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By Amir Kurtovic

 A new Bosnian-language newspaper in St. Louis, the Sehara Tribune, is concerned mainly with the loss of religious and cultural identification of an immigrant populace that is quickly assimilating to life in the United States.

The 32-page tabloid, printed in full color, began publication in July [2009]. “Sehara” is a Bosnian word for an antique chest often used for storing valuable possessions. For the first two issues it was published as a weekly, but then switched to a bi-weekly. It is distributed through Bosnian grocery stores at $1.50 a copy in St. Louis, where an estimated 50,000 Bosnians live.

The paper reached about 7,500 Bosnians in St. Louis after its first two issues, according to Amir Kurtovic, the paper’s 36-year-old founder. It is supported through sales, subscriptions and advertising – though ads at the outset have been slim; those of a lawyer, a real estate agent, an Islamic bookstore and a bridal store. An effort is being made to attract businesses that want to reach the Bosnian community.

National distribution of the Sehara Tribune is organized around a network of Bosnian mosques throughout the country. The paper is printed in St. Louis, shipped by mail and distributed by mosque volunteers to ethnic grocery stores in cities with significant Bosnian communities, such as Grand Rapids, Mich., Atlanta, Ga., and Salt Lake City, Utah. Subscribers can get the paper by mail.

Kundalic lives in Ballwin, Mo., with his wife Belma and their two young children. He came to the U.S. in 1996 from the Bosnian town of Zenica, about 40 miles north of Sarajevo. There he got a start learning English while working for U.S. humanitarian organizations. He was one of the first Bosnians to attend Forest Park Community College and eventually earned a Bachelor’s degree in computer science from Webster University in 1999, and an MBA from Phoenix University in 2008. He and Belma, also a Bosnian immigrant, met here; she is a 2009 fine arts graduate from Webster University.

The first two issues of the Sehara Tribune included coverage of the 14th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre, where more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslims were killed by Serbian forces in what was  described as the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II. The second issue contained over 14 pages of coverage about the massacre, including a two-page spread with a list of the 534 names of Srebrenica victims identified in 2009. The message is “Don’t Forget.” Other articles deal with the history of Islam, the role of the religion in the lives of young people, and Bosnian cultural traditions.

The Sehara Tribune is clearly advocacy journalism with harsh critiques of the current state of politics and culture. “We want to stay connected to our history, our culture, our religion, so that they are not  forgotten. Bosnians are the only ethnic group that has assimilated in the first generation,” said Kundalic.

Some Bosnian youths, perhaps too young to remember the war, roll their eyes and take refuge in their rooms, too busy with Facebook or TV to be bothered with the same old stories from their elders about the war or the motherland. Most youths speak English better than Bosnian. And some in the Bosnian community are not happy with this quick cultural adaptation.

Kundalic feels there has been a lack of coverage devoted to religious and cultural issues in other Bosnian publications such as SabaH and Bosnjacka Dijaspora. The Sehara Tribune is trying a different approach. Its articles are longer, more opinionated and analytical. The plan is to make each issue of the newspaper dedicated to a specific theme, according to Kundalic.

“We found a niche market in the ethnic media where there was an opportunity. There are a lot of people looking for this,” Kundalic said about his paper’s narrower focus on cultural and religious topics. The commercial success of this new paper will largely depend on its popularity in the St. Louis market. Grocery store owners report that the paper is selling well, partly because people are seeing the newspaper for the first time and want to check it out.

One person who knows about the hardships of running a Bosnian newspaper is Amir Hotich. He was the owner of the now-defunct newspaper 5ta Strana Svijeta (The Fifth Side of the World) and is host of a popular Bosnian radio show on WGNU radio which airs Sundays between 6 and 6 p.m. Hotich said the costs of printing and shipping the newspaper, which was given away for free, and paying a small staff of reporters, made it almost impossible to turn a profit.

The Sehara Tribune has no office and is produced in the Kundalics’ home. Articles and photos are contributed by freelancers and volunteers. Some articles are reprints from other publications and some photos are pulled from online sources. The production and layout are handled by Kundalic and his wife Belma using computers, publishing programs and emails.

A digital edition of the paper is not yet available. Kundalic said he is trying to figure out how to publish online and make money doing it. He and his wife are considering publishing a monthly magazine but no firm date has been set for the first issue.

(Reprinted with permission of the St. Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 7/2009).

THE GLOBE-DEMOCRAT’S GOLDEN CENTURY
Story of newspaper is an absorbing one of outstanding personalities conscientiously performing a public trust
by Robert Willier

St. Louis in the 1850’s was not the calm. deliberate, orderly city it is today. Its 80,000 residents, confined largely to an area bordered on the west by today’s Eighteenth street, were a composite of English, French, Irish and German – frontiersmen, aggressive, energetic, impatient.

From varied backgrounds, faced with the common struggle of creating a new life under great hardships, they tended to disagree violently on many things, notably politics.

Mob violence was not uncommon; indeed, Mayor Kennett’s election on Apr. 5, 1852, was attended by a riot which involved most of the city, resulted in one death and the destruction of numerous houses. One section of the mob, not content with small arms, obtained two brass six-pounders from the armory and fixed them in position “so as to sweep with murderous certainty either side of Second street, on either side of which were immense crowds of Germans.”

True, St. Louis was not the raucous life of Gold Rush towns, but living here at mid-century was at least rugged, filled with dynamic atmosphere of competition, of conflicting ideas and of differences normally arising from a melting pot of many races, creeds and backgrounds suddenly thrown together. To add to the confusion, there was a constant flow of people to the West, through this gateway, the “jumping off point” of the early settlers.

There was one unifying influence – the press. Just as Colonial America had early realized the need for a communications medium – Benjamin Harris, an exiled English newspaper editor, having issued his “Publick Occurrences Both Foreign and Domestick” in Boston on Sept. 25, 1690 – so early St. Louis found comfort in its first paper, the “Missouri Gazette,” issued July 12, 1808, the first newspaper ever published west of the Mississippi.

Seven years later an “opposition” paper, the “Western Journal” appeared, and from then on till mid-century there were numerous journals, “Enquirer,” “Beacon,” “Herald,” “People’s Organ and Reveille,” to name but a few. These all had their effect as a means of bringing issues into focus and in generating public opinion. Mortality of the papers was high, however, reflecting the problems of publishing and, to a certain extent, the fact that the papers were “one-man” operations.

From the 1850’s on, the pattern of journalism became more fixed, particularly in the morning field. The “Democrat,” for example, established in 1852, has had an unbroken history of 100 years. It became the “Globe-Democrat” in 1875 and has continued under that name to the present.

In the evening newspaper field, the “Globe-Democrat’s” contemporary today, the “Post-Dispatch,” emerged under its present name in 1878. (Joseph Pulitzer purchased the “Dispatch” at public auction in front of the Old Courthouse in December of the same year, the price – $2500.) Just as its ancestry might be traced to July 3, 1838, with the founding of the “St. Louis Evening Gazette,” later to become the “Dispatch,” so the “Globe-Democrat,” which acquired the “St. Louis Republic” in 1919, could claim ancestry back to 1808, since the predecessor of the “Republic” was the “Morning Gazette.”

That only one morning and one evening newspaper eventually should survive in St. Louis is not out of the ordinary. Alfred M. Lee, in his history of American journalism, pointed out that there have been some 16,000 dailies launched in the United States since 1783. By 1952 there were only 1873 dailies left out of the 16,000. This high mortality rate, accentuated in recent years, is mute evidence of the many problems, including constantly increasing costs, of publishing daily newspapers today.

Inevitably those who today can recall the “Globe-Democrat” before 1900, do so with chief reference to a personality known as “Little Mack” – editor Joseph B. McCullagh. Like other great editors, publishers or proprietors of the paper, McCullagh helped shape metropolitan St. Louis’ destiny.

But the man who began the “Democrat” (of today’s “Globe-Democrat”) was William McKee, who entered the field of journalism as owner of a paper called the “Barnburner,” in which his anti-slavery sentiments were strongly expressed. It was McKee’s “Barnburner,” its name changed to “Signal,” which became the “Democrat” in 1852, and which was strengthened by the addition of the “Union” a year later.

McKee was not unaware of the dangers of voicing unpopular sentiments of criticism, especially in a city which was Southern in character and politically Democratic. The proprietor of the “Union” (under its new name of “Argus”), one Andrew Jackson Davis, was assaulted on the street by an irate reader “in such a manner that he died a day or two later.” The assailant was tried, convicted and fined $500.

With the aid of his associates. B. Gratz Brown and Francis P. Blair, McKee hammered away on the anti-slavery theme, despite the antagonism it created in this border state. To say the campaign had repercussions, especially in profits, is to put it mildly since it took some seven years for the company to pay off its $15,000 debt for the purchase of the “Union.”

Under McKee’s leadership the “Democrat” swung its weight behind Lincoln, McKee himself having been influential in obtaining Lincoln’s nomination. The “Democrat” fought so vigorously against secession that the Great Emancipator said it had done more “to preserve the Union than 20 regiments.” But the “Democrat’s” stand was often assailed, mobs collecting at the “Democrat” building to demand a change. Soldiers from the armory had to be called to break up these mobs. McKee would give no ground; indeed, if anything he guided the paper’s writers (he wrote very little himself) into stronger reiteration of their stand.

Following the Civil War the “Democrat” flourished under the guidance of McKee and his partners, Daniel M. Houser and George W. Fishback. Houser, who had been with McKee in earlier newspaper ventures, was the mastermind of the business office. It was he and McKee who agreed to hire a high-priced editor named McCullagh in 1871, a man who had gained a national reputation as a war correspondent covering the campaign of Gen. Grant.

This step and others not to the liking of Fishback resulted in a dissolution of the partnership, with the “Democrat” being sold to Fishback for $456,100. Within a matter of months the team of McKee and Houser were back in business with a paper they named the “Globe,” and within a year they had McCullagh as their editor.

The competition of three morning dailies (Republic, Globe and Democrat) was too much for the “Democrat.” McKee and Houser, now aided by a third associate whose family name is familiar, a nephew of McKee, Simeone Ray, bought it for $125,000 less than Fishback had paid for it.

“Little Mack,” the new managing editor of the “Globe-Democrat,” the man who had come to American from Dublin at 11 and who started as a compositor on the “St. Louis Christian Advocate” in 1858, was at last in his element. The “Globe-Democrat” was his only love. He lived it day and night.

A bachelor, short and somewhat stout, but with an impressive hard-boiled demeanor, McCullagh made newspaper history. The newspaper interview, with public figures permitting direct quotations – Little Mack invented it. The short, pungent, one-sentence paragraph – he is said to have originated it. The use of complete wire service – McCullagh used so much the “Globe-Democrat” became famous as the largest wire service newspaper outside New York and Little Mack found himself immortalized by Eugene Field in a poem that ends:

  “From Africa’s sunny fountains and Siloam’s shady rills,
  He gathers in his telegrams and Houser pays the bills.”

First and foremost, McCullagh was a great reporter, with a sense of news and timing, based upon his own wide experience, that kept his staff scurrying at top speed. He knew what to expect of reporters and they of him, especially after they read his 48 points for good reporting.

As editor, however, Little Mack truly hit his stride. His crusading spirit was an invigorating element in the ‘80s and ‘90s, perhaps unequalled in St. Louis’ history. Why, he asked, was St. Louis so slow in railroad development and service? He began a campaign, sent reporters into the Southwest to show the developments resulting from railroad service; he opened his own railroad department; he editorialized.

Ably assisted by Daniel Houser, who succeeded McKee as president, he even financed the first fast mail services for St. Louis.

In many other ways he “boomed” metropolitan St. Louis, being credited, incidentally, with originating the word “booming.” To reward him for his efforts, a group of citizens offered him $25,000 to purchase a residence, but, he declined the offer for fear “they might come around later and try to run the paper.”

McCullagh dared match editorial swords with anyone. He is quoted as saying on one occasion “why use a barrel of vinegar when a couple drops of prussic acid will do the job?” Among his most noted campaigns was the one in 1878-79, now referred to as the “gambler’s roundup.”

Gambling had become big business, being afforded police protection through bribery. McCullagh saw it as a blight upon the city, the “cause of suicides, embezzlements and thefts to cover gambling losses.” Only an aroused public opinion, he determined, could force the cleanup required.

The public did become aroused as a result of the “Globe-Democrat’s” articles, features and editorials. A grand jury was impaneled with McCullagh as foreman. A new anti-gambling law was rushed through the State Legislature. And the gambling ring, together with its kingpins, was effectively smashed.

Before the turn of the century the “Globe-Democrat” had established its niche in the newspaper field in metropolitan St. Louis. It was a “world” paper, proudly printing on its front page a map and slogan “All the News of All the Earth.” By wire and special correspondents the paper brought to its readers a wealth of information from all parts of the globe.

This, of course, was in striking contrast to earlier journalism here since, before the telegraph in St. Louis (1849) news was primarily local and personal. But the “Globe-Democrat” realized the avid interest of readers in things “foreign and domestic,” surpassed all other papers in producing the world-wide coverage desired.

In 1897, on a single Sunday in July the “Globe-Democrat” printed 65,000 words of telegraphed copy in addition to 35,000 words of Associated Press telegraphed copy. Here, for example, are a few typical headlines from the front page on Jan. 1, 1909: Gloom in England, telling of Great Britain’s “miscalculation and disaster” in South Africa; Germany Objects, a story about German protests over the seizure of one of their mail steamers by the British; Bomb Plot Foiled in Manilla; and Naval Officers Disturbed (Dateline: Washington), because some Navy order automatically gave special privilege to certain officers while others had to use the “regular red tape method” of getting the same privilege.

These stories and others from outside the city occupied over 80 per cent of the front page. While this percentage of “national” vs. “local” news did not hold throughout the rest of the paper, there is no doubt that the editorial policy was to give weight to the national and international news the subscribers wanted to read.

In later years this policy has been modified only to the extent of providing a more even balance of news, with emphasis naturally shifting as events justify. By gradual evolution the “Globe-Democrat” has adapted itself to its geographical area – the “49th State” – to the likes of morning newspaper readers, to the effect of new means of communications – radio and television – and has emerged with increasing circulation, prestige and influence.

The opening of the Twentieth Century marked the beginning of an era in which one personality – E. Lansing Ray – stands out above all others in the “Globe-Democrat’s” second 50 years. While he did not officially take the helm until 1918, he was on his way up through the ranks starting in 1903.

Like McKee in the first 50 years, Ray has proved to be a man capable of great leadership without personally intruding himself into the limelight of publicity. The paper he has directed for so many years is living evidence of his ability and personality.
His personal antipathy toward the limelight has tended somewhat to restrain the paper from extravagant claims and back-patting. The test of the paper, as he has viewed it, has been the paper itself, day by day, the kind of job it was doing, the service it was rendering its community and readers.

Avoiding unnecessary controversy, the “Globe-Democrat” has nonetheless been a constant source of information about important issues and needs of this area. For example, it can point to numerous articles and editorials advocating smoke elimination. But the paper makes no claim to having single-handedly cleared the city of smoke. It is content to say it did its share.

As is well known, a paper’s editorials are the reflection of opinions and policies of the publisher. Examination of American journalism shows the widest possible divergence of editorials as might be expected. Biting, sarcastic, controversial, liberal, conservative, instructive – take your choice and you find successful papers which regularly use one or more of these types.

For the “Globe-Democrat,” since the acquisition of the “Republic,” the policy has been non-partisan, instructive, interpretive and reflective. The publisher on several occasions has explained that he does not approve the paper “dictating to or lecturing” on every subject. Except on major issues the paper prefers to let readers make up their own minds after presenting factual news coverage and editorial material of interest and value.

The value of this approach can be seen in the Pulitzer Prize winning editorial this year, an editorial entitled “The Low Estate of Public Morals,” written by Lou La Coss, “Globe-Democrat” staff member since 1924 and editor of the editorial page since 1941. La Coss, a journalist of national renown, has invigorated the paper’s editorial page, added to its influence and prestige.

A review of the “Globe-Democrat’s” editorials in recent years shows it has spoken out vigorously on major issues. And in the beginning of its second century there may be anticipated an increasing tempo of aggressive editorials because the publisher views these as critical times in our national history – critical in the same sense as McKee viewed the pre-Civil War era, as McCullagh viewed the post-Civil War era.

At the turn of the century, following McCullagh’s death, the “Globe-Democrat’s” managing editor was Capt. Henry King, whose contribution to St. Louis journalism rests chiefly on his development of a well-rounded paper – in news, features, society, sports, financial and editorial. He believed in giving readers their money’s worth, a Sunday edition, for example, consisting of four parts: I and II of news, III features, and IV sports and society.

One Sunday chosen at random in the files in 1900 showed the feature section containing stories on the Holy Year, Part II of a serial by Bret Harte, and an intriguingly intimate story on the home life of Queen Victoria. This section, as well as the entire paper, contained an excellent representation of advertising by national and local concerns.

Typical of the writing was an editorial referring to Gov. Lon B. Stevens as the “sapient son of a sainted sire,” and another which said “the police are so deeply occupied assessing the force and making presents to the Police Board that reports of burglaries annoy them.”

As might be expected, there was a great rivalry between the “Globe-Democrat” and the “Republic.” These morning dailies usually ended up on different sides of the political fence, and not as their names would indicate. For the most part, the “Republic” favored the Democratic party while the “Globe-Democrat” was strongly Republican.

When it is recalled that the rivalry of these two papers began in 1852, that the “Republic” in its last decade was owned principally by one of St. Louis’ most representative citizens, David R. Francis, and that the “Republic” represented a direct line of journalistic practice to the very beginnings of the city, some idea can be gained of the problem that faced President Ray when the “Republic” was purchased in 1919.

The physical absorption was easy, for a newspaper is not a building, brick and steel and concrete, as Francis had learned when he poured hundreds of thousands of dollars of his own money into an effort to find a “formula” to make the paper successful.
The problem was personality – the personality of the “Republic.” For every newspaper worthy of the name is a living, breathing personality, as full of character and moral fiber as the men who run it, who are its reporters, its salesmen, its editors. Great newspapers, reflecting great editors and staffs, have been published from physical surroundings that were little more than a printing shop. But in the language, the makeup, the “faithfulness of their public trust” these papers were the mirrors of great journalists.

To absorb one personality within another is a real problem, and Publisher Ray solved it in a manner that has proved its effectiveness through succeeding years. Ray, through his editorial page editor , Casper Yost, proclaimed the paper now to be no longer politically partisan: “The Globe-Democrat is an independent newspaper, printing the news impartially, supporting what it believes to be right, and opposing what it believes to be wrong, without regard to party politics.” This statement of policy has appeared on the masthead of the “Globe-Democrat” every day since that time.

Eliminating political partisanship did not, of course, infer that the paper would not editorially support candidates it considered best for public office. Nor did it mean the paper would not editorially support or criticize policies of either party. The paper has indorsed candidates and policies as its conscience dictated in the best interest of the city, state and nation without regard to party affiliation.

The “Globe-Democrat,” which had opposed President Wilson as a candidate, surprised its readers by supporting President Wilson’s war policies and his League of Nations, while newspapers all over the country were objecting to his “high-handed” procedure. In other ways the “Globe-Democrat” gained stature with its readers by its honest efforts, as the only morning paper, to produce a highly readable, interesting, entertaining and reliable publication.

On the retirement of Capt. King in 1915, Ray, then secretary of the company, was instrumental in establishing a change in policy which has governed the reporting and interpretation of news since that time. He divorced the editorial page and the news departments, establishing each as a separate unit. Henceforth the editorial page, through its own editor, reflected the policies and thinking of the publisher while the news department, under the managing editor, handled the news.

Another “Mack,” this time a noted reporter-editor, Joseph McAuliffe, was installed as managing editor. He was succeeded in 1941 by the present managing editor, Lon M. Burrowes. Burrowes and McAuliffe joined the “Globe-Democrat” on the same day in 1913 and, at the time the change in managing editors was made in 1915, McAuliffe was city editor and Burrowes telegraph editor. Later Burrowes became news editor, directly under McAuliffe, and was ready to step in and maintain the continuity or direction which has extended for more than 35 years.

Casper Yost, then Sunday editor, became the first editor of the editorial page and was succeeded in 1941 by Louis La Coss, veteran news, feature and special editorial writer.

On the “publishing side,” the continuity has existed the full 100 years of the paper. Sons of Dan Houser – W.M. Houser and D.B. Houser – and a grandson, W.C. Houser, have held executive positions down through the years. Charles H. McKee, nephew of one of the founders, was president of the paper for a period. And, of course, the present publisher is a son of Simeon Ray, nephew of William McKee, one of the founders.

The sequence received a tragic blow shortly after World War II with the death, at age 35, of E. Lansing Ray, Jr., who was to have succeeded his father. Young Ray came to the paper in 1932 and, until he was called into service in 1941, had trained for the day that he would become publisher by working in virtually every department of the newspaper. In his early days he rode delivery trucks, sold ads, acted as a reporter – following fires and the Cardinals, covering Jefferson City and the local news front.

With this sound background, he moved into the executive branch of the business and was associate publisher and secretary at the time of his death in 1946.

Young Lansing, a popular and active figure among the city’s junior executive group, had been president of the Advertising Club and prominent in other civic activities prior to being called into service.

During World War II he served with highest distinction as an officer in the Army Intelligence Corps. He was awarded the Legion of Merit for “exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding service in the Mediterranean theater of operations” and was cited for setting up the counter-intelligence network in that area. He was invalided home in 1944 and, when discharged from the Army in March, 1945, held the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.

When E. Lansing Ray, Jr., died in 1946, the logical choice for succession within the family circle became James C. Burkham, a nephew of the publisher. Like young Ray, Burkham had learned the business from the ground up. He had just about completed this training when he, too, was called into service in 1942. Like Lansing Jr., Burkham was also detailed to the Counter-Intelligence Corps of the Army.

Upon return from the service he moved into the executive ranks at the “Globe-Democrat” and immediately displayed the qualities and love and understanding of the publishing business which Ray Sr. was seeking. Burkham became president of the company in 1949, with Ray retaining his three-way position of publisher, editor and chairman of the board.

Honors and high positions have come to many “Globe-Democrat” personnel through the years. It was the training ground for such men as Eugene Field, Capt. John H. Bowen, Henry M. Stanley (the explorer), John Hay, Myron T. Herrick and John G. Nicolay.

 Publisher Ray, who was for many years a curator of the University of Missouri, has received many honors but values most his distinction of having been for 29 years a director of the Associated Press.Only four men in the whole history of the AP had served longer as a director, when Ray retired in 1951. During that period he served two terms as first vice president. Another distinction he values is that of having been one of the small handful of St. Louisans who backed Lindbergh in his historic flight.

Not particularly enthusiastic about flying himself, Ray nevertheless had made certain that the “Globe-Democrat” was in the forefront of aviation promotion. In it he saw the significance that McKee and “Little Mack” had seen in the coming of railroads during the “Globe-Democrat’s” first half-century. So the prospect of demonstrating the Atlantic could be flown non-stop, plus the prospect of bringing credit to St. Louis if the flight were successful, was a “natural” for Ray.

The “Globe-Democrat’s” interest in making St. Louis an important air center has continued through the years. Immediately after World War II, for example, the “Globe-Democrat’s” front-page reports on the condition of Lambert Field, including the reference to “more wind and words than concrete,” were credited with stimulating improvements which have kept the city very prominently in the world aviation picture.

Ray’s civic interest has caused the “Globe-Democrat” to sponsor a year-round program of community projects of interest not alone in St. Louis but to the whole 49th State.

These projects embrace a wide range of interests, but if there is any preponderance it is to the attention given to children and to youth. Quizdown, soon to be replaced by a Spelling Bee, and the High School Revues – both co-sponsored by Radio Station KWK, in which the “Globe-Democrat” owns a minority interest – are designed for elementary and high school students. The annual Soap Box Derby interests boys from 11 to 16, while the Golden Gloves, probably the most popular of all “Globe-Democrat” promotions, provides healthful training and good sport for hundreds of young men from 13 years of age on up, every year.

Among the most recent “Globe-Democrat” public service projects are two which have developed tremendous interest, both among participants and among the general public of the 49th State. They are the annual Christmas Choral Pageant and the Missouri Soil Conservation Awards program.

When the St. Louis Community Chest Fund of 1930 failed by over $50,000 to reach its goal, the “Globe-Democrat” guaranteed that amount, then put on a campaign that carried it over the top.

Now in its fourth building in a century, the “Globe-Democrat has production facilities which are a far cry from the old Ramage press that did well to produce 200 “Missouri Gazettes” a day. But the intricate machinery and methods of today’s modern newspaper plant are not as impressive to the reader as the single paper he gets each morning – its appearance and content.

To make reading easier, the “Globe-Democrat” a few years ago changed to a style of type face and make-up considered by experts to be among the best there is today. They are easy on the eye and easy for the reader who must get his news in a hurry. Furthermore, the “Globe-Democrat” eliminated the “jump-over” from Page 1, being one of the first papers in the country to do so.

For its Sunday readers the “Globe-Democrat” provides, in addition to its regular sections and comics, three “supplements” known respectively as “This Week,” “American Weekly” and “Globe-Democrat Magazine,” a veritable department store of reading matter.

The area served by the “Globe-Democrat” in 1952 is a far cry from that in 1852. Today the paper provides the only morning newspaper in a metropolitan district of 1,681,300 people. By actual survey, however, the paper’s influence and readership encompass a much larger area, known as the “49th State,” which has a population of over 3,384,000.

In serving this great industrial area of the heartland of the Mississippi Valley, the “Globe-Democrat,” ending its first century, and Publisher Ray, nearing a half century of service, can be certain this morning daily newspaper is progressing, is doing its utmost for its readers. It is, therefore, fulfilling its public trust.

In many parts of the world, the lights have gone out on a free press. Argentina, China, Czechoslovakia, Poland, the list goes on endlessly of countries where dictators or Communists control the press to their own ends.

At least half the world’s population today knows nothing but what their government wants them to know. They are spoon-fed the propaganda by radio and the press, that keeps them servile, subservient.

But here in America, here in St. Louis, we have freedom of the press, one of the great freedoms for which our forefathers fought and died, a freedom which may easily be the key to the success of our way of life.

It is a tribute to the men like McKee and McCullagh and Ray that they have lived up to the trust placed in them in their use of this great freedom in publishing the “Globe-Democrat.” The tribute has in large measure already been paid by the simple fact of the “Globe-Democrat’s” 100 years of existence.

(Originally published in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat 11/9/1952. Author Robert Willier was the senior partner of the St. Louis public relations company Robert A. Willier and Associates.)   

Bill Everett’s Humorous Look at the First Days of His Career at the Post

My first day on the Post-Dispatch was almost my last.

The city editor was completely charming. He told me in a fatherly manner that nothing much would be expected of me for a time, that I was just to sit quietly and study the paper and the style. He cautioned me against hurt feelings in the event that he might find constructive criticism necessary. It would be in my best interest – nothing personal, he assured me.

He kept his word. No one noticed me, but after about six hours, I began to feel hunger pains. I approached the desk to find out about eating arrangements. I didn’t find out at once.

The assistant city editor was addressing one of the staff. “Mr. Dresser,” he was saying, “it is a cardinal principle that our reporters read the Post-Dispatch, and I hope you will, you may observe that when we refer to a man as a Corporal, we spell it out. When we refer to his rank before his name, we abbreviate it with Cpl.”

There was much more. Mr. Dresser was trying to say something, but rank had him whipped. He sounded as futile as Jack Benny trying to interrupt his sponsor. Finally brass ran out of brass, and more important, out of wind. Mr. Dresser had his chance. He said, “but sir, I did not write that story.” This information left the editor quite cold. He removed his glasses, wiped them, and then in measured tones said, “I think it is a damned good thing for you to keep in mind anyway.” Mr. Dresser left and I almost did.

My First Volunteer

The city editor summoned me to the desk and told me that there was a volunteer in the hall. He advised me to handle the situation with great acumen. Some of our biggest stories came in that way, he warned me.

I was a trifle nervous. This was a new and tremendous responsibility.

It turned out that the volunteer was more nervous than I. He peered over my left shoulder, then my right shoulder. I decided to follow suit. To the astonished persons in the hall waiting for the elevator, we must have looked like the pioneers of rock ‘n’ roll.

He told me his trouble. Every time he walked in the streets in south St. Louis, people called him bad names. I asked him for a few samples. They were bad. I suggested that he move to north St. Louis. He told me he had tried that, but they called him even worse names. I asked for a few samples. They were much worse.

I was worried. I could tell from his clothing that it would not be wise to offer the advice of Greeley, and it would not be seemly to tell him to jump into the river. I compromised. I told him that the Post-Dispatch would keep him in mind and that no one would call him such horrible names again, unless justified.

He was extremely grateful, shook hands with me and wept a bit. He started for the elevator, and then it dawned on me that he had asked me for my name. I rushed back to him. “How,” I asked, “did you happen to ask for me?” He said it had been quite simple. He had been in the day before and was told that Mr. Everett, the man in charge of the “Bad Name Department,” would be in on the following day.

The Strike That Failed

I was a full-fledged reporter now. I had been there one week and called the assistant city editor by his first name. He told me to meet a photographer in the lobby and to be careful. He said there was information that eight meat packers were to cross a picket line at a cold storage firm in north St. Louis. He warned me that heads could fall and blood flow in the streets.

It was a hot August morning, and I was scared. The photographer didn’t do much to reassure me. He advised me that strikes could be nasty. He said we should look the situation over. We did. Finally, after driving in the area for 20 minutes, we saw one picket with an umbrella, and he was about 75 years old. We gathered courage and approached.

Soon we were joined at the one-man picket line by a young Irish cop who had a pencil, a crossword puzzle and a gripe. The cop said he had only four words to go to finish the puzzle, that he had never finished one and that his wife always made fun of him because he couldn’t finish one.

I interrupted to ask the picket what would happen if the packers crossed his line. He pointed to some men entering the storage company. “Them fellers have already crossed, now how about the puzzle?” he asked.

I went to the nearest telephone and called the desk. It was too early for a beer, but the phone was in a tavern. I told the editor that the only controversy was with a young cop, a picket and our photographer over a crossword puzzle. “Stay there,” Sam said.

 I went back. They were down to two words and were becoming very excited. I went back to the tavern. I reported that they were down to two words. I was told, grimly, to stay there. I went back to the trio. They were wildly excited. They needed only one word to complete the puzzle. I went back to the friendly tavern and telephone. “Sam,” I said, “all they need is a three-letter word for the Queen of Fairies.”

There was a silence for the matter of a few seconds. A deep intake of breath, and then: “It is M for moron, A for addle-brained, B for bastard, MAB, and you, you SOB, you come on in, and now!”

(Originally published in Page One, 1958. Bill Everett began working as a general assignment reporter at the Post-Dispatch in 1944.)

Things at TSN Used to be a Lot Different
(Condensed from original article)

In the spring of 1948, as a pre-journalism would-be sportswriter freshman at Mizzou, I wrote a term paper on the Sporting News for an English composition and rhetoric class. I sent a letter to John George Taylor Spink, owner, publisher and editor, informing him of my project. In return, I received a torrent of material, including books, a subscription and an invitation to a baseball game. The letter was signed in the unreadable scrawl that was one of Spink’s many trademarks.

The term paper is long gone; even a packrat such as I can’t keep everything. But the memories are strong, from the first time I rode the rackety elevator to the seventh floor of 2018 Washington Ave. and crossed the old , creaky, rutted wooden floor to visit the jowly, gnarled, gravel-voiced, profane, cigar-chewing little man in the corner office.

I saw him a few times a year, even introduced him to my father, a baseball fan from the days before World War I. The two men got along famously, swapping old stories. When my father retired, Spink was shocked. He was of the old school, where people worked forever. But dad sent him postcards from Tokyo, and from Paris and Rome, and Spink would send them along to me, with a carbon of the thank-you note he had sent to dad. My folks traveled a lot by ship in those days, and I remember a letter Spink sent to the president of United States Lines, a man he somehow knew. Spink said he didn’t understand Samuel Pollack, because he sailed on small ships, but he wanted all courtesies extended to his friend.

Dad often recommended retirement and travel to Spink, but it fell on deaf ears; Spink was a man so dedicated to his work that when he took a rare evening off and went to the Muny Opera, it was a real event when he stayed beyond intermission. Sometimes he left at the overture, recalling a phone call he had to make. The portable phone was invented too late for him.

Spink was one of the last of the personal journalists. He inherited the Sporting News from his father and uncle, who founded it in 1886. He left it to his son, Charles C. Johnson Spink, named for an elder Spink and for Ban Johnson, a sportswriter who founded the American League.

Now the Sporting News is leaving. It’s being sold by the Times Mirror Corporation, which bought it from Johnson Spink in 1978.

The Sporting News, known as “the Bible of baseball” for its massive coverage of professional baseball teams, with complete statistics and weekly “letters” from a group of correspondents across the country, came to accept other sports the way baseball came to accept African-Americans – very slowly. Of course, the paper was subsidized by major league baseball for many years, including the purchase of thousands of copies to distribute to soldiers during World War II. For a while, it had a special section, The Quarterback, dealing with football but printed as a pull-out so that baseball fans could pitch it without having to see even a mention of other sports.

Taylor Spink read practically every word that went into the paper. I remember piles of proofs on his desk, towering over the short man. He didn’t write, even though he had a column in which baseball players often were quoted as addressing him by name. “I was born, Mr. Spink, in a log cabin (or on a farm)…” was a favorite parody. Hard-working editors like Lowell Reidenbaugh, Oscar Kahan, Oscar Ruhl, Edgar Brands, Ray Gillespie and others who did the work, bolstered by local sportswriters who worked one or two days a week as copy editors. Writers from across the country filed stories on the teams they covered, and the greatest sports artist of all, Willard Mullin of the New York World-Telegram, provided covers. It was Mullin who devised the “Brooklyn Bum” and the “St. Louis Swifty,” a lean riverboat gambler type to represent the speedy, and winning Birds of the early 1940s.

Bill Fleischman, long-time chief sports copy editor (the slot man) at the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, was one of them, and the favor was returned by many Sporting News people who filled in on one of the dailies’ sports copy desks on a regular basis.

Spink was a legendary character in sports journalism. Though he rarely attended a game and probably never saw more than a couple to their conclusion, he always was one of the official scorers at the World Series. Spink had a habit of strolling through the office after the edition was printed, often tossing 5- or 10-dollar bills to people, an instant bonus for a clever headline or just for fun. At one point, his son Johnson told him this was messy bookkeeping, confusing to the accountants. Why didn’t he just give everyone a raise? Spink thought it was a good idea and did so. A few weeks later, he was back at the old habit, dropping paper money here and there.

He was violently opposed to unions, too, but I recall an incident in the late 1950s. As a bit of harassment of the Newspaper Guild and its members, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Globe managements decided to forbid staffers from outside employment, a long-time practice guaranteed in the contract. It didn’t last, of course, but a friend at the Sporting News chuckled over a Spink call to Rollin Everett, the Guild’s executive secretary, that began, “Rollin, you’ve got to help me…”

Before the 20th and Washington site, the weekly was at 10th and Pine Streets, catty-corner from the Scruggs, Vandervoort, Barney department store. As the mercantile calendar shortened the period between holidays, the store began playing recorded Christmas music right after Thanksgiving, and it floated across the street to Spink’s office. Spink asked his secretary, the cherubic-looking, always smiling, long-suffering, asbestos-eared Frances, to call Walter Head at the department store and ask to have the music volume lowered. She did, and she reported, “Mr. Head told me to tell you he won’t give you advice on how to run the Sporting News and you don’t have to give him advice on how to run a department store.”

Spink’s response was unprintable, and he then took action, hiring a brass band to perform continuous renditions of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” An hour or two later, the phone rang, and Frances asked Spink to look out the window.

Walter Head was outside, waving a white flag.

Bob Broeg, sports editor and columnist emeritus at the Post, also shared a story that Spink used to tell on himself. He was, as everyone knew, an expert on tracking down people he wished to talk to (with the help of Frances and the legendary long-distance operators of the time) and his language, which could blister the paint on a door jamb, was  more styled for ship’s boiler room than a tea party.

Anyway, Spink was in New York in a cab when he noticed the driver’s name was Tommy Holmes, also the name of a Brooklyn Eagle sportswriter and Spink’s long-time Dodger correspondent. Spink knew the difference but he innocently asked the driver if he was related to the Tommy Holmes of Brooklyn.

“I’m not,” said the driver, “but some silly son of a bitch in St. Louis thinks I am. He calls me at all hours of the day and night asking for information on the Dodgers.”

By Joe Pollack

(Printed with permission of the St. Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 10/1999).

Corporate Owner Moves a St. Louis Institution

What has St. Louis lost with the passing of The Sporting News?

For one thing, “The” was dropped from the title a decade ago when the publication switched from its traditional newsprint appearance to a glossy look.

Sporting News is now [2008] based in Charlotte, NC., where on July 23, a free, online daily – that’s seven days a week – called Sporting News Today made its debut. Starting in September, officials said, the Sporting News in its magazine form will be published only twice a month, instead of weekly.

American City Business Journals of Charlotte, which purchased Sporting News is 2006, moved most of the archives a month ago from the Chesterfield office that was its last outpost here. An online staff that had been in St. Louis as part of sportingnews.com moved to Charlotte a year ago. In the latest migration, 17 staffers accepted relocation to North Carolina. Dennis Dillon and Stan McNeal were retained as St. Louis correspondents. Others faced retirement or career change.

“I am looking for work,” said Steve Gietschier, who was an archivist for the State of South Carolina before moving in 1986 to TSN in St. Louis to bring order to the mountain of books, photographs and sports memorabilia that had accumulated in TSN’s first 100 years. He created the Sporting News Research Center.

As if job worries weren’t enough, Gietschier and wife Donna had to forgo a scheduled trip to New York this summer to watch their beloved Mets in the final season of Shea Stadium.

Hard Departure
“I guess I’m retired,” said John Rawlings, who in late July was writing a final article for The Sporting News. Rawlings moved from the San Jose Mercury-News in 1990 to become managing editor. He left as editorial director/senior vice president – after working for Times Mirror Corp., the Paul Allen-founded Vulcan Media, and then American City.

In his sports media column in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Dan Caesar quoted Rawlings as saying, “It’s hard to see friends leave. But I’m excited for people who are going to working on two new products…I wish we could have changed faster. I felt like we were close a couple of times. We never got over the hump.

During its 122 years here, The Sporting News was called the “Bible of Baseball” by sports devotees. It helped put St. Louis on the map similar to the way Anheuser-Busch has. For at least 60 years, it had operated closely with organized baseball in publishing news of the game in its weekly reports and supplemented that with yearly guides, registers, record books, the National League Green Book and the American League Red Book. The absence of these materials this spring created a minor panic among sportswriters, broadcasters and collectors who had grown accustomed to having that vital information at their fingertips.

Under the Times Mirror ownership and the leadership of CEO Richard Waters, who arrived in 1982, TSN reached a weekly circulation record of one million copies during the week of March 17, 1986 – the publication’s 100th birthday. Times Mirror president Robert Erburu and his wife flew in from Los Angeles for the centennial dinner at the St. Louis Club, and Ernie Hayes was at the organ, making a million sounds. Circulation had been 750,000 before the TSN anniversary, so perhaps newsstand sales were enough to hit seven figures.

The sports highlights of that decade were more than enough to keep TSN afloat – the 1980 Winter Olympics at Lake Placid, NY., the ’84 Summer Games in Los Angeles, Pete Rose surpassing Stan Musial’s National League record for most career hits (in ’81) and then Ty Cobb’s major league career high (on Sept. 11, 1985). In 1989, there was Rose’s lifetime suspension from baseball on charges of betting on games while he was managing the Cincinnati Reds.

Ty Cobb’s Record
In 1981, The Sporting News was at the center of another baseball storm after publishing a story that Paul Mac Farlane, then TSN’s historian, said he would “blow the cover off baseball.” Mac Farlane, who was compiling the seventh edition of Daguerreotypes, the complete records of major league stars and executives, found that Ty Cobb’s career numbers needed a slight adjustment because of a bookkeeping error that had been made in 1910.

Record books credited Cobb with winning 12 American League batting titles, nine in succession (1907-15), on his way to a career average of .367 and a total of 4,191 hits. Every baseball fan knew those last two figures by heart.

But whoa! TSN had acquired a collection of notebooks used by Leonard Gettelson, who edited baseball record books, including such annuals as “The Little Red Book of Major League Baseball” and “One for the Book.” A daily log book used in production of the official averages for the AL lay idle until Mac Farlane discovered an extra entry for Cobb in a late-season Detroit Tigers’ game in 1910. Cobb had gone 2 for 3 in an incomplete game that should have been erased from the records. With those numbers counted, the Georgia Peach finished the season with 196 hits in 509 at-bats, a .385 average. Without that entry, he would have been 194 for 506, a .383 mark.

Does it matter much? Well, no, except that Napoleon (Nap) Lajoie of the Cleveland Indians wound up with a .384 average, going 227 for 591, and should have been the batting champion. Well, no, except that Cobb’s career hits total should have been 4,189 instead of 4,191. So Pete Rose could have gone into the 1985 season, in which he seemed sure to top Cobb’s career total, with 4,190 stamped across his forehead instead of 4,192 (Rose had a total of 4,256 hits when he finished as a player in 1986).

Commissioner Bowie Kuhn and baseball’s Records Committee refused to make a change in Cobb’s totals, declaring that this was water over the dam. Nonetheless, Mac Farlane went ahead with the new edition of Daguerreotypes. Since that time, record books compiled by members of the Society of Baseball Research (with much help from computers) and others have recognized the 1910 glitch and accepted Mac’s revelation. Ironically, an eighth edition of Daguerreotypes, published in 1990, after Mac’s retirement, restored Cobb’s glory.

Players Would Drop In
The Sporting News had a handful of downtown St. Louis addresses before it moved to rented space at 2018 Washington Ave. in 1948.

Often, big-name players who arrived by train at Union Station to play the Cardinals or the Browns would walk in off the street to visit TSN staffers or to grab the latest issue of baseball’s “Bible.”

J.G. Taylor Spink was publisher for 48 years before his death in 1962, and he built strong ties with baseball’s establishment. His dad, Charles Spink, was co-founder of The Sporting News along with his brother, Al Spink.

The Spink family hosted dinner parties at their Clayton home for league officials, umpires and retired players. Ty Cobb exchanged correspondence with Taylor Spink, advising him to buy Coca-Cola stock. Those letters remain in the archives that were relocated to Charlotte, NC.

C.C. Johnson Spink, who became publisher after his father’s death, moved the company in 1969 from 2018 Washington to 1212 North Lindbergh Blvd., a half-hour drive from downtown. Johnson commissioned a new, low building with open-air courtyards – from a photo he’d taken on a trip to Spain.

Johnson Spink spent 43 years with TSN, which he sold to the Times Mirror Co. on Jan. 11, 1977. He remained as editor-publisher for five years and as a consultant thereafter. Richard Waters, who had been a Readers’ Digest vice-president, became president and CEO in March 1982. There were no Spink heirs to continue publication.

The new building and plant improved the production facilities, but the distance from downtown reduced the number of walk-in visits by celebrities. Among the notables in the 1980s was W.H. Kinsella, author of “Shoeless Joe,” a baseball fantasy that was adapted for the movie “Field of Dreams.”

Kinsella wanted to look through TSN’s index card file, hping to confirm that a relative from western Canada had been involved in pro baseball. He found “Sinister Dick” Kinsella, who had been an umpire, a scout for the New York Giants and operator of the Springfield, IL., club in the Three-I League.

The Illinois Kinsella recommended Earl Obenshain of Decatur, who was hired as TSN editor after Ring Lardner quit the job in 1911. Lardner went to the East Coast, and his series of stories about a dimwit first baseman named Jack Keefe was compiled and published in 1916 as “You Know Me, Al.” And that wasn’t Al Spink, co-founder of TSN in 1886 and great uncle of Johnson Spink.

Basketball’s Karl Malone, whose flight had a layover at Lambert St. Louis Airport on NBA draft day in 1985, took a cab from the airport to TSN to find out where he’d been picked. (The Louisiana Tech star was taken by the Utah Jazz with the 13th selection.) Malone became known as the game’s consummate power forward and finished his career as the league’s No. 2 all-time scorer. He earned more than $100 million in salary – putting him in the limousine league.

Managing Editor Dick Kaegel, in the early 1980s, hired Larry King as a columnist. King had been tossing bouquets to TSN as host of Mutual radio’s all-night talk show based in Washington, DC. King’s telegrams arrived each Tuesday, sans punctuation, capitalization and, often, with no clue about which item was to be the lede. There were plugs for some author’s “good summer read” and for a restaurant in DC.

Every King column contained a quip or reaction from a celebrity, and this required careful editing. If it was an A-list person speaking – Frank Sinatra, for instance – the quote would begin, “Well, Larry…” or “You know, Larry…” This same kind of salutation later seemed to develop on the “Larry King Live” television show. If a guest preceded each answer with “Mr. King,” the man in the suspenders responded, “You may call me Larry.”

By Bob McCoy

(Reprinted with permission of the St. Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 9/2008).
 

After being based in St. Louis for 122 years, the Sporting News has ceased publication here.

It was moved July 5 [2008] to Charlotte, NC., the home of its owner since 2006, American City Business Journals.

The venerable sports newspaper, founded in 1886 by Alfred H. Spink, had only about 30 employees left in its Chesterfield office at the end. More than half agreed to make the move but others decided to leave the company; three staffers were to stay here, working out of their homes.

The Spink family had run Sporting News for many decades with a wide readership that gave St. Louis national attention. It was called “The Bible of Baseball” because of the statistics it ran of the games, teams and players. It covered other sports as well, mainly football, hockey, horse racing and boxing. The print version will be reduced in September from a weekly to every two weeks.

American City publishes the St. Louis Business Journal and a variety of other business and sports publications. Last summer, it merged its online New York and St. Louis operations of SportingNews.com to Charlotte.

The company said it was set to launch a new format on July 23 which would be the first free digital daily sports paper, called SportingNewsToday. This follows a trend of other publications to concentrate on their online communications in the face of increased competition from ESPN, Sports Illustrated and other web sites.

By Roy Malone

(Printed with permission of the St. Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 7/2008).