No one complains more about the Post-Dispatch than the EYE. The look of the paper evokes the odor of an old man’s old shoes, and its daily story package often seems so much less than what an entire building of professional journalists reporting on a diverse and historied metropolitan area should be able to produce.
But even the Post’s most aggravated critics must regard the sale of the paper by Pulitzer Inc. to Lee Enterprises this past week with a little dread.
Of course, Lee execs said to their new staffers, who dutifully reported it, that editorial decisions will not be dictated from Davenport, Iowa, the rather drab Quad City where the new ownership is headquartered. (Pulitzer, of course, was based here.) Fine and good. But where have we heard that one before?
In the University City offices of the Riverfront Times, when The New Times Inc. purchased the paper from local gadfly (and, some would say, limousine liberal) Ray Hartmann in 1998.
At the time, sources inside the RFT “newsroom” (it was really a news hallway of news cubicles) told tales of New Times bigwigs assuring them that they loved the RFT just the way it was and would not dictate editorial direction from Phoenix (where the company is based). One New Times exec even attempted to reassure staffers by saying that then-Managing Editor Safir Ahmed was “God,” which both misjudged staff loyalty to Safir and later revealed that even God’s head is on the chopping block where the New Times is concerned.
Of course, the New Times quickly began to impose its goofy, snarky, alienated, apolitical, frat boy editorial direction from Phoenix (or Mars), and STL residents have watched helplessly as a very good, locally reported alternative weekly dissolved into listings, syndicated film reviews and preening inside jokes. The recent dismissal of Wm. Stage’s popular “Street Talk” column marked the belated, definitive end of the old days for the RFT.
The Post can’t be expected to fall that hard n it doesn’t start as high as the Hartmann-era RFT was on a good week n but it’s possible that one day even we poison pens will miss the liberal editorial page and more than occasional flashes of smart, surprising local reporting that has been the best of the Post-Dispatch in recent years.
On the other hand, it is fair to ask: does anyone feel any loyalty to the Post? Does anyone read the paper with eagerness? Does anyone look upon the paper as anything other than a chore, the only daily paper in town which must therefore be swallowed like medicine with breakfast?
P.S. on the local media watch: There must have been a misprint in the February issue of St. Louis Magazine. There is actually a black person on the cover!