The HuffPost kicked off its national listening tour in partnership with local media partners, Listen to America, in St. Louis on Tuesday, September 12, in partnership with The St. Louis American.
After a morning launch event downtown at Kiener Plaza with the Gateway Arch as backdrop, HuffPost parked its listening bus – of the kind rented for major musical tours, though outfitted to record video interviews – next to the Chuck Berry statue in the University City Loop.
After an afternoon of mingling with locals and recording interviews, the HuffPost team decamped to The Royale, a public house in the Tower Grove neighborhood, for a panel discussion, assembled and moderated by The American, about seeking solutions to St. Louis’ systemic problems three years after Ferguson.
“We collected 38 interviews in three hours, which exceeded expectations,” said Hillary Frey, director of strategy at HuffPost and mastermind of Listen to America. “We estimated the crowd for the panel at 125. We were thrilled with the turnout and everything else at both.”
Lydia Polgreen, editor in chief at HuffPost, also attended all of the St. Louis events and gave opening remarks at the morning launch. She said the tour was motivated by editors’ feelings of isolation from much of the country from their metropolitan bases in New York, Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles.
“So we thought: Why don’t we just go out and listen?” Polgreen said. “Let’s go out and give the mic to other people.”
She then handed the mic to Donald M. Suggs, publisher and executive editor of The St. Louis American and president of the St. Louis American Foundation, who provided a detailed look at a broad expanse of St. Louis history. The other speakers at the launch, selected by The American and HuffPost, were former Ferguson Commission co-chair Rev. Starsky Wilson, St. Louis Treasurer Tishaura O. Jones, and 15th Ward Alderwoman Megan Ellyria Green.
St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson was invited to speak, but after showing initial interest, she stopped responding to emails from organizers.
The first tour stop for Listen to America to gather interviews in the U. City Loop was busy, with a wait time of more than an hour, at times, as people volunteered to be interviewed on video. The lively and diverse group of interview subjects included legends from the Ferguson protest movement, including Tony Rice, Heather De Mian and Jon Ziegler (whose video footage of Heather Heyer being murdered at a protest in Charlottesville, Virginia will be the prosecution’s best evidence against James Alex Fields Jr.).
“They are looking to get to the bottom of things,” Rod Wilbon, a student at the University of Missouri St. Louis, said after his interview. “For someone as big as HuffPost to come to St. Louis just to ask local people questions, I’ve never witnessed anything like that before.”
The HuffPost team worked out of the parking lot at Salt + Smoke, as well as inside the tour bus. Loop developer Joe Edwards, who owns the property, arranged with Salt + Smoke owner Tom Schmidt to make the space available when HuffPost had permitting difficulties with University City government. For one afternoon, a major international news organization – the HuffPost site currently is ranked No. 253 worldwide for most web traffic – was in residence at a local barbecue joint next to a Chuck Berry statue.
The evening panel at The Royale was focused on actions and solutions. Rev. Wilson and Alderwoman Green were invited to participate again, joined by organizer/activist Kayla Reed, ArchCity Defenders attorney Blake Strode, and Sgt. Kevin Ahlbrand of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, a former Ferguson Commission member and immediate past president of the Missouri Fraternal Order of Police.
As a state police union leader, Ahlbrand was asked by Green what the local police union, the St. Louis Police Officers Association, could be doing to improve relations with the community. Ahlbrand said there needed to be “better lines of communication.”
Reed said one way to improve communication with the police union would be to remove the controversial Jeff Roorda as the union’s business agent and spokesman. Roorda became a flashpoint in the discussion, with one audience member referring to Roorda on mic as a “racist pig.”
Ahlbrand said he was just one dues-paying union member among many, and the decision of whom to hire to work for the union was a decision reserved for members.
In response, Reed called for a citizen campaign to pressure the union to fire Roorda. In fact, each panelist at one time or another put the responsibility to force change in the region onto the public, onto the audience.
“It was so incredible to be on the ground interacting with people and feeling in a really unfiltered way what is going on in St. Louis,” Hillary Frey of HuffPost said the morning after launch day.
“Working with The St. Louis American was a dream. We trusted each other, and we would not have had the same day without you. We were so proud to have you as a partner, and we definitely look forward to covering stories together in the future, and relying on your knowledge and expertise in your community.”
The American and the Huffpost also team-wrote a story as part of the collaboration, “In St. Louis, the politics of police reform are tougher than ever,” which was published on both of their sites.
To watch a video of the panel discussion, visit the HuffPost’s Listen to America Facebook page.
