says most decisions are based on market research and polling data.

"The guidance to the time buyers really comes from the pollsters," he says. "In most cases the campaign staff itself doesn't provide much guidance. It's really a conversation that goes on between the pollster and the media firm."

Although most media firms are located in Washington or Philadelphia, Farinella says they are well familiar with the local audience.

"These guys place ads all over the country. So, they're familiar with all the markets," Farinella says. "They get all the usual data-how many gross ratings points each show is worth, and when each show airs and that sort of thing-and they also have relationships with sales people at each of the stations."

Bob Dudley is a senior consultant with Shorr & Associates, a Democratic media firm based in Philadelphia.

"The advantage to using consultants is experience," Dudley says. "We have many years in media planning and placement, creative production and campaign consulting."

Dudley says his firm-which works on about 20 campaigns during even-numbered years-works with pollsters, fundraisers and direct mail consultants to come up with an overall campaign strategy that works.

"We figure out where and when to spend money earmarked for media," he says. "It's a collaboration between all of the consultants and the campaign."

Most of Shorr's political consultants come from campaign backgrounds, Dudley says.

"They've worked on various campaigns, or have been campaign managers," he says. "But, I think time buyers come more from advertising agencies or media buying backgrounds."

The traffic department
Back at Channel 5, Bev Henley stares at her crowded computer screen, lined with an inscrutable display of data, wondering what answers the software program will spit out today.

Traffic has been heavy lately, she explains, which means her job is tougher than ever.

"The traffic department decides where the ads go within a certain program," Henley says.

Although campaigns are understandably particular about the shows they buy time in-ones that are watched by females aged 35-64 are their favorites-Channel 5 will not allow buyers to specify in which commercial break their ads will run. Nor do buyers have control over the order in which a string of commercials will appear. Indeed, even Henley can't control that.

"We can't tell them where they're going to fall," she says.

For each type of commercial Henley enters a "conflict code." She says there's a different code for automotive, political, restaurants, etc.

After that, the software tosses everything into the air and comes down with a schedule. If everything works out correctly, the conflict codes will keep competing advertisers from running back to back.

"You wouldn't want Talent running right after Carnahan," Riggin explains. "Just like you wouldn't want Taco Bell running right after McDonald's."
If there are too many orders and not enough time, then some ads are preempted. Riggin says the station strives to be fair.

"If I run Talent, then I have to run Carnahan," she says. "That's only fair."

Walsh says the system works the same at Channel 11.

"Everybody purchases the show for whatever rate they purchase it for and there's no preferential treatment of one over the other," he says. "If there's 10 spots in one specific show, and 10 people buy spots, then you throw them all in a bag and however it shakes out, that's how it shakes out."

Walsh says the traffic department must remain flexible.

"One minute we might have eight spots ordered for news, and half an hour later there might be 25 spots ordered for news," he says. "If they choose the lowest rate and the time period is sold out, they won't get in."

Walsh says the station rarely hears from campaigns that have complaints with the way their ads are placed.

"Frankly, with the volume of commercials these people put on, I don't think they care," he says.

Oddly enough, Riggin says this would be a slow campaign season were it not for the Talent-Carnahan race.

"That race wasn't supposed to be this year," she points out. "The years between national elections are usually called hammock years. The revenue really dips."