HuffPost is coming to St. Louis – and 24 other American cities – in a bus to listen to America, and it’s coming to St. Louis first.
The national news organization’s chartered bus will launch its national listening tour in St. Louis on Tuesday, September 12, in partnership with The St. Louis American.
The tour will get kicked off with a 10:30 a.m. launch event at Kiener Plaza in downtown St. Louis. Speakers will include leadership from HuffPost (Lydia Polgreen, editor in chief) and The American (Donald Suggs, publisher and executive editor), as well as community leaders: Rev. Starsky Wilson, president of the Deaconess Foundation and former co-chair of the Ferguson Commission; St. Louis Treasurer Tishaura O. Jones; and 15th Ward Alderwoman Megan Ellyia Green.
That afternoon, from 2-5 p.m., the listening bus will make its first tour stop in the University City Loop near the statue of Chuck Berry. The public will be invited to climb aboard the bus and record an interview with HuffPost staffers, who are being trained in advance by psychologist Renee Lertzman in the art of the open-ended interview.
“We are doing a completely open-ended survey of what’s keeping people up at night and what they feel hopeful about,” Hillary Frey, head of strategy for HuffPost, told Nieman Reports.
At 7 p.m. that evening, HuffPost and The American will present a forum, “Three Years After Ferguson: Seeking Solutions in St. Louis,” at The Royale, 3132 S Kingshighway Blvd. Polgreen will give the introduction, and an editor at The American will moderate the panel, featuring Rev. Wilson, Alderwoman Green, organizer and strategist Kayla Reed, attorney Blake Stroke of ArchCity Defenders, andKevin Ahlbrand, former member of the Ferguson Commission, former president of the Missouri Fraternal Order of Police, and a sergeant in the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department.
“We have a really, really big task ahead of us, which is essentially to try and re-engage with the country in a fundamentally different way than the national news media has in the past,” Polgreen told CNN.
“And the reason that we’re doing this bus tour is that we feel that, by partnering with local news organizations who are on the ground in places all around the country, we can re-start this conversation about our identity, who we are as Americans, what are our values.”
As part of the HuffPost’s collaboration with The American, reporters from the two organizations are team-writing a story that they will co-publish on their respective news sites on September 12.
To register, visit https://www.eventbrite.com/e/huffpost-listen-to-america-bus-tour-st-louis-tickets-37423455563
For more information, visit www.huffpost.com or the HuffPost’s “Listen to America” Facebook page, or email listening@huffpost.com.
