Historical February 1996 article. Dates, prices, services and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.
If the Post-Dispatch editors had canned Elaine Viets for her mediocre writing, I’d have no complaint.
For that matter, if they said that they found her characterizations of St. Louis natives more than a tad offensive and asked her to clean up her act, I’d have agreed and wondered why it took them so long to figure this out. Or if they felt that her living out of town meant that she had lost her grasp on the local climate, it might have made sense.
But to have tired her simply because she refuses to live in St. Louis is pretty amazing. Sadly, it’s not very surprising. It’s easy to bash the local paper.
This isn’t ust a Post problem; newspaper circulation around the country is decreasing.
With CNN and a myriad of channels at our remotetips, why wait until the morning to find out who was murdered or what happened in Bosnia?
All you need to do is turn on the tube and wade through the talking heads’ mono-diamonologue. Sooner or later their chatter will make room for the things that are actually happening in the world. What you hear won’t be terribly profound, in-depth, or comprehensive, but it will be quick. That’s what we get: national and international fast-food news. Of course the situation is worse here because we’re only a onenewspaper town. (This excludes the various journals, The Riverfront Times, and vibrant neighborhood tabloids, like our very own Times of Skinker-DeBaliviere!) The collusion that took place years ago between the Post and Globe-Democrat — the owners of the Globe selling out because they were unable to resist the temptation of big payments coupled with no work — continues to haunt our town. Generally, there’s now just one movie, restaurant, or book review. Worse, there’s one interpretation of the news, one political bent.
I didn’t agree with the Globe view of the world very often, but it was always interesting to read what its writers were saying. More important, the presence of the Globe forced the Post to try to be competitive and innovative. Now, like all other monopolies, the Post has grown fat, sloppy, and not terribly responsive.
For some reason print reporters and editors fail to grasp their changing role.
It may be fun and exciting to cover health care, eastern blizzards, or the Japanese trade imbalance. And writing about Whitewater or drug smuggling is how reputations are made and Pulitzer Prizes are won.
But those things arc all better covered, at least as far as news reporting goes, by television or radio.
In a decade or so it may be that they’re best done on “the net” or through your wristwatch. Technology is evolving at such a pace that it* is hard to predict through what electronic line, satellite dish, or cellular device we’ll be receiving information in the future.
But we do know that technology doesn’t move backwards. (Have you tried to buy a manual typewriter lately?) What this means is that the print media’s place in reporting the national and international news will continue to diminish.
All need not be lost for the newspapers, however, if they would wake up and smell the air just outside their window.
For regardless of what happens with technology, at least in the near future, an area where they will continue to have a unique position is in reporting local news.
In many ways the actions of our local officials — our community leaders and statehouse representatives — have a greater immediate impact on our lives than what happens in D.C. or at the U.N. What highways are built, which hospitals offer what services, if snow is plowed from streets, how nearby schools define curriculum, and whether the police force is honest truly affects our quality of life. Yet the Post has no Jefferson City office. That’s right, our only (and the State’s largest) daily newspaper has no permanent office and reporter in the State Capital. And when was the last time that the Post did more than report on an aldermanic action? Sure, whenever there’s a budgetary battle or whenever the Mayor forgets to sign bills into law (something that seems to happen on a not-irregular basis) it makes the pages.
But when has the paper done an in-depth interview with Dan McGuire, our alderman?
When has it assembled a panel of representatives from this area — say, Dan along with State Representative Nancy Farmer and State Senator Lacy Clay — to talk about legislation they might have for us?
When has the Post acknowledged the existence of the Skinker-DeBaliviere Community Council, much less talked about its role in our community or its actions?
The litany of the news that the Post doesn’t cover, the “small” happenings and events that dramatically touch us, goes on and on. Important things that happen every day in schools and neighborhoods, things that won’t be reported on by CNN, are missed. There’s a void here, an information need that is waiting to be filled. What, exactly, is going to happen on Delmar, east of Skinker? What about the proposed economic activity package that will center around the Delmar MetroLink station? Or what’s happening with our local schools? What are the new thrusts at Hamilton or St. Roch’s or New City? How is that ex-school on Des Peres being used? What’s going on with that vacant gas station at McPherson and Skinker? Is Prosecuting Attorney, and neighbor, Dee Joyce-Hayes happy with the new police chief? What does ex-Mayor Vince Schoemehl, and neighbor, think of the City re-entering the County’s governance structure? What do our two neighborhood school board members think about the State’s proposal to end the desegregation plan, and how might this affect us? What’s the status of the search for the new head of the Crossroads’ School? Who arc our local police officers and what’s happening with the crime rate in our neighborhood?
The point is not that everyone is interested in these questions; they’re not.
But just as we in Skinker-DeBaliviere want to know about these issues, there are other issues that are critically important in other neighborhoods.
The list of local issues that beg for coverage is endless.
As long as the leadership of the Post, however, and that at similar papers in other cities, fails to recognize the uniqueness of the neighborhoods within their communities, the downward spiral in newspaper circulation will continue. Elaine Viets did not write to my tastes, but her columns reflected a local spirit that wasn’t available anywhere else. Just as Bernie Miklasz’s writings about sports are unique, his perspective being different than that found in my New York Times or Sports Illustrated, Elaine Viets gave us something that couldn’t be found on the tube or “America On-Line.” The only thing worse than a one-newspaper town would be a nonewspaper town, and there is cause for alarm. Today’s teenagers read less than their parents did. Television permeates our culture. Speed is measured in nano-seconds, yet the large metropolitan newspaper is becoming a dinosaur, slugging it out with the electronic media, seemingly puzzled by its ever-changing environment.
An example is that the Post’s weekly supplement, “Get Out,” is its attempt to be topical and grab young readers. Elaine Viets, where are you?
Originally published in The Times of Skinker-DeBaliviere, February 1996.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Original source: SD_Times1996_02.pdf, printed page(s) 8, 7; PDF page(s) 8, 7.
