St. Louis summers are better at night.
The small miseries of a Missouri summer add up. That stuck-to-your-seat humidity combines with a heat bores down from above and reflects up from the pavement, roasting you from all sides. Who wants to do anything in that? But the game changes when the sun drops. St. Louis at night transforms into a place of new possibilities. Baseball under the lights. Patio beers. Outdoor concerts.
It s a new world, but it s fleeting. To help you make sure you don t waste one moonlit moment, we ve designed the RFT s annual Summer Guide to help you plan your strategy. Maybe you re a wildlife lover, ready to set off in search of an elusive winged wonder or a stretch of open water. Or maybe you ve been waiting (and waiting and waiting and waiting) for live music to return. Or maybe you know that food tastes better at the end of a long night.
After a long year, local news looks back and thinks forward
The local news crisis can be tough to describe in national terms, because no two places are exactly the same. Though it’s been a difficult year for regional journalism, following a difficult decade, it’s a diverse media ecosystem, and though industry-wide challenges are rooted in similar trends, every outlet has faced battles of its own. “Local news” comprises many things: newspapers, public radio, television, blogs, newsletters, and as CJR’s newest digital magazine highlights pirate radio stations, text message chains, internet forums. Different outlets had different fates this year. Radio and television stations fared better than newspapers. Nonprofit publications of all mediums soared while many for-profit outlets foundered. Many communities lost a trusted source of information; others lost outlets that were already on the way out; and, as bears mentioning, some communities haven’t had a local news source for
St. Louis on the Air.
And in September 2020, after six months of publishing solely online, three Webster-Kirkwood Times employees
“We just started talking to each other, and we’re like, ‘We have to keep this going. How can we do this? We want to do this [and] our community really is behind this,’” said Jaime Mowers, a veteran reporter who now serves as the Webster-Kirkwood Times’ editor-in-chief.
The first print edition under the new ownership was on doorsteps by Sept. 25, 2020. And today, both papers are going strong.
“For us, in our communities, print is where it’s at,” Mowers said. “We felt like this was worth the risk because the community just kept asking for it. … That makes all the difference.”
Friday: How St Louis Journalists Kept Print Alive As Pandemic Raged stlpublicradio.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from stlpublicradio.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Last month, Mark Fingerhut set out from his home in St. Louis’ Dogtown neighborhood to see how far his feet could take him over the course of 24 hours. And he persuaded 20 fellow St. Louisans to do the same, dubbing the adventure the 24 Hours from Home Challenge.