Next week marks the one-year anniversary of a big change at St. Louis Public Radio. It transformed our work, but you may not know how.
So let’s celebrate the merger of St. Louis Public Radio and the St. Louis Beacon by considering why it matters. It’s simple. At a time when news media are undergoing historic upheaval and when news coverage of St. Louis has never mattered more, the merger has enabled us to serve you better.
It began, officially, last Dec. 9. The next day, my colleagues from the Beacon moved in to St. Louis Public Radio's spiffy quarters, immediately overloading the newsroom. Many of us were newspaper veterans before launching our nonprofit, online website. Still posted above my desk is a cheat sheet of radio lingo. I consulted it often in the days right after the merger when I couldn’t remember the difference between a voicer (you hear the reporter) and a reader (you hear the newscaster.)
Next to that glossary, balancing change with tradition, hangs a memo that I’ve treasured since my days at the Post-Dispatch: Rules For The Making Of A Great Newspaper (Condensed from conversations with Mr. Pulitzer.) That would be the first Joseph Pulitzer, whose innovations transformed the press in an earlier age.
Among his advice in 1901: “Don’t echo flapdoodle. Expose it.” and “Always keep burning the twin lights of judgment and common sense.”
That’s advice worth heeding, whether your medium is print, radio, web, email or social. The spirit of those imperatives is reflected in our slogan: News That Matters. While the technology has changed since 1901, providing News That Matters still requires skill and resources, creativity and courage. The merger helped nurture these essentials.
Consider resources. Our combined newsroom was instantly twice as big as each organization’s separately – and it grew again last summer when we added six additional staff. Because we are one, there is no longer overlap among the stories reporters cover. That gives us breadth without sacrificing depth and allows us to pursue investigations and other resource-hungry enterprise reporting.
Moreover, each reporter now covers a beat – education, science, health, politics and so on. That means reporters can develop deeper knowledge than is possible when they must jump from topic to topic.
In the last year, reporters have built their skills and creativity as well. Those who had never done radio now appear regularly on air, reaching people who otherwise might not have found their work. Online, reporters use photos, video and graphics in addition to text to tell stories. All that adds up to a deeper presentation of significant local news than either organization could achieve separately.
At the same time, we’ve expanded our participation in the social media conversation – yet another way to reach people. Though both organizations previously used Twitter, Facebook and other social tools, we can now focus more intently with engagement editor Kelsey Proud taking the lead. That’s been especially important in connection with Ferguson, where developments play out virtually as well as geographically.
Ferguson – a local story more significant than any I’ve covered, ever – has tested our new organization in ways we couldn’t have imagined. We're thankful for the resources and resilience the merger has allowed us to bring to this profoundly important story.
Perhaps it shouldn’t surprise me that many St. Louisans don’t see how the merger has transformed our organization as a whole. Some think the Beacon is gone, when in fact the work of its staff continues in expanded form. Some think St. Louis Public Radio operates only on air, when in fact our work online is crucial. Some see us on social media and never make it to stlpublicradio.org’s homepage or to 90.7 FM.
But that’s OK. Our work should speak for itself. We hope you find it vital and trustworthy. We hope it finds you when and how you need it.
