Former stltoday.com staffer Kenya Vaughn has been tapped to edit the St. Louis American’s website. The 1994 Beaumont High graduate has a wealth of experience in both print and online writing and reporting. “We are extremely pleased and excited to have Kenya on board,” said St. Louis American president and publisher Donald M. Suggs. “We are improving the quality and increasing the amount of our web content. Kenya brings a great deal of experience and enthusiasm and we look forward to her assisting us in taking our website to the next level, where we will have much more information and online opportunities for reader interaction.”
After obtaining a degree in marketing from Grambling State University, Kenya, a St. Louis native joined the St. Louis Black Repertory Company’s Professional Internship Program as a marketing/media intern. Following her work with the Black Rep, she joined the Pulitzer organization in 2000, first as a trainer in the Community Web Sites program of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and later as a member of the marketing department which helped to transition Postnet.com into STLtoday.com. She later held positions with the Missouri Black Expo, St. Louis Public Schools and the St. Louis Public Schools Foundation, an organization of the United Way.
“Being a black person from St. Louis, the American tells my story as well as the stories of my neighbors,” said Vaughn. “Having a hand in what serves as the voice of black St. Louis and black America is a career high for me.”
The latest figures released from the Newspaper Association of America Newspaper Audience Database project reveal that more Americans regularly visit the online websites of their favorite newspapers rather than purchase the printed editions. In fact, the Newspaper Association of America recently announced that the number of Americans reading newspapers online grew over 31 percent just in the past year. While the circulation of the print edition of the St. Louis American remains strong and continues to grow, the company will invest considerable resources to boost the web edition of the top-rated African American newspaper in the country, an honor bestowed upon the paper by the National Newspaper Publishers Association six out of the past eleven years.
The website, www.stlamerican.com, now has more “daily” news, sports and entertainment updates, including Saturday and Sunday updates. Upcoming features of the St. Louis American’s website will include: more local news and photos, reader forums, online polls, ticket giveaways, high school sports scores and schedules, links to special community partners, and much more. According to St. Louis American senior vice president Dina M. Suggs, the site will also become much more reader interactive. “We want the website to become a place where African Americans can not only get news targeted toward them, but also a place where they can express themselves, talk with others, even share family recipes,” she said. “We want the site to become a ‘community’ site in every sense of the word.”
Visit www.stlamerican.com for regular updates on local, national and entertainment news and sports scores.
