The St. Louis American is in the very fortunate position of publishing the largest issue in its long history in the year 2010. We are nowhere near the end of a direly trying economic crisis that has wreaked havoc on our nation’s workforce and institutions. Ill-advised, poorly regulated gambling on innovations in financial products tied to bad mortgage loans that never should have been tendered put national and local economies in a tailspin. A resulting advertising drought would have challenged media venues in the best of times, but these are not the best of times for media venues. The explosion of social media, facilitated by the internet, has made it much easier for the everyday public to provide and access for itself the kind of information in which the media traditionally has uniquely trafficked. Advertising dollars are chasing this breaking trend and other trends at the expense of print publications like this one.
A record-setting issue such as this July 22, 2010 edition of The St. Louis American, coming on the heels of our winning the John B. Russwurm Trophy for the Best of the Black Press, encourages us as we soldier forward in battle against the challenges of publishing a relevant community newspaper and website targeted to, but not limited to, the black community in St. Louis as our community is struggling and our industry endeavors to reinvent itself.
This milestone has been facilitated by its connection to our editorial mission of promoting diversity and inclusion in regional business and culture. This section tells success stories of African Americans in area organizations – a staple of our Business section and front page – while also appealing directly to area leaders to share their vision of support for diversity and inclusion in their companies and institutions. This special section, now in its fifth year, has only grown, as more and more St. Louis businesses came forward wanting to share their diversity success stories, and more and more business executives proved willing to state their commitment to inclusion as a core ideal and show support for the state’s largest black-owned newspaper and arguably the most viable locally owned newspaper of any kind.
We think this milestone of success bodes well for this region as a whole. Many of the area’s largest employers and most powerful leaders have come to the table and said that the embracing of diversity in our region is a valuable asset that pays dividends. They have said that fair and representational inclusion of this diversity in our workforce and leadership is essential to the substantial health and growth of this region. They are on record as supporting the promotion of diversity and inclusion. Stating a vision and expressing public support, of course, is not the same as hiring and promoting fairly and proportionately in the daily operations of a business. But, we submit, a standard for the region is being set, something of a collective mission statement has been set forth. We expect the community – especially its vigorous inclusion activist sector – to join us now in holding these avowed supporters of our mission accountable. As Clyde Cahill reminds us pointedly, this includes much more than diversity and inclusion at the entry level, but all the way up the chains of executive authority.
Moreover, we think this edition of the paper gives us a chance to reflect upon a core aspect of our editorial mission. We know our readers understand and respect this aspect of what we do, even if other journalists are in the habit of dismissing this sort of coverage as “soft” or “feel-good.” The point is, a community working through hard times sometimes needs soft spaces to land and reasons to remember that life can feel and be good. We want to publish every week a newspaper that a hard-working black parent can put in front of his or her child and say, “Look. Look at this. This could be you.” And the this that is waiting out there for this child to become, which that child is being shown in the pages of our newspaper, is an example of success. We are especially dedicated to finding examples of local African-American excellence in less familiar areas – finance, math, science, medicine, law, operations, entrepreneurship of all kinds. It is our intention and expectation that area parents and teachers – and every parent is a teacher – put this Diversity section in front of our youth and encourage them to examine all the many varied examples of African-American success that surround us. This. This could be you.
