Early Edition

Post behind the eight ball

By Ed Bishop

Most people believe that newspapers make their money selling advertising. That's not exactly the case. Newspapers make money by selling audiences to advertisers.

It's an important distinction. Not understanding the distinction often leads the public into some wrongheaded ideas about newspapers.

For example, it's fashionable to believe that advertisers have so much sway over newspapers that they can shape news. In fact, any given advertiser needs a newspaper's audience as much as the newspaper needs a particular advertiser.

So, newspapers are in the business of gathering audiences. And the most important tool in gathering an audience is credibility. If you don't believe a newspaper is telling you the truth, why buy it? A drop in credibility means a drop in circulation which means a drop in profits. At least, theoretically.

In reality, the circulation of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch has been falling for years while profits have continued to rise. Still, the Post's credibility could reach critical mass and the whole structure collapse.

Which brings us to Pulitzer Inc. buying four percent of the Cardinals.

It couldn't come at a worse time. The extremely rich owners of the Cardinals are in the middle of trying to convince local and state politicians that hundreds of millions of dollars from public coffers should be spent to build these rich guys a new baseball stadium. The owners have managed to duck a public referendum on the deal which they would've probably lost "big time" as our Vice President likes to say. The battle for the money has mainly taken place in smoke-filled rooms.

These sorts of backroom dealings are exactly the stuff newspaper readers expect newspaper reporters to expose and explain. But, just a few days after the Post half-heartedly endorsed the public-money plan with some reservations, it announced that Pulitzer had bought into the Cardinals and their sweetheart deal. This does not raise the esteem of the Post in the eyes of a public still smarting from the financing of the downtown football stadium, the coverage of which the Post pretty much blew.

When a KDNL (Channel 30) reporter asked the new Post editor, Ellen Soeteber, about the Pulitzer deal, you could almost see the steam coming from her ears. She started to say something to the effect that if Michael Pulitzer tried to come into her newsroom and tell her... In mid sentence, she seemed to catch herself and turned a phrase that was more politic.

Maybe I'm still giddy over Cole Campbell's being gone, but there's something about this new editor that makes me believe she's a real journalist.

If anything, Pulitzer's buying a small piece of the Cardinals has seemed to focus the Post's reporting on the public financing of the proposed new baseball stadium. SJR writer Alex Posorske caught the flavor of this aggressive attitude in his report in this issue. He quotes Managing Editor Arnie Robbins as saying that the newsroom is aware that the public might have misgivings about the Post's coverage and, subsequently, they've turned it up a notch.

Still, the public perception that Post ownership has an overly cozy relationship with the St. Louis area's movers and shakers is strong. Folks like Joe Pulitzer and Bill Woo, and more recently Campbell, never really cared that the Post is viewed as elitest. They would have accepted the Pulitzer deal with the Cardinals as business as usual.

That's not to say such a deal would have influenced coverage in their newsrooms. It probably wouldn't have. (Nothing in the real world seemed to influence Campbell's newsroom.) But they didn't even care about the perception of a conflict of interest. And, as far as the newspaper business goes, the perception of a conflict of interest is as bad as a real conflict of interest.

In the past, management at the Post has actually sought out this cozy relationship with the rich and famous. Things like the VP Fair, the St. Louis Man of the Year Award and the Buder Building, where the Post embarrassed itself with its coverage, still haunt the paper.

In other words, for too long the Post has believed that it was in the business of selling advertising, when, in fact, it is in the business of gathering an audience.

Letters

Problems with SJR

SJR: Well, I started reading the March issue with the very first page of copy, the letter to the editor from Mr. Yaeger of Laclede Gas.

I don't watch TV, so I didn't see Jamie Allman's piece but if what Mr. Yaeger says is true, there was some very poor reporting on Channel 4. I noticed that elsewhere in the same issue, Tripp Frohlichstein weighs in on some problems with that same telecast, but Frohlichstein's comments have to do with specific aspects of technique in the broadcast rather than the substantive issue.

Yaeger's letter provided the perfect opportunity for SJR to get a response from Mr. Allman at the very least, and, even more usefully, obtain an independent analysis of Allman's journalism and Yaeger's complaints. I still don't know who's right. While I don't look to SJR as a definitive source of information about the politics of natural gas pricing, your readers are left with more questions than answers about the facts in the story. Did Allman get it right or not? SJR could have at least called Sheila Lumpe for comment since Frohlichstein says she was given short shrift in the TV piece. How about it?

An observation on Don Corrigan's "Fighting Hazelwood" brief: I have never understood SJR's position on school newspapers. When I had a dispute about editorial policy with my high school journalism teacher, I went off campus to publish my own "underground" newspaper. It never occurred to me that I could claim a First Amendment right to see anything and everything I wrote published in the school paper, any more than professional journalists can demand that their publisher print any particular piece of copy. The school board serves as publisher of the school newspaper. The First Amendment prohibits, for instance, the state or municipal government from dictating to a school board what it can publish. The U.S. Constitution doesn't empower high school journalism students or their faculty advisors in a dispute with the school board any more than it empowers an individual journalist or editor in the adult world against his or her employer.

Now, if the principal of my school had stopped the distribution of my privately published paper on campus, as he threatened, that would have given me a freedom of expression issue. Maybe that's why he pussied out on that threat.

As long as the school board is the party that pays the printer, the party that gets sued for libel, etc., the school board has the authority to determine the content. Would high school journalism education be improved by a more open-minded approach? Sure. Do school authorities use their position as publisher to stifle legitimate inquiry by student journalists? It happens. Are these constitutional issues? No way. Freedom of the press belongs to he who owns one. Or, in my case, freedom of the mimeograph belonged to he who rented one. In this modern day of personal web pages and a Kinko's on every corner, a student's ability to publish his work is beyond the reach of the principal.

On a different subject, I hate to quibble with Joe Pollack, but since this is not a restaurant-related point, I'll screw up my courage. His short piece in "Off the Record" regarding euphemisms in the auto insurance industry is based on an incorrect premise. Pollack says that the term "aftermarket" in regard to auto parts is a euphemism for "used." As I understand it, the term refers to auto parts that are made specifically for use as replacement parts, frequently by companies other than the original automobile manufacturers. These parts are usually new, although part of the "aftermarket" is for "rebuilt" used parts of certain types, like carburetors and brake shoes. Often, rebuilt used versions of original parts are of higher quality than comparable new parts made by dedicated "aftermarket" producers, whose products are frequently not made to the standards of the original manufacturers.

As I recall the story of the lawsuit, the dispute involved the use of new parts, but not factory authorized parts. By limiting the dollar amount available for repairs, the insurance company effectively eliminated the use of factory spec parts and forced the use of "aftermarket" parts, which typically would be newly manufactured but of inferior quality to the parts they replaced. This practice achieved a huge savings for the insurer to the detriment of the insured.

Certainly, the term "aftermarket parts" is a specific one, used throughout the industry and it does not infer that the parts are used. Perhaps the St. Louis Post-Dispatch should have done more to define this somewhat esoteric term to its readers, but the usage was neither incorrect nor euphemistic. I think it must have been a while since Joe did any work on his own car.

Watching the watch dog carefully,

Andy Ayers

University City, Mo.

Standing pat

SJR: KMOV (Channel 4 ) and I stand by every element of my report. Mr. Yaeger has continually refused to go face to face to answer direct questions. The invitation still stands.

Jamie Allman

KMOV-TV

Set straight

SJR: Thanks very much for your welcoming column and encouragement. Thanks also for the article by Dawn Grodsky. She gave the piece care and thought, which I appreciate. I do want to clarify one matter, however, so there's no misunderstanding down the road: I didn't personally win a Pulitzer Prize while at the Chicago Tribune. As the Trib's metro editor, I supervised an investigative project and a team of metro reporters who won the Pulitzer for investigative reporting. They deserve the credit, and I don't want to appear to be taking any of it from them.

Ellen Soeteber

Editor, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Present tense

SJR: Tripp Frolichstein, touched on a pet peeve of mine when he mentioned Mandy Murphey's use of the present tense in presenting a story. It seemed that he thought this unusual.

Is he not aware that most channels constantly use the present tense when presenting stories? It is most annoying. The lead story is almost universally given in the present tense.

He also touched on another pet peeve of mine-the way the stations self-aggrandize with claims of being the first to report a story. Yuk.

Finally, I copied an email to SJR that I sent to KSDK (Channel 5). I could have sent it to any station, but here it is :

It is interesting how a certain term, once misstated in one medium, catches on in other outlets of the same medium and spreads to other media as well. I am referring to hoof and mouth disease, now almost universally erroneously called foot and mouth disease on the radio, television and in newspapers and magazines. Early in the epidemic I heard it called correctly one time. After that the only time I heard it called correctly was by two television personalities not in the news department. Dave Letterman called it hoof and mouth disease and Jay Leno pointed out that cows don't have feet and wondered why they were calling foot and mouth disease instead of hoof and mouth disease. Good question!

Please be advised that the correct name for the disease is hoof and mouth disease as cows (and pigs) don't have feet. I urge you to be the first on your block to use the correct term.

Yours for excellence in broadcasting,

CT Sharp

St. Louis, Mo.

Interviewing lawyers

SJR: When I covered courts for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (off and on for most of the last 20 years before retiring), there was an attorney in Clayton who ribbingly called me Columbo. No, it wasn't my raincoat; it was my predilection to call back after an interview with "one more question." He didn't ever mind, as long as I spelled his name correctly.

Such were my recollections as I read Ken Jones' Media/Law article in last month's issue: "The fine art of lawyer interviews," to which I would like to add a few observations of my own.

First, a cooperative attorney can most helpful-lawyers being very adept at getting to the nut of the matter-and can save a reporter from chasing wild geese. However, always remember that an attorney is also an advocate; he will be sure to protect his client and cause. He can also cleverly conceal and confuse an issue when it suits his purpose.

Second, a lawyer is often better at asking questions than answering them. In that case, as Jones suggests, ask how he would explain it to a jury; trial attorneys are then especially quotable. And listen to how they examine a witness in court: shunning leading questions with yes-or-no answers, avoiding rambling responses and other legally objectionable questions, not to mention cross-examination techniques. I leaned some useful tactics from them.

Nevertheless, lawyers always seemed easier to interview than politicians, as talkative as politicos are wont to be, or bureaucrats, as uncommunicative as they tend to be. The hardest, most inarticulate were usually engineers. But the best were friendly judges; they could really make a story hit home--even when speaking off the record.

E.S. Evans

St. Louis, Mo.

More complicated

SJR: I find it truly distasteful to write anything that might be misconstrued as supportive of John Ashcroft, the Confederacy or slavery. But I also value accuracy, especially when recounting history, because so much of who we are is determined by our understanding of our past; and for the same reason I am wary of mythologizing, which seems inescapable when we start discussing Abraham Lincoln.

So let me take issue with Ed Bishop's comments, in the Feb. issue, in which he contends that the South seceded "because Lincoln had been elected president and leaders in those states were absolutely sure he would try to abolish slavery." The historical record, however, suggests that Lincoln was more of a politician than we usually credit, meaning that he spoke out of both sides of his mouth on this and other issues, depending on which audience he was addressing.

For example, although Lincoln argued against slavery on moral grounds, he also argued that a strict interpretation of the U.S. Constitution-notably in the Tenth Amendment-prevented Congress from abolishing slavery. When a proposal was advanced to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, which WAS constitutionally permissible, Lincoln said that Congress shouldn't exercise its power unless the District's residents agreed-which, comprising mostly white southerners, they did not.

It's not just defenders of the Confederacy that have commented on this ambivalence: historian Richard Hofstadter has commented on Lincoln's "uncompromising insistence on moderation."

As Howard Zinn wrote in his landmark volume, "A People's History of the United States," the Civil War was not fought over slavery but because of a clash of elites, with the Northern elite pushing for economic and political changes--protective tariffs for manufacturers, a national bank, free land and free labor--that threatened the plantation-based southern economy. Having lost that debate with the election of a president supporting the Northern agenda, the Southern states decided to go it alone. It wasn't until well into the war that Lincoln embraced the slavery issue as providing a moral justification for an increasingly bloody struggle.

In mid-1862--more than 15 months after the war had started-in response to a letter from Horace Greeley, Lincoln wrote: "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that."

The irony, of course, is that the bulk of Bishop's column is devoted to exploring the premise that "economic forces . . . prosper only when facts are hidden." Indeed. It has thus been ever so, and we are better served by identifying those forces and their agents in the past as well as in the present.

Andy Zipser

Manassas, Virginia

Measuring rod

SJR: I am writing this letter because I don't believe that mothers at or below the poverty level should be measured with the chastening rod of middle class morality. That rod is too narrow to encompass all of the pitfalls and tragedies of being poor and troubled.

Recently, Rodney McAllister, a 10-year-old child, was horrifically and tragically killed by a pack of dogs. Neighbors had called for animal control to pick the dogs up for weeks, but to no avail. Apparently, the pack of dogs attacked McAllister as he played in the park across the street from his home. A basketball, with his name inscribed on it, was left on the court. Police found the child's body near a tree. Vacant buildings, waiting to undergo urban renewal efforts, surround that particular section of the park. McAllister's mother, Gladys Loman, was jailed for negligence. She did not call to confirm her son's whereabouts at the time of the killing.

Loman was not given time to overcome the shock of the death, or the horror of how her child died, before she was handcuffed and taken to jail.

She was neglected even the minutest semblance of sympathy. If logic prevails, the tragic incidences that rendered a whole community woefully speechless and touched individuals who did not know and had never met McAllister, we can be assured that his mother also grieved the loss of her youngest son.

I did not see in any of the reports if anyone had checked to see if she had a phone, or if that phone was disconnected. Loman, who seemingly had issues to contend with, was reported to have lived in a homeless shelter upon arrival in St. Louis. However, she did manage to secure an apartment for her two sons and I didn't see in reports that her sons went hungry.

McAllister was a "B" student, so somewhere in the child's young life,

someone had to stress the importance of education. Simple items such as a phone in the home, or having a winter coat are looked upon as basic necessities by middle-class standards. In poor households, having food on the table and a roof over one's head are luxury items.

I think her portrayal was one-dimensional. McAllister's catastrophic loss of life was multi-dimensional and convoluted. I don't think all the blame should be placed on his mother. The threat to human life by a pack of dogs running through the city's streets should never have existed.

Kim Pearson

student,Washington University

St. Louis, MO

Off the Record

Anchor freaks

What you learn often depends on what section of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch you read, and also on who wrote it. For example, Harry Levins' "People" column recently noted, "Co-anchor Stuart Varney of CNN Moneyline News Hour,' has quit after feuding with network founder Ted Turner, says New York's Daily News." If Levins had checked other sources, like the Associated Press, he would have learned what the Business section did, and printed on the very same day, that Varney had walked out for four days, and then quit, partly because of anger about a Turner reference to CNN employees who observed Ash Wednesday as "Jesus freaks."

Turner later apologized, and the AP pointed out that Varney, who did not comment, reportedly also was upset because of increased focus on new correspondents and less on Varney and Willow Bay, the anchors.

-Joe Pollack

Gouging candidates

The final numbers are in for political ads in the 2000 elections and St. Louis is the winner. More campaign television spots-34,889 of them-aired in the St. Louis market than anywhere else in the United States, according to a study published by the Alliance for Better Campaigns.

It gave a nice boost to the stations' ad revenues, adding $21.6 million to

their coffers. That was the eighth highest in the nation, ahead of larger markets like Boston and Chicago.

The study also found that most stations abandoned the practice of providing candidates with the "lowest unit charge." Instead, with so much demand for time, rates averaged "65 percent above the lowest candidate rate published on the

station's rate cards," according to the ABC analysis.

-Terry Jones

Similarities

As the St. Louis Post-Dispatch places large ads in its own classified section to recruit people in all positions for a variety of the Suburban Journals, the neighborhood throwaways that Pulitzer bought last year, the Philadelphia Inquirer is about to merge or close a number of its own suburban enterprises.

The ads, almost a half-page in size, seek both full- and part-time employees as reporters, page designers, circulation people and advertising salespersons, both classified and retail. At least 22 positions are open in Journals near and far, at a number of suburban and exurban newspapers.

The advertisement also promises: "Immediate positions, positive and professional office environment, team atmosphere, managers committed to your success and growth, paid training, paid vacation, paid birthday, personal day and holidays, comprehensive benefits including medical, dental, life and a 401 (k) savings and retirement plan.

The Inquirer had a major employee buyout last fall and also will physically shrink the newspaper, as the Post is doing and recently did.

Part of the Knight Ridder organization, the Inquirer in 1997 established seven regional sections in the daily newspaper, four offering accented regional and local coverage in southern New Jersey and three doing the same in suburban areas on the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware River.

In Chester County, the Inquirer competed strongly with the Daily Local News, published in West Chester.

No longer. Beginning in April, the Pennsylvania sections will be combined into one daily section, reducing local community news but expanding regional stories. There also will be five zoned sections for Pennsylvania and three for New Jersey, but only on Thursday. The section for southern New Jersey, which runs on Sunday, will be unaffected.

-Joe Pollack

Wider choices

Some members of the committee overseeing the local Achievement in Radio (AIR) Awards say there's a need to rethink the criteria for the Lifetime Achievement Award.

This is the award, presented each year, that is supposed to spotlight an individual's significant, positive contribution to St. Louis radio and to the community. Two committee members who spoke with SJR feel there are many deserving people who are being overlooked and they questioned recent choices for the award. A spokesperson for the March of Dimes, which administers the awards nationally, said anyone who has worked in the local radio business is eligible to be nominated, even if they are no longer living. The problem, according to the spokesperson, may be that those who make the nominations may not be aware of that.

SJR has learned only three people were even nominated for the award in each of the last three years.

-Frank Absher

Doing the right thing

Publishers of major metropolitan newspapers don't often quit over matters of principle, but California always has been different. Jay T. Harris, chairman and publisher of the San Jose Mercury News, resigned in mid-March because he saw the corporate policies of Knight Ridder as a threat to the newspaper and to journalism everywhere.

The Mercury News, in the heart of Silicon Valley, has grown tremendously in recent years, following the Silicon Valley boom with extensive coverage and going far enough afield to cover events in San Francisco.

Knight Ridder, which also owns the Kansas City Star and major newspapers from coast to coast (Philadelphia Inquirer and Miami Herald, among others) had its most profitable year ever in 2000. Still, there have been corporate demands to cut costs even further, and profit goals of more than 20 per cent were regarded as too high by Harris, who said, in the resignation memo to the staff that the Knight Ridder action was a risk of "significant and lasting harm to the Mercury News as a journalistic enterprise."

Harris had been publisher for seven years, and is the highest-ranking African-American journalist in the nation.

A couple of weeks later, Knight Ridder replaced Harris with Joseph T. Natoli, who had been president of the Miami Herald. The 45-year-old Natoli would seem to be the perfect newsman for the Knight Ridder system; he spent his entire career with the Herald, beginning as an accountant in the company's suburban division, then becoming a manager at the Herald.

-Joe Pollack

Death grip

Maybe it's fallout from the disaster of the XFL. Maybe it's a new broom demonstrating its ability to sweep clean. Maybe it's a sign that some executives can buck the trend of intellectual sloppiness that has plagued television for much of its life.

In any event, Turner Broadcasting System, a division of AOL Time Warner, made March the final month for professional wrestling on its TBS and TNT cable channels.

Jamie Kellner, chief executive of the WB network, became the head of TBS during the month, and wrestling became the first program to feel the axe, or maybe the Texas Death Grip. The cable networks each had been carrying a two-hour segment from World Championship Wrestling, "Nitro" on Mondays and

"Thunder" on Wednesdays. Both shows were badly beaten up in ratings by the World Wrestling Foundation events on MTV and TNN, and losses were in eight figures.

Kellner had no comment, but a network statement read, "Basically, we've decided that professional wrestling, in its current incarnation, is not consistent with the upscale brands we've built at TBS and TNT. Therefore, we will not be carrying it."

Wrestling helped Ted Turner build his television empire, beginning on WTCG-TV, Atlanta, almost 30 years ago, but some television experts believe that it's an indication that Kellner, and AOL Time Warner, are seeking a brighter image and more affluent viewers for the networks.

-Joe Pollack

D.J. Slimmer

Okay, like many of you out there, I heard all those commercials with radio people telling us we can use Body Solutions to lose weight. Just take it before bed time three hours after your last meal and you will lose weight. Eat what you want, they told us. John Carney, John Hadley, Casey Van Allen, Randy Karraker. All of them.

Okay, I'll try it, I decided. After all the hype it must work, right?

I got the stuff and lost four or five pounds in the first few days. Water weight-but a good start, I thought. I was wrong. I never lost any more and gained the water weight back. After three months of following directions to the letter, I was up a couple pounds.

I have since figured out the trick. Maybe to lose weight, you have to be in radio. So much for print types.

-Tripp Frohlichstein

Join 'em

The giant newspaper chains like Knight Ridder and Gannett may keep getting larger and more powerful, and raising their profit demands, but the smaller ones aren't letting the grass on the path to higher profits grow under their feet. Nine groups have pooled resources and joined in a venture to buy more small newspapers around the country.

The group, calling itself Family Newspapers of America, will focus on newspapers whose circulations are between 25,000 and 75,000, and while the primary focus is on family owned papers, the new purchasing combination may consider publicly owned properties as well.

Richard K. Larson, chairman of Swift Newspapers, Reno, Nev., spoke for the consortium when he said, "Our feeling is that papers that are family-run are usually looking for a good home for their newspapers. While I don't mean any disrespect to the big players, we are long-term investors. We feel we can pay market rates for our newspapers but with the added advantage of making the seller sleep better since it's in good hands."

George Wilson, chief executive of Newspapers of New England, Concord, N. H., added that the group doesn't want to encourage private owners to sell-of course not, they just formed a company to give themselves two tables of bridge-and continued, "By emphasizing the values of family ownership, we hope to give encouragement to those owners who wish to remain independent."

This sort of fatuous reasoning might make one wonder why they got together in the first place, and also sparks the danger signal that waves in front of individuals any time someone decides to act with "family" as the focal point, like Joe Ortwerth and the Family Arena in St. Charles.

Others in the group who want to buy newspapers but really don't want to buy them unless the seller begs, are Gazette Communications, Inc., Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Calkins Newspapers, Levittown, Pa.; the Eagle-Tribune Company, North Andover, Mass.; Times Publishing, Erie, Pa.; the ScrantonTimes, Scranton, Pa.; the American Republican, Waterbury, Conn.; and the Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Wash.

-Joe Pollack

AM/FM

Karraker moves to KTRS

By Lynn Venhaus

Class act Randy Karraker has left his only radio home, KMOX (1120AM), for the greener pastures of rival talk station KTRS (550AM).

Karraker was unable to reach a satisfactory agreement with KMOX, where he had been working since 1984, first as a producer, then as a sports open-line host. "It was the only real job that I've ever had," he said.

He signed a three-year contract with KTRS that gives him the freedom he wanted-opportunities to do more cable TV play-by-play and also take advantage of other options, he said.

"I'm really excited about it. I think we can do some great things. They are an established radio station now, and with Frank O. Pinion as a lead-in, it can only be good for me," he said.

Known for his vast knowledge of sports and his excellent rapport with callers, Karraker's a well-respected veteran whose announcement raised more than a few eyebrows around town, considerably boosting KTRS' profile.

"This is a big move for us," said Fred Zielonko, KTRS operations manager. "We look forward to having him here."

It will be like old home week for Karraker, as he worked with Zielonko and sports director Jim Holder for years at KMOX, as well as station owner Tim Dorsey.

"I'm already hitting the ground running," an enthusiastic Karraker said.

Beginning April 2 , Karraker hosts "The Big Sports Show" from 6 to 8 p.m. Monday through Friday and will alternate with the Sunday morning sports show. He'll also take part in St. Louis Blues' pre-game shows. On the TV end, Karraker said he is developing a sports show with Charter Communications that would be a localized version of ESPN's "Sports Reporters." Because of Charter's purchase of AT&T Broadband, "they want to do more local programming," he said.

Karraker can also do play-by-play for football and basketball games on local cable and will be allowed to pursue regional opportunities with Fox Sports Midwest and ESPN.

"This is the direction I wanted to move in. KTRS has been really great

about it. I have wanted to do play-by-play ever since I was a little kid," Karraker said.

• • •

After 11 years on community radio KDHX (88.1FM), Roy St. John signed off as the morning host March 27 and within days had a new offer from WEW (770AM). As of April 3, St. John and longtime partner Otis Woodard will anchor an evening show from 7 to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday at St. Louis' oldest station.

St. John said he was "surprised and delighted" by the offer from station manager Rich Vannoy. "They are very excited to have us and we are thrilled with the new station," St. John said.

The new show will feature more emphasis on swing music, he said, which is "a favorite of ours already."

The pair had been the longest-running team in St. Louis morning radio and frequently topped the "Best of" polls in the Riverfront Times.

At KDHX, guest hosts are currently filling the morning drive time.

• • •

A reduction in force by Emmis Communications nation-wide affected several popular St. Louis radio fixtures last month. Among the 100 slashed March 1 were Al Hofer, K.C. Clark, Dave Kelly, Carl Middleman and Pete Matusak at KSHE (94.7 FM) and Michelle Kent and Jonny King at K-HITS96 (KIHT 96.3FM).

The ever-reliable Hofer, who spent 20 years as part of KSHE's Real Rock Army, was yanked from his 1 to 3 p.m. weekday shift and replaced on-air by Katy Kruze and as assistant program director by Marty Linck, the former program director at The Rock (KXOK 97.1FM). At KSHE, Clark was on overnights and Matusak was weekends. Kelly was the general manager and Middleman was the promotions director.

At K-HITS, total pro Kent was a longtime jock who manned "The Night Shift" evenings, and King was heard overnights.

The laid-off employees received substantial severance packages from Emmis, with the stipulation that they could not talk about it for two years.

Those contacted declined to comment.

The announcement may have stunned local radio folks, but it's the way of the business these days. Emmis' moves are indicative of corporate ownership across the country-the major companies are making business decisions to consolidate and eliminate duplication at the cluster stations while cutting high-salaried personnel in favor of cheaper talent.

• • •

In a belt-tightening move, the locally-owned SportsTalk KFNS (590AM, 100.7FM) cut four employees March 30. Jeff Gordon, a St. Louis Post-Dispatch sports columnist who co-hosted the 9 to 11 a.m. weekday show "Pressbox" with Frank Cusumano, has been let go, along with fitness expert Heather Hawk, operations supervisor Jason Posey and administrative assistant Jeannine Bailey.

Gordon did not have a contract. Cusumano, a KSDK sportscaster, will continue as solo host.

President Greg Marecek could not be reached for comment prior to deadline. The station employs about 40 people.

• • •

Clear Channel has shifted KLOU (103.3FM)'s Program Director Mike Wheeler to Z107 (KSLZ 107.7FM), replacing Jeff Kapugi who returned to his previous post at Tampa's WLFZ (93.3FM). At the Oldies station, midday DJ Dana Daniels has been promoted to program director while still keeping her 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. gig.

Z's lineup has undergone some changes, with music director Kandy Klutch gone from midday and Jana from Indianapolis filling both positions. Shoe, who won the AIR Award for Best New Talent, departs the midnight to 3 a.m. shift and his creative services duties for Portland, Ore.

The hard-working Kapugi took over the Z reins about two and a half years ago, bringing the Tampa-based MJ and BJ morning show with him. The morning show remains in St. Louis for now, but rumors persist that Clear Channel may use the syndicated Rick Dees show from affiliate KIIS-FM in Los Angeles.

During his tenure here, Kapugi had always wrestled with "live and local" vs. syndicated, but was a big fan of MJ and BJ's entertainment value. In Tampa, the show had been the top-rated morning show for six straight years.

In St. Louis, the tape-delayed show had gotten decent ratings to save it from the chopping block.

The contemporary hit station's target audience is women age 18-34.

• • •

Jason Merrill, former producer of KMOX's Total Information AM, is now working in public relations at Barnes-Jewish Hospital. Tim Albright is the new morning producer.

Radio History

Multiple frequency

By Frank Absher

Anyone who remembers the Dogpatch characters created by the late cartoonist Al Capp will probably remember Joe Btfsplk. He was the poor soul who walked around with a black cloud hanging over his head. For him there was never much chance of basking in the sunshine of good fortune. So, it seems, was the fate of radio station KFQA in St. Louis.

Owned and operated by The Principia, KFQA hit the airwaves May 9, 1924. In those days The Principia was not at Elsah, Ill. as it is now. It was located in St. Louis' West End at 5539 Page. A bill of sale from Western Electric Company shows the entire equipment package cost less than $5,000, installed. In fact, the school paid to bring in a special radio engineer from Chicago to handle the installation, and he charged them $1.90 to cover expenses for two meals. All these costs were paid by a benefactor, Clarence Howard, chairman of the American fails to cover death threat board of General Steel Castings in Granite City.

Two 62-feet masts were constructed atop Howard Gymnasium 85 feet apart and the aerial was strung between them. The studio was built in a 12 foot by 12 foot room, and the first transmitter had a power of 50 watts. There were unconfirmed reports of reception of KFQA along the Eastern seaboard.

It is clear from all documents in The Principia archives that the primary raison d'etre for the station was to broadcast local Christian Science church services and lectures.

In radio's early days two or three stations were often required to share the same frequency, and when KMOX signed on in December of 1924, it was given the same frequency as KFQA. Along with KFQA's new neighbor came a new, powerful transmitter, 5,000 watts. The Principia station would be allowed to broadcast, without charge, over the frequency 104 hours a year. This arrangement had a two-year life span, and then KFQA had to start paying for broadcast time, which totaled about 64 hours a year. The cost, including remote line charges, would be $5,327.

Soon the Federal Radio Commission began to question whether The Principia should be allowed to continue operating a radio station. KFQA had been forced to change frequencies in 1927, from 1150 Kc. to 1210 Kc. (shared with WMAY), and later to 1280 Kc. (shared with KWK and WMAY). In May 1928 the station was ordered to leave the air, but it was back on in October of that year, again sharing a frequency with KMOX.

It was an interesting arrangement. KMOX was obligated to broadcast the Christian Science church services. KFQA was obligated to buy shares of the corporation owning KMOX and pay the station the equivalent ad rates for the broadcast time. And KMOX would be identified as KFQA during those broadcasts.

This arrangement, convoluted as it was, stayed in place until July 1930, when the Federal Radio Commission deleted the call letters of KFQA from its active files.

American fails to cover death threat

By Tammy Merrett

Death threats are a serious matter. And, no matter how you look at them, they're news.

Yet, when the Rev. Earl Nance Jr.'s life was threatened because of his personal endorsement of Francis Slay as the Democratic candidate for mayor of St. Louis, it was not covered in the St. Louis American. Slay is white.

It is not uncommon to see pictures of Nance in the American, nor is it uncommon to read stories about him and colleagues from the St. Louis Metropolitan Clergy Coalition fighting for such causes as voters' rights or asking for help for the needy to pay their utility bills.

So when Nance received telephone calls warning of putting a bullet in his head and setting fire to his church because of his political endorsement, it would be reasonable to expect the American, St. Louis' leading black weekly newspaper, to cover it.

St. Louis American City Editor Alvin A. Reid said that the lack of coverage was simple to explain.

"Rev. Nance was on the TV and radio announcing his death threats, but he didn't tell the American. You'll have to ask Rev. Nance why he didn't come to us," Reid said.

Reid said Nance had spoken with the American twice the day that the news broke on radio and television in St. Louis, but he didn't mention the death threats. However, there was no coverage or follow-up in the American after the story broke either. Even local television stations managed to follow up on the story with features about Nance's emotional sermon from the pulpit the following Sunday at church.

"After that it was eight days later. We had gone on to the next thing," Reid said. Reid also said there was no discussion in the newsroom at the American about covering or not covering the story because of timeliness issues.

That seems a plausible explanation. But, given the way Nance had been treated in print in the American because of his endorsement of Slay, it also raises questions. On the front page of the Feb. 15-21 issue of the American, the headline on the story about Nance's endorsement read: "Clay Jr. backs Bosley; Nance does a dance for Slay" with a kicker that read, "Rev. B.T. Rice: Nance 'being manipulated.'"

The article featured Rev. B.T. Rice's reaction to Nance's personal endorsement. The Clergy Coalition does not endorse candidates, according to Nance, but Rice called Nance's choice "divisive." The article went on to portray Nance as being at odds with the membership of the coalition, which Rev. Nance disputes.

"It gave the impression that the Clergy Coalition was split, divided by what I've done, and it wasn't," Nance told SJR.

Nance said that he did have support of his decision among members of the Clergy Coalition and that, even if he did not, it did not mean that he and the organization were at odds.

Nance said that he did indeed talk to the American the day the news of the threats broke, but did not talk about the threats themselves. He said he did not plan to talk to any media about it, but a reporter showed up at his door following up on a tip. So, he made a statement.

"I hadn't intended for it to be a media event," Nance said, adding that he did not call the American back to tell them about the threats. "I thought the American might have mistaken it as me putting it out in the white media instead of the American," Nance said. "But even after the story broke, no one called me."

Reid did not comment on the story or how it portrayed Nance other than to say that if Nance had told him about the threats, it would have been in that story. Since the endorsement story, there have been occasional jabs at Nance in print accusing him of abdicating and defecting from the Clergy Coalition as well as being responsible for the "whitening" of the city's fiscal panel. "Who needs enemies when black folks have nobody to blame but themselves?" Political Eye columnist Mark Wilson wrote.

"I didn't like how the American put it, but that's their prerogative. I guess they felt stiffed by me," Nance said.

He said he wrote a note to Ishmael Lateef Ahmad, the American's senior writer and co-author of the original story, about the endorsement. "I didn't appreciate it. I didn't appreciate the way it was put," Nance said. "The American didn't understand that I made a commitment before Bosley entered the race and I was going to honor that commitment."

If he had not already committed to endorsing Slay, Nance said he might have endorsed Bosley.

"I supported him twice before," Nance said. "We had two outstanding candidates (Bosley and Slay), both friends of mine. I didn't want to see them run against each other. It put me on the spot."

Nance said his congregation has supported him in his decision to endorse Slay and that many did not appreciate Rev. Rice's comments.

"I'm more furious about his comments than I am at the American," Nance said

Media/Politics

Post misses important business story

By Terry Jones

It would have been easy to miss it: only three sentences, published in the Saturday edition, located on the lower left hand side of the business section's second page.

Here it is, verbatim, from the Feb. 24, St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

The Regional Business Council has declared independence from the St. Louis Regional Chamber and Growth Association. The RCGA set up the council last year to help chief executives of medium-sized companies focus their energies on important civic issues. Kathleen T. Osborn, a senior vice president of the RCGA, will become the council's executive director, effective Thursday.

It's an event that raises intriguing and important issues about power and governance in the St. Louis region, but the Post did not pursue any of them.

The newspaper of record's answer to "Whassup" was "Nothing."

When the Founding Fathers wrote the nation's Declaration of Independence in 1776, they set forth the reasons for rejecting Great Britain. "A decent respect to the opinions of mankind," they stated, "requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to separation."

Why, then, did the Regional Business Council set off on its own less than 14 months after its formation was announced by the RCGA? Is there a struggle within the area's businesses about who speaks for the private sector? Are their differences about priorities, strategies and tactics?

Does a separate Regional Business Council mean a diminished RCGA and a weaker Civic Progress? Is big business, which often preaches consolidation for local governments, now mimicking the public sector's fragmentary bent?

Let's follow two of these strands: the RCGA-RBC relationship and the Civic Progress-RBC connection. In the Feb. 23, 2001, St. Louis Business Journal's 13-paragraph story on the split, one of the RBC members, J.S. Alberici Construction head Robert McCoole, after saying he does not want "to be critical of it (RCGA)," then proceeds to do just that, commenting that while "RCGA makes things happen just by showing up, they do not move quickly, deftly or secretly."

Ever since he arrived in St. Louis in 1994, RCGA head Richard Fleming has worked to unite the region's economic development efforts. He has moved the many public and private actors from backbiting competition to fruitful cooperation, with the MasterCard/Winghaven deal just one example. It was his idea to initiate the RBC and one of the reasons he recruited Kathy Osborn from the University of Missouri-St. Louis was to make it happen. Now

RBC has left Fleming's fold and taken Osborn with it.

Although the Business Journal article has Fleming putting a positive face on the RBC departure ("the evolution...from a fledgling under RCGA's auspices to independence is a testament to St. Louis"), it is difficult to imagine that this was how he wanted it to play out. Will the 70 RBC members, which include the publishers of the Business Journal, the Post, and the St. Louis American, faithfully follow the RCGA strategic plan ("Shaping a Greater St. Louis") for economic development or will they set off in a different direction?

As for Civic Progress, is RBC now partner or competitor or subsidiary or farm team or some of each? Once Civic Progress required all its members to be headquartered in St. Louis, save for Robert Hyland's notable exception.

Now only about two-thirds meet that condition, including its current

president, Thomas Jacobsen, once Mercantile's CEO but now, two bank buyouts later, part of the larger U.S. Bancorp. The RBC members are more home grown, setting up a possible conflict between the branch managers and the locals.

Although Civic Progress adds a new member now and then-the most recent is David Steward, World Wide Technology's CEO-it has always made it clear that the roster should never go much beyond 30 corporations. To what extent is RBC a reaction to this informal barrier, an announcement that the next tier of business leaders are no longer willing to wait their turn to enter Civic Progress and instead are forming their own club?

In a capitalist society and especially for a governmentally fragmented region, how business organizes its civic involvement is big news. The local public sector is inherently weak, deliberately constrained by state government and other forces. Most major public policy actions in the St. Louis metropolitan area require some public-private partnership. Unless business comes to the dance, it is rarely held.

That is why the Regional Business Council's decision to become its own separate entity is front page stuff, meriting thorough coverage complete with the answers to tough questions. If 70 significant enterprises are, in McCoole's words, going to move "quickly, deftly, (and) secretly" on public policy issues, then the public, through its media, needs to know about it.

Sports/Media

Sports overlap gets worse

By Joe Pollack

Once upon a time, sports knew-as does the Bible-that to everything there was a season and that in the spring, the voice of the turtle (either real or metaphorical) was heard in the land.

No more. The overlap gets worse and worse, as long as television needs something to fill its screen while announcers babble endlessly and nonsensically, and now baseball begins the day before the college basketball champion is crowned, and sports are contested on a year-round basis.

In addition, right after the World Series and the Super Bowl bring baseball and football, respectively, to a merciful close, the economic side of sports begins, with free agents and salary caps and deferred payments discussed in a sea of recriminations that boggles the mind. If they only spoke with as much sense as the turtle. . .

Like many baseball teams, the Cardinals have had injury problems during spring training, not as serious as, say, the Yankees (Derek Jeter) and the Red Sox (Nomar Garciaparra), but enough to bring some worry to town to accompany the Birds for their home opener in April.

The Cardinals should win in their division, but I remain concerned about their pitching, which turned sour in the post-season last October and does not seem to be that much improved today. I like Darryl Kile, but I worry about the Benes brothers and Matt Morris in terms of injuries, and about Rick Ankiel, period. Dustin Hermanson may be the real thing, but he's young. I quake with fear whenever Dave Veres comes into a game, and I'm not a great fan of setup men Mike Timlin and Mike James. There's a desperate need for a lefthander in the bullpen, and I'm dubious over whether Steve Kline or Jason Christiansen is the answer. In other words, I have a lot of concerns.

Offensively, Mark McGwire and Jim Edmonds are the big men, but there are strong bats up and down the lineup. If Mike Matheny and Eli Marrero stay healthy, the catching will be solid, and by the time we get into the season a month or so, maybe Kelli Johnson, the new sportscaster at KSDK (Channel 5), will understand that his name is Eli and not Ellie. Regardless of where he starts the season, hot rookie Albert Pujols will spend most of the year in St. Louis, and I think he'll help. Bobby Bonilla and Bernard Gilkey are showing their age, and Ray Lankford seems to be showing some attitude. He told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that the fact he's a major league veteran should cause umpires to give him better ball-and-strike calls than they would give a rookie. And he still shows a tendency to strike out too much.

I think the Cardinals' management should have done more in the off season to fill the gaps, and I hope Tony La Russa has done a better job in teaching fundamentals this year than he did last year when the players made far too many basic mistakes, both physical and mental.

• • •

If the hiring of Dennis Miller and Eric Dickerson were the defining moments of Don Ohlmeyer's return from retirement to once again become the producer of Monday Night Football for ABC, well, he has brought us low-definition television.

But Ohlmeyer has decided to pack it in again, returning to the easy life where he paints and takes college-level courses in German expressionism.

He came back to the truck last year after watching the second-rate work in 1999, and he promptly hired Miller, the largest Band-aid ever stuck to a critical wound. The gamble failed, and Miller, who could not negotiate the traffic in a crowded, three-person booth was not the solution in any way, shape or form. His commentaries were mostly banal and meaningless, but more important is the fact that setting up a Miller joke takes a rather long time, a luxury he never had during football games. Without the tough and experienced Ohlmeyer to rein him in, Miller may ride roughshod over Al Michaels and Dan Fouts. The selection of Miller, however, can be defended as a gimmick with potential, as a move that had a chance.

Adding Dickerson to the mix was a mess, and Ohlmeyer has to take the blame for that one; Dickerson never got untracked, asked truly dumb questions-even by the standards of network television-and seemed totally lost on the field. Very surprising that a man of Ohlmeyer's experience would hire someone with Dickerson's credentials.

The change in graphics was mostly an addition of flash and dash and trash, the usual television pattern of style over substance, but maybe we'll get used to it with another year.

Howard Katz, president of ABC sports, repeated all the usual kind words, and Michaels, a solid play-by-play man who will be back in the booth for his 16th season, added, somewhat strangely, "If there's a legacy to what he did in 2000, it's that Don is not afraid of anything. It's like the shackles are off."

And so were the ratings for ABC's top-rated prime time program; they

declined seven percent from 1999 to a 12.7, the lowest ever.

Post restructuring may mean personnel changes

By Joe Pollack

The march of Public Journalism through the newsroom of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, while not quite as destructive as the march of the Khmer Rouge through Cambodia, certainly left a swath of damage across the 70-year-old building where the newspaper lives. One could never compare Pol Pot with Cole Campbell, but the Norfolk nightmare put into seats of power a large number of people with no knowledge of St. Louis and its peculiarities, with no historical memory and little interest in gaining one.

A new day seems to be dawning, with Ellen Soeteber in charge of a more traditional newspaper structure-one with emphasis on news and a table of organization that restores some of the old chains of command. And, without saying so, apparently it has brought an end to "team" journalism in favor of a staff whose job will be to report the news-not to create it.

The new newsroom organization chart-and it blessedly says "organization" and not the trendy, artificial "organizational"-has Soeteber, as editor, alone at the top, though presumably answering to Terry Egger and Robert Woodworth at the very top of the heap. Beneath are the managing editor and the editorial page editor, equal but separate, to paraphrase the old racial makeup of the South before Brown v. Board of Education. The former has seven assistant managing editors (or AMEs), while the latter is off to the side, without a group of subsidiaries.

At the moment, Arnie Robbins is the managing editor and Christine Bertelson the editor of the editorial page, though neither has been announced as remaining in their present jobs. Only one of the AMEs is set, with Richard Weil becoming AME/Projects, which could be considered a demotion from executive editor, a title and a job that no longer exists. Weil will oversee a couple of investigative reporters, the computer-assisted reporting department, research and liaison with the newspaper's attorneys.

The other six posts, and staffs, are:

• AME/Business Editor: Assistants for coverage and sections, business coverage team, technology writers

• AME/Editing and Presentation: Copy desk, design, photo, graphics, systems administration, technology manager and zone production

• AME/Features Editor: Assistants for coverage and sections, all feature and arts and entertainment writers and support staff

• AME/Metro Editor: Day editor, night metro editor, zones editor, current coverage teams, current zones coverage teams, columnists, science writers, community outreach

• AME/News Editor: Sunday editor, Imagine St. Louis/News Analysis, pages 1A and 1B, night news editor, wire desk, Washington bureau

• AME/Sports Editor: Assistants for coverage and sections, sports

writers and columnists

Apparently all of the usual suspects came out of the woodwork to apply-more than a dozen for the features post, more than that for AME/Metro. The guidelines ask all the right questions and seek the standard qualifications, and in at least some areas, it would appear that a major amount of work is on the agenda.

Soeteber also announced a few changes in the higher echelons-the job of director of writing programs (Dick Weiss) is abandoned, as is the post of Readers' Advocate (Carolyn Kingcade). A couple of lines of responsibility also will change-the newsroom administrator (Laszlo Domjan) now will report directly to Soeteber, and the director of recruiting (Cynthia Todd) will report to the managing editor.

In her memo, Soeteber indicated that she hoped most of the AMEs would come from current Post personnel, but she reserved the right to go outside. Originally, she had hoped to fill the positions during the week of April 8, but the process apparently will take a little longer.

Those who don't achieve the high levels for which they are campaigning will have a softer sword to fall upon. The buyout program in operation among the advertising department will be offered to editorial employees at the end of the reorganization process, and it's fair to guess that a number of losers will be on their way out. The buyout offers at least a week's pay for every year, plus some additional sweetening, and those who have been around 25 years or so will collect more than $50,000, plus pension and health insurance.

It's going to be interesting for a while and, as a Hunter Thompson wanna-be wrote in a mock headline for the memo, "Ellen returns to traditional newsroom structure, Weil returns to journalism, Staff returns to fear and loathing."

P(l)ay ball

How politicians and the local media are handling public funding for a new baseball stadium

Two points of general consensus about the use of public funds for building the Cardinals a new stadium seem to have formed. First, most Missourians do not believe public money should be used. And, second, most Missourians believe public money will be used.

Or, as one leading St. Louis journalist puts it, "The fix is in."

Have the local media reported this story in a fair and balanced way? And have the politicians in Jefferson City acted on the will of their constituency?

By Don Corrigan

When state legislators met this March with the pack of heavy hitters demanding a new downtown stadium for the St. Louis Cardinals, some in the press described the unusual encounter in Jefferson City as a "lovefest."

Few lobbyists for public money, tax breaks and numerous other special considerations are afforded such red carpet treatment in the State Capitol. Then, again, very few such delegations include celebrities like broadcast hall of famer Jack Buck and legendary base stealer Lou Brock.

While there were lots of smiles, glad-handing and banter in Jefferson City, there was also an underlying tension. The stakes are very high in this quest by Cardinal owners to get state help in razing and replacing the 35-year-old Busch Stadium.

Many legislators are reluctant to cross the baseball team owners who have threatened to move the franchise if they don't get a new stadium. Those same legislators are reluctant to cross angry constituents-taxpayers who are clamoring against subsidies to fund a questionable sports edifice to benefit multi-millionaires.

Owners of the Cardinals are asking legislators to okay a plan to give the St. Louis Sports Authority power to issue bonds to build a replacement for Busch. Under the plan, the team would put up $100 million toward the $370 million deal. Taxpayers would be responsible for the rest. The state would ante up about $6 million annually to pay for the project out of sales taxes generated by the new facility.

William O. DeWitt Jr., the chairman and majority owner of the Cardinals, told legislators the team would suffer without a new stadium. He said the Cardinals cannot acquire new talent, and remain a force in baseball, without a state-of-the-art facility that generates more revenue. DeWitt and company told state legislators they can have a competitive ball team, an invigorated St. Louis downtown, and a magnetic development to attract tourists and fans, if they make the tough decision to fund a new stadium.

"Absolutely unconscionable"

For Missouri Rep. Jim Murphy, R-Crestwood, there's nothing tough about a decision on the new stadium plan. He calls it "morally bankrupt," "absolutely unconscionable," "outright theft"-and that's when he is feeling polite. Murphy was outraged when no dissident voices were allowed to be heard at an afternoon committee when the House entertained the Cardinals in March. The organization behind the new stadium proposal is just "a gang of itinerant sports hustlers," according to Murphy.

"The owners are playing this thing brilliantly," said Murphy. "They came to the capitol and blinded the eyes of legislators with their celebrities, and there's much more to come. These are hustlers. They've already cleared the big hurdle. They got rid of the law that said if financing included state funds, the citizens of Missouri had to vote on it. It's gone. Now all they have to do is pick off 100 legislators."

Murphy said he has spent "an inordinate amount" of time studying the stadium bill, the owners of the team, and their past history. He has dubbed Andrew Baur, Fred Hanser and DeWitt as the "Country Day Welfare Trio," because the three owners, who all attended the expensive preparatory school together, are now seeking public tax money.

"The DeWitt family has been making millions off stadium and team deals for years," said Murphy. "I understand that they're hated in Cincinnati because they took the Reds and sold off their best talent and then dumped the team.

"In Texas, they needed some local help with the Rangers, so they fronted George W. Bush $600,000 to be a partner in the team," continued Murphy. "They got their new publicly financed stadium, inflated the price of the franchise at the public trough, and then dumped it. George W.'s share with the sale was $14 million."

Murphy refers to the current proposal in Missouri to allow sales tax money generated at the stadium to pay off bonds as "the big steal." He said the plan is even more reprehensible when taxpayers will ultimately be responsible for the bonds in the event of default.

"What kind of precedent are we establishing here?" asked Murphy. "What if Famous-Barr told us they want all the sales tax they generate on their retail to build their stores? What if they said: 'You give it to us or we are leaving your town?'

"I admire this proposed stadium deal from a business standpoint," added Murphy. "From a business standpoint, if they can get away with it, it's sheer genius. From the standpoint of civic responsibility, it's the work of rapists."

Murphy said he thinks the stadium proposal will not pass the legislature, "if the facts are allowed to get out." He said he was flabbergasted that the St. Louis Post-Dispatch endorsed the plan in its March 18 Sunday edition that included graphics of a proposed Ball Park Village that would be adjacent to the new stadium.

"I think the daily paper is closing its eyes, pretending the sales tax money isn't really going to be lost, because it will be plowed back into the stadium," said Murphy. "But we have a really tight state budget now. Either taxes are going to have to be raised to make up for the loss, or we are going to have to cut more essential services in health, transportation and in our schools.

"There's a suggestion that the sales tax will be made up with the new Ball Park Village-with some shops and an aquarium," said Murphy. "Those things have been promised in other cities facing stadium deals. They haven't materialized.

"Who is going to build this village?" added Murphy. "Is it in the bill for the stadium plan? No, it's not there. It's somebody's dream. It's just a bunch of whipped cream on a poison pie."

"We have to act"

Sen. Anita Yeckel, R-Sunset Hills, said she came away "much more hopeful" and upbeat from the March meeting with Cardinals owners. She said their plan seems "much less like a tax giveaway" with the team owners talking about a $100 million contribution to the project.

What's more, Yeckel said she is impressed with the Ball Park Village concept that would have restaurants and retail stores adjacent to the new stadium. She said the Village, with its businesses and attractive outdoor plaza, could provide a turning point for downtown revitalization.

"We have to act," said Yeckel. "Our downtown has to find a way to rebuild, to turn itself around and to grow. A new stadium and the Ball Park Village and the Cupples complex are all part of this. That's why we can't afford to have this team pack up and go elsewhere."

Yeckel has little patience with the kind of negativism about the stadium development expressed by Murphy and others. She said there is "a kind populism" among some in St. Louis that involves envy against those who have the resources and the wherewithal to do the city some good.

"I know, I've heard the complaining about how much the owners will make out of this," added Yeckel. "I think we need to concentrate on what it will do for us as a city and a region. We obviously in the legislature want the value of the franchise to go up for both the owners and for St. Louis."

Yeckel said she is keenly aware that there are substantial political risks for legislators in making the stadium decision.Yeckel said that if major league baseball does not resolve its problems with sharing television revenues and capping exorbitant player salaries, a new stadium will not be the answer to future woes of the St. Louis Cardinals. Nevertheless, Yeckel said she feels the city and the region have to act.

"No doubt about it," said Yeckel. "I am going to listen to my constituents. Up to now they have been pretty negative about it. I do sense that that might be turning around.

"If I decide to support the new stadium plan, I will explain to people why I made the decision and let them decide whether I made the right choice," said Yeckel. "It's a tough decision."

"Best deal possible"

State Sen. Michael Gibbons, R-Kirkwood, said the legislature must craft a stadium bill that gets "the best deal possible for taxpayers." Gibbons, who heads the Ways and Means Committee, said that may mean the Cardinals' owners have to pick up more of the development costs. He said that may mean giving the public the benefits from naming the stadium, a potential revenue stream that the owners have said they want to keep in their coffers.

"The proposal that they put in front of us is extraordinarily broad and open ended," said state Sen. Mike Gibbons, R-Kirkwood. "The devil is in the details. Some of the promises made have to be nailed down in the bill. It's my sense that the Ways and Means Committee will not rush this out.

"The House members may have had a lovefest, but we asked this group a lot of hard questions," insisted Gibbons, regarding the March visit by celebrities advocating the new stadium. "We don't want to leave Missouri with a taxpayer boondoggle. We are very concerned about what we end up with."

One of the things that concerns Gibbons is the question of who picks up the annual payments on stadium bonds if the owners default. What if poor baseball seasons cause a lag in the revenue that is supposed to cover the annual payments on the bonds?

Gibbons noted that as the funding bill is presently worded, the Sports Authority will inform the governor in the event of a default. The governor will inform the legislature. The legislature has the option to do nothing, but that would send Missouri's bond rating down the sewer, with dire economic consequences for the state.

"The celebrities who visited us pushing the new stadium were saying that the Ball Park Village would make up for the sales tax loss from the stadium plan," observed Gibbons. "But that Village is just a dream. Rep. Murphy is right about that. It is not a part of SB 523 (the stadium bill). I don't know that there's any way we can guarantee that it will happen.

"The worst situation would be for us to be building the new stadium while baseball is on strike because the players want their millions and won't accept a contract," said Gibbons. "The fans might be sour for years and boycott baseball. We could all end up looking like real idiots. The political consequences of this decision are enormous."

By Alex Posorske

If you ask the St. Louis media, they think they've been doing a pretty good job looking into the whole stadium mess.

"Overall I think the local media is doing a fine job of covering it," said KMOX's Charles Jaco. "They've been asking all the questions that the Cardinals haven't raised."

Jaco said those questions included the basics of whether taxpayers should be subsidizing a private entity such as the Cardinals, instead of just reciting the Cardinals' mantra that there is no other option due to current economic conditions in major league baseball.

He also gave local coverage kudos for looking in depth at some of the happenings in Jefferson City as well as raising the issue of the Texas Rangers.

In Texas, as some might recall, Cardinals' owner Bill Dewitt was part of another group of investors that managed to wrangle public funding for a new stadium. After the new stadium was built the team's net worth skyrocketed and the new owners sold out for a rather large profit.

As some have pointed out, our beloved current president George W. Bush made enough of a fortune of that deal to be able to run for governor and then, of course, bigger and better things.

Jaco had some specific praise for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

"Sometimes the media in this town has been known to roll over and play dead for the usual suspects, the movers and shakers. (But) the Post has been very much on this," he said. "I don't think the Post has succumbed to civic boostering. I think they've done a hell of a better job than if Cole Campbell were still here."

He noted that the Cardinals felt a necessity to buy a full-page ad in the Post and Jefferson City News Tribune on Sunday, March 11 to make their case directly to the public.

Jaco said the ad (headlined, "If players are honored with statues, then what do you build for the game's greatest fans?") was evidence that the Post had not rolled over for the Cardinals' talk of revitalizing downtown. If the Post had, he said, there would have been no need to spend the advertising money.

Jaco also pointed out that the Post has endorsed the Cardinals' plan on its editorial page several times, but with noted reservations and with several additional conditions that the Cardinals pay more to the city and state than they have currently offered.

Post Deputy Editorial Page Editor William Freivogel agreed with Jaco's assessment.

"I think it's been balanced," he said. "We've tried to look at the issues realistically, talk to the various sides in the dispute and take a position that we thought was best for the city of St. Louis."

Freivogel also thought the news coverage was balanced. He pointed out that a story was run after Pulitzer Chairman Michael Pulitzer bought a four percent interest in the Cardinals. That story ran on the front page of the March 23 issue and included Editor-in-Chief Ellen Soeteber saying the move would not affect the Post's coverage of the Cardinals.

The Post also ran an editorial on March 25 entitled "A Question of Independence" that discussed the possible Pulitzer dilemma/influence.

Post Managing Editor Arnie Robbins said the possibility that the Pulitzer situation could result in a perception of skewed coverage by the Post only makes the newsroom work harder.

"I want to be really aggressive," he said. "If we get beat, people will say, 'Oh, the Post-Dispatch looked the other way.'"

Of course, balanced coverage in this case is to some degree a code phrase that means has enough thought been given to the folks that are skeptical of the Cardinals' stadium plan?

After all, the Cardinals are a large, rich organization that can churn out press releases much faster than individuals opposed to the plan who have yet to form an organized group and wrap it in a nice, tight, media-friendly package. Robbins even complimented the Cardinals' public relations machine.

Looking at the issue in that fashion, one could come to the conclusion that the Post has done a decent job working with a limited amount of "experts" on the topic.

Its "Imagine" section from March 18 quoted several architects who said the Cardinals' plan for downtown might not work as well as they say.

The Post's Jefferson City bureau has also done a good job of highlighting opposition to the plan by legislators, especially when the only blatant public opposition has come from one man, Crestwood Republican Representative Jim Murphy.

On March 14, after the initial Missouri House hearings on the subject when legislators and Cardinals' representatives got together in what Jaco described as a "lovefest," Post reporter Eric Stern wrote the following lead:

"The only critic (Murphy) who showed up to testify Tuesday against a Cardinals' ballpark subsidy was heckled and cut off by his fellow legislators-most of whom seemed to embrace the team's proposal for a new stadium."

The story noted that Murphy had been invited to testify in two weeks. On March 28, though, nothing had changed, and a filing from the Jefferson City Bureau (which was buried on Metro, Page 3) noted, "Rep. Jim Murphy got bumped again from testifying against the Cardinals' ballpark proposal, this time passed over for fried chicken sandwiches."

Television

It is a little harder to comment thoroughly on local broadcast media's coverage of the issue, since the pieces are much shorter and harder to find in public archives.

But most broadcast news officials contacted insist they have been doing the most balanced job possible.

Jaco said he would tend to agree with them.

"I haven't really paid a lot of attention to their coverage, but they've covered what needs to be covered," he said. "They really don't have the luxury (of in-depth reports) due to time constraints."

KMOV (Channel 4) News Director Marty Van Housen said it was ridiculous to say his station had not been balanced in its coverage.

"I think we've tried to do as balanced of a job as we can do," he said. "It's silly to say we're taking sides."

Van Housen said he could not remember specifics but said his station had dug up as many anti-public subsidy people as it could find and had done several pieces in other cities where similar issues had been hot-button topics in recent years.

KPLR (Channel 11) News Director Sheldon Ripson said his station had more limited resources and a smaller time slot (only 9- 9:30 p.m.) than some of the other stations but that he still felt they had done a decent job.

"I'm comfortable with what we've done," he said. "I did a quick thumbnail sketch of our stories after receiving your phone call. We haven't done a great quantity of stories, but we've gone out of our way to find people who are opposed to the stadium. (That's hard) because there is no organized go-to group that's against the stadium."

Ripson said Channel 11 had no one stationed in Jefferson City, but had followed the legislative events from "afar," and had also spent time combining the mayoral race and stadium issue coverage.

One accusation that has come to light against the television stations revolves around their coverage of the Missouri House hearings on the subject. Specifically, it was said that Murphy was going to speak at the Senate hearings, held on the evening of the House hearings, and that the television stations were aware of that fact but did not cover it.

Van Housen said he knew nothing about the subject. Representatives for KDNL (Channel 30) said it was corporate policy not to talk to the media about station issues. KTVI (Channels 2) and KSDK (Channel 5) did not return phone calls to SJR.

When asked his opinion about the media's coverage of the stadium issue, Murphy said he had no serious problem.

"I think to a degree they've been doing a pretty good job. The problem with the media in St. Louis is that it has a self-interest in the Cardinals," he said, referring to Michael Pulitzer's recently acquired stake in the team. "(But) the editorials and a few articles have painted a good picture of us, the opposition."

Murphy said his only complaint was a wish that someone had noted that the Cardinals had hired two of the highest paid lobbyists in the state.

That is probably a good character reference for the St. Louis media, when the main Cardinals' opponent gives at least a partial compliment to the coverage.

But the question then is does it even matter? Can public enlightenment and knowledge manage to overcome the Cardinals' money and influence in the community?

Jaco does not think so.

"If Pittsburgh is any example, no, it won't matter," he said, referring to a similar stadium issue from several years ago. In that case, Jaco said, a vote in the area showed far more people opposed to public financing than in favor, but a 90 to 95 percent publicly funded stadium was still built.

Ripson said most people in the area had already made up their minds long ago.

"I think the stadium and the Cardinals are such a force here that people have their own opinions of the issue," he said.

Ripson noted that a Channel 11 poll (which he admitted was un-scientific) from last year, about the time when the Cardinals announced their proposal, showed 59 percent of those responding opposed to a public subsidy. That was before any sort of large media barrage even began.

Robbins said he had no idea.

"Politically, man, I've heard 8 zillion viewpoints on this," he said. "It's going to go through, it's not going to go through. I don't know."

Jaco pointed out that 74 percent of St. Louisans were listed as against public funds in a recent poll and says his call-in show is flooded with people who love the team but do not want to pay for their stadium.

But still, he said, "If the lovefest in Jefferson City for Jack Buck, Lou Brock and the Cardinals is any indication, the fix is in."

Media/Law

High court strikes blow for openness

By Ken Jones

The Missouri Supreme Court issued two important rulings on March 6 that will allow greater access to court documents and public records.

In Pulitzer Publishing Company v. Transit Casualty Company, the Supreme Court ruled that "there is a presumption in favor of the public's right of access to court records and that the presumption cannot be overcome absent a compelling justification that the records should be closed."

The opinion, written by Judge John C. Holstein, is really a rather stirring defense of the public's right to know and the media's central role in assuring an open and democratic government.

The case arose out of the Transit Casualty Company receivership that began in 1985-the largest insurance company receivership in American history, the court notes. The receivership, which had $4 billion in liabilities, has recovered $1 billion for policyholders and creditors. The liquidation in Cole County Circuit Court is expected to continue for another 10 years.

In 1987 the Director of Insurance appointed Burleigh Arnold CEO of the liquidation. Arnold's compensation comes from the assets of the receivership. Records of his compensation are sealed and not available to the public-though creditors, policyholders and the Department of Insurance have access to them.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch sought Arnold's records, but the receivership objected, claiming that disclosure would negatively affect the receivership's position in the continuing litigation and would violate Arnold's privacy rights. The circuit court agreed with the receivership and ordered that the records remain closed.

The Supreme Court reversed, noting that there was a presumption in favor of open records. But the court acknowledged that it has never "articulate[d] a precise standard governing this open records policy."

In articulating a standard, the court demolished the receivership's argument that the public had no interest in the compensation records since creditors and policyholders had access. The public's "interest in the subject matter of this litigation is irrelevant," Holstein said. "The public's right to inspect court and other public records comes not from any personal interest in the subject matter of the records. Rather, the right stems from the public's presumed interest in the integrity and impartiality of its government."

To prove his point, Holstein cited Blackstone, the 18th century English commentator on the common law.

And in a scathing swipe at the receivership, Holstein said that "open records do not simply accommodate the public's amusement, curiosity, or convenience. Instead, it is simply beyond dispute that public records are freely accessible to ensure confidence in the impartiality and fairness of the judicial system, and generally to discourage bias and corruption in public service."

For good measure he quoted Jeremy Bentham: "Without publicity, all other checks are insufficient."

Holstein also had this advice for lower courts faced with lawyers' motions to seal court files: "Justice is best served when it is done within full view of those to whom all courts are ultimately responsible-the public. "

Of course, in some situations the record can be closed, Holstein said. But before doing so "a court in its order must identify specific and tangible threats to important values in order to override the importance of public right of access....Vague or uncertain threats claimed by one party normally would not justify closure."

In this case, Holstein said the circuit court did not articulate its reasons, and so he sent it back for rehearing on whether there was compelling justification for sealing the compensation records.

• • •

In a companion case, the Supreme Court struck another blow for openness when it ordered the City of Kirkwood to turn over to a police officer a citizen complaint against him and perhaps the whole investigation file on the incident.

In Guyer v. City of Kirkwood, the St. Louis County Bureau of Internal Affairs helped the city investigate a citizen complaint of misconduct by Officer Guyer. After concluding that the complaint was unfounded, the bureau sent a report to the city.

Guyer twice requested a copy of the report, in addition to the complainant's identity and the specifics of the complaint. The city refused under two exceptions to disclosure in the Sunshine Law: records related to the "(h)iring, firing, or disciplining . . . of a particular employee," and "identifiable personnel records."

The circuit court ruled for the city, and Guyer appealed.

Reversing the circuit court, the Supreme Court emphasized that exceptions to disclosure must be narrowly construed in favor of openness.

It held here that the citizen complaint clearly was an open record under the Sunshine Law. Whether the resulting investigative report was an open record depended, the court said, on whether it charged criminal conduct by the officer. If so, it had to be disclosed-and the court sent it back to the trial court for a rehearing on that issue.

Post is preaching to the converted

By Joe Pollack

Be careful driving downtown on the last weekend of the month. Downtown St. Louis will be awash in wandering journalists, each about to participate in a National Writers' Workshop. The same workshops also will be taking place in Seattle, Austin, Tex. and Wilmington, Del., spreading a vast amount of knowledge from coast to coast. These events are sponsored by the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank in St. Petersburg Fla., that sings the song of modern journalism in one-hour speeches and seminars that many editors think are vital to improving their staffs.

Who puts out the newspaper while the speakers are carrying the gospel to the nation is an unanswered question. In St. Louis, at the Marriott Pavilion Hotel ($95 for up to four people in a room), 33 journalists are on the schedule. The group includes seven St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporters (Dawn Fallik, Pat Gauen, Kevin Horrigan, Jennifer LaFleur, Harry Levins, Bill McClellan and Florence Shinkle), one former reporter (Martha Shirk), a former managing editor (Foster Davis), six Mizzou faculty members (Mary Kay Blakely, Judy Bolch, George Kennedy, Daryl Moen, Geneva Overholser and Steve Weinberg) and newspaper writers Frank Ahrens of the Washington Post, Polly Basore of the Wichita Eagle, Betty Winston Baye of the Louisville Courier-Journal, Ken Fuson of the Des Moines Register, Stephanie Simon of the Los Angeles Times and Judy Thomas of the Kansas City Star.

Nancy Amons, Steve Hartman, Larry Hatteberg and David Raziq are from television; Mark Singer writes for the New Yorker; Mary Ann Hogan is a freelance writer; Walt Harrington and Leon Dash are on the faculty at the University of Illinois; Stephen Doig is a faculty member at Arizona State University, and Karen Dunlap, Jim Romanesko and Al Tompkins are on the Poynter staff.

Interestingly, the flyer announcing the event, and praising the speakers to the sky, makes no mention of Poynter. Registration fees and requests for information go to the Post, and hotel reservations go to the hotel. The conferences are discussed, however, on the Poynter web site. The fee is $80 for the weekend, including two meals on Saturday, and there is a reduced fee of $60 for students. Post reporters, who are being ardently wooed to go hear their fellow employees, or to make sure the rooms look full, only have to pay $25, though the price of a beer usually is enough to get a lecture from Levins, Gauen, Horrigan, McClellan or Shinkle (I don't know the other folks). Levins' barroom conversations tend to be far more interesting than his seminar subject, to wit: "Journalism's Ten Commandments."

In the other cities where Poynter exhibits its traveling side show, the fee is only $75, but we offer a hotel bargain. Seattle also permits four in a room, but for $122. Wilmington charges $79 for a single or double, and Austin is a sawbuck more expensive for the same accommodations.

Topics, each completely covered in just 60 minutes, run the gamut from the most basic ("clarity in writing") to the extremely esoteric ("quality TV investigative strategies"), repeating subjects learned in the first year or two of journalism school ("passionate writing" or "covering the burbs") and offering insider tricks ("managing your editor" and "learning to be a writer's editor").

The Poynter web site calls the reporters "the best speakers and discussion leaders in the country," and emphasizes that they are donating their time. But regardless of whether it's a boondoggle for some, a hustle for others or a chance to mingle and rub shoulders for still others, be careful driving downtown that weekend. The journalist you hit might be preparing a story about you.

Public journalism continues to expand

By Don Corrigan

Public journalism was a hot topic on the St. Louis media scene while movement guru Cole Campbell was at the helm of the Pulitzer daily. But the public journalism issue dropped from the local radar screen when Campbell abruptly departed from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch one year ago.

While public journalism has now been largely rejected as an editorial formula at the Post (despite the persistence of Campbell's lame Sunday prodigy "Imagine St. Louis"), the experimentation with the concept continues at other newspapers across the country.

The most recent issue of Civic Catalyst, the quarterly of the Pew Center for Public Journalism, highlights more than one dozen experiments across the country, at such papers as the Portland Press Herald in Maine, the Lincoln Journal Star in Nebraska, the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson, and the Philadelphia Daily News in Pennsylvania.

In addition to these news media experiments, the evangelists of public journalism have a number of think tank pow-wows planned for the rest of 2001. Among the upcoming events:

• A symposium on the current state of public journalism at Kent State University in Ohio on April 19 to coincide with public journalism's James K. Batten Awards.

• Several round table discussions on public journalism, also later in April, at the Lee Hills Legacy Conference at the University of Missouri School of Journalism in Columbia.

• A joint workshop by the Pew Center and the Radio and Television News Directors Foundation for print and electronic journalists in Indiana in June.

• A Pew brainstorming luncheon and presentation of public journalism scholarly papers at the annual August convention of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) in August in the nation's capital.

In addition to those scholarly papers, academia continues to pump out books and monographs on the movement to reform journalism. One of the latest is "Public Journalism and Political Knowledge," a collection of essays pulled together by two political science professors, Robert N. Roberts and Anthony Eksterowicz of James Madison University.

Re-imagining journalism

Virginian Pilot editor Thomas A. Warhover contributes to the new book with an account of his daily's move to a civic culture in the newsroom. Much of that transition from traditional journalism to public journalism was under the editorship of Cole Campbell, who subsequently went to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Warhover contends that public journalism requires a newspaper staff to re-imagine the role of readers, to redefine the meaning of politics, and to redraw the boundaries of what constitutes journalistic fairness.

In the area of political coverage, all this means jettisoning the old "horse race coverage" for a new deliberative conversation with the public on the issues. Editor Campbell told reporters the new paradigm was to present political campaigns as more of "a job application" process by candidates than an election race.

In their contribution to "Public Journalism and Political Knowledge," Deborah Potter and David Kurpius explore the partnerships between print and broadcast on public journalism projects.

These collaborative efforts of print and broadcast have drawn fire from traditional journalists on several counts: first, it further homogenizes the news product in the communities where it is practiced; second, it lends credence to the many conspiracy theorists who see the news industry as one large, cooperative monolith with an agenda.

Potter and Kurpius believe these collaborative projects are worth doing, but they acknowledge many difficulties. Broadcast and print journalists operate in very different environments with very different expectations. At one point, Potter and Kurpius liken these partnerships to "that of the cobra and mongoose-with even less mutual respect."

In his contribution to "Public Journalism and Political Knowledge," Lewis Friedlander of the University of Wisconsin goes after public journalism's critics. Friedlander writes that he has interviewed citizen readers who have been treated to public journalism and their primary worry is: "Will they (the news media) keep it up? ...They (readers) wanted more of it, and they wanted a long-term commitment."

Friedlander's assertions strain credibility. A decade after it began as a reform movement in news, most editors and reporters continue to be at a loss to explain or really define public journalism. But Friedlander not only finds citizens who know what public journalism is, but they are clamoring for more of it!

Friedlander declares that these citizens' views are very much in contrast to "the near hysterical reactions" of public journalism's critics. Not a single citizen expressed concern that public journalism would compromise journalistic credibility, according to Friedlander.

"Nor did anyone express worry about the newspaper usurping the agenda of elected officials, overstepping its bounds, distorting its reporting on citizens by covering them more favorably, or any of the other litany of imagined problems that the critics of public journalism have offered up," Friedlander writes.

Friedlander finds quite a heroic defense of public journalism in his "deliberative conversations" with the Joe Six-Packs of readership land. But he never quite reveals his survey methodology in getting this happy "read" on public journalism from a newly engaged citizenry.

A dissenter: William Woo

In contrast to "the near hysterical" public journalism boosterism of Friedlander, William Woo offers the most thoughtful and informed observations on public journalism in the new book. Woo is also the one discordant voice allowed in "Public Journalism and Political Knowledge."

Woo, the editor who was replaced by public journalism guru Campbell at the Post, has been a consistent critic of the 1990's journalism reform movement. He warns that public journalists are in danger of being deluded by the seminar sessions, the "group think," and public relations in which they regularly engage.

For example, Woo notes that public journalism advocates have convinced themselves that anxious readers want "prescriptives" from the news media, rather than just "descriptive" accounts of reality. Woo says this flies in the face of surveys that show readers strongly prefer a "just the facts, ma'am" journalism to a journalism with some mission to address and solve community ills.

Woo also notes that many public journalism enthusiasts have deluded themselves into thinking theirs is a "from-the-ground-up" movement, with experiments at the grassroots by reporters eager to reconnect with cynical and alienated readers.

Woo retorts that "...without the moral and organizational support of the Pew Center for Civic Journalism, without the millions of dollars it has provided, and without the we're-in-this-great-crusade-together networking that it gave to like-minded journalists, it is impossible to imagine these projects independently popping up across America."

Woo is especially concerned about that bugaboo for public journalists-detachment. What happens, he asks, when the editor and the banker and the real estate broker and the elected official get together to solve community problems? For that matter, what happens when a philanthropy less benign than Pew comes along to fund a portion of the reporting that a newspaper does?

Interestingly enough, Woo reports in his chapter of "Public Journalism and Political Knowledge" that the Pew Charitable Trusts had to do some fancy dancing to get around tax laws that prevented it from giving direct grants to profit-making enterprises.

The roundabout means to funnel project money to profit-making enterprises such as the Charlotte Observer (operating revenues of $187 million in 1998) was to create an offshoot, the Pew Center for Civic Journalism.

Woo observes that "...the funding of civic journalism's projects to reinvigorate democracy (the ends) proceeds by way of a loophole through the law (the means), a process that may seem at odds with Pew's objective of reducing cynicism in public life.

"On the other hand," adds Woo, "such pass-through arrangements are not unusual. Everybody does it, which may also not be the 'civic' lesson that Pew would have the public draw from the arrangement

(Editor's note: Reviewer Don Corrigan is the author of "The Public Journalism Movement in America," published by Praeger in 1999. "Public Journalism and Political Knowledge" is available from Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc.)

KFUO-FM deserves recognition

By Frank Absher

Maybe it's the fact that they don't spend any money on TV commercials. You don't see any bumper stickers containing their call letters. There's that thing about their history, being owned by the same group since signing on in 1948. Oh, yes-they're the oldest FM station in the market and in the past two years they've averaged a respectable 3.1 quarter hour 12+ share in Arbitron, delivering the kind of high-end demographics many advertisers crave. And then there's the Marconi Award last year.

So why is it that when the "radio reporter" for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch writes a rambling, misinformed article on the lack of variety on the market's music radio stations, she doesn't even mention KFUO-FM? Doesn't classical music count?

There is a uniqueness to Classic 99, including the fact that it's still on the air, and still commercially successful. In the past few years, classical music stations in New York, Chicago, Miami, Detroit, Kansas City, Philadelphia and Denver have dropped the format, opting for something more popular-and more lucrative. Chicago Sun-Times Radio/TV columnist Robert Feder tells SJR his city once enjoyed "two full-time commercial classical music stations." When big money came calling, the married couple who owned WNIB (having put it on the air for $8,000 45 years ago) sold for $165 million. Exit classical music; enter rock music.

Philadelphia saw the same thing happen. Kent Steinriede, who writes for the Philadelphia Weekly, says, "WFLN was bought by a big radio chain that dropped the (classical) format because it didn't pay." It's a rock station now, and the City of Brotherly Love can hear classical music only during a limited number of hours each day on the Temple University station.

Here in St. Louis, that situation was reversed. In 1994 the non-commercial radio station owned by the University of Missouri-St. Louis dropped its broadcasts of classical music, thereby giving KFUO-FM a sort of classical monopoly. At Classic 99, they've been running commercials since 1983, and although they provide a significant chunk of income to the owners from spot sales, there's a slight difference in their operating philosophy when compared with other commercial stations.

In St. Louis, KFUO-FM is owned by the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, and the station's director of broadcast, Dennis Stortz, says that gives the station a big advantage over those that were sold. "The mission of the station is really two-fold: to support the cultural well-being of the community and to represent its ownership in that quest. Broadcast groups search endlessly for the right format. This is a traditional format and people respect it."

It appears the Lutheran Church is one of those "old-fashioned" radio owners that cares deeply about serving the community. The station works hard at publicizing the entire St. Louis Arts community. It has established outreach programs to take music into the schools, provide musical instruments to students, and give disadvantaged kids a chance to perform the music they've learned. Stortz admits there's no way to please all the listeners. "In 1990 or '91, it became apparent we had to start giving the audience a format based largely on the popular classics." The result was a load of letters from an audience segment upset that they were no longer hearing entire orchestral works.

KFUO-FM's uniqueness in the radio business extends beyond format and community service. "Our full-time staff hasn't changed in any dramatic way in the past 10 years," says Stortz. Morning man Jim Connett has been there for 10 years; John Roberts, who holds down middays has been an announcer there since 1977; Dick Wobbe, who is in afternoon drive, has been on the air at Classic 99 since 1985; and operations director Ron Klemm, whose voice is on many commercials and most of the station's weekly specialty shows, has been there for 23 years.

Everyone at the station agrees there's a special relationship between Classic 99 and its listeners. Wobbe puts it succinctly: "I think the people who listen to us realize our station is something special." And Stortz says staff members are appreciative of their relationship with the listeners: "We spend a lot of time each day answering e-mails from our audience. They listen. They respond. We never have remotes where people don't show up."

Staff members agree the two-way listener-station relationship is based, in part, on the musical product. Connett, who is also the station's program director, says, "People come here for the music. It's their (listeners') radio station." And Klemm says the listeners' taste is due to their demographic backgrounds: "Classical music people are more educated, are more involved in the community. There is a connection with the listener that is so intimate that each of them has a sense of ownership in what we're doing."

One man, Paul DeVantier, has a perspective of the radio station that is unique. Now retired and living in Wisconsin, he served as general manager of the station for many years before moving to the position of executive director of communications for the synod.

DeVantier says during that 28-year period, he saw a "leadership in the synod committed to classical music as its most appropriate use of the airwaves, because it tied in with the Lutheran understanding of the importance of music in life itself."

Thanks to the Telecommunications Act of 1996, there's really no limit to the number of radio stations a company can own. Because of that, four corporations own the bulk of the nation's radio properties, and the days are gone when the corporate executives knew the names of the people who worked for them. At KFUO-FM, the staff is well known to the owners, and to the station's many listeners.

In SJR

10 Years Ago:

• An FM station at 95.5 mHz licensed to Bethalto, Ill., WXJO-FM, changed its format to children's programming. The call letters would become WFUN-FM.

• KMOV (Channel 4) announced an agreement to provide local news to Cencom Cable.

• KMOX veteran John Rooney was tapped to host a 15-part baseball preview program for CBS Radio.

5 Years Ago:

• Richard Weil succeeded Foster Davis as Managing Editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

• Radio analyst Jim Duncan said of Tim Dorsey's newly announced radio station featuring former KMOX employees, "They're not even on my radar screen as far as revenue goes."

• Tripp Frohlichstein was selected to write a once-a-week television criticism for the St. Lous Post-Dispatch.