Roland Klose

Reviews

From review of Carey Gillam’s “The Monsanto Papers: Deadly Secrets, Corporate Corruption, and One Man’s Search for Justice” (2021): “Despite the subject matter — complicated science and legal proceedings — “The Monsanto Papers” is a gripping read that provides an easy-to-follow explanation of how this litigation unfolded, how the jurors reached their verdict and why Bayer appears to be, in effect, throwing up a white flag now.”

From review of Ben Montgomery’s “A Shot in the Moonlight: How a Freed Slave and a Confederate Soldier Fought for Justice in the Jim Crow South” (2021): “Montgomery does more than resurrect this old story; he digs deep into trial testimony, newspaper records and archives and weaves a richly textured and dramatic story that underscores a truth of the Jim Crow era — that Black people faced oppression with great courage and resilience, and that their fearlessness and moral rectitude made even unreconstructed apologists for an unjust system bend.”

Journalism! (Artifacts)

Neile Adams in “This Could Be the Night” (1957)  https://bit.ly/30NJtmB

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Names

Some St. Louis names -> Archer Alexander, Anonda Allen, James J. Allman, Roger Nash Baldwin, Henrietta Bamberger, The Rev. William C. Barlow, Gordon Lee Baum, Charles W. Beehler, Napoleon Bland (Napoleon A. Rahim), Oliver K. Bovard, Helen Britton, Garrett Brown, Harry J. Cantwell, Charles Chapin, Winston Churchill, Jack Clark, Charles W. Conrad, Col. John T. Crisp, Thomas Anthony Dooley, Elmer Sylvester “Dutch” Dowling, Cyrile Echele, Rev. Grant Edwards Sr., Chauncey I. Filley, Lovett Fort-Whiteman, Julia Fortmeyer, Flint Garrison, Emme and Mayme Gerhard, Jeff Gluck, Frank J. Guetle, Benani Guiseppe, Edward Michael Harrington Jr., A. Lincoln Hartley, Louis Hempelmann, Jeptha D. Howe, John Eads Howe, John L. French, John W. Jacks, Jerry the orangutan, Col. Charles Henry Jones, Joe Jones, Thomas ‘Red’ Kane, Madge Keith, Claire Kenamore, Anton Kessler, Raymond Klose, Jean Knott, Felix P. Lawrence, Ivy Lee, Robert Lemen, Julius Lester, Robertus Love, Herman C. G. Luyties, Amadeo S. Marrazzi, Alice Martin, Mary Margaret McBride, Francis L. McIntosh, William ‘Red’ McKenzie, Marguerite Martyn, Hyman Minsky, Charles H. Mott, Bryan Mullanphy, Reinhold Niebuhr, Barbara Ann O’Merry, Nicholas A. Mortell, Nelson O. Nelson, Rick Newburger, Kate Richards O’Hare, Chris Pepus, Paul Piccone, John Henry Pippin, Benjamin Pitezel, Chief Pontiac, Cyrus Rastegar, Roy S. Rauschkolb, Dr. Amand Ravold, Ripley Saunders, Eleanor Schlafly, Fannie Sellins, William and Toni Sentner, Menlo Smith, Nicole Staits, Henry Morton Stanley (John Rowlands), Nicole Staits, Marvin “Gene” Starr, Dr. Henry A. Stimson, Julia C. Stimson, Ignatius Strecker, Tony Tabacchi, Curtis Thomas, John S. Thurman, Henry M. Tichenor, the Rev. Irwin St. John Tucker, Harry S. Turner, Harry J. Tuthill, Rev. Frank G. Tyrell, George P. Vierheller, Dora Wagner, Minnie Walden, George Herbert Walker,  Joseph Weydemeyer, John W. Wheeler, Lee and Lyn Wilde, Mary Young …

‘Inner St. Louis’

A century ago, the Commission on Comity of the St. Louis Church Federation surveyed “Inner St. Louis,” the area east of Grand.

This portion of the city, the Protestant ministerial group found, accounted for “half the population, three-fifths of the saloons and four-fifths of the crime.”

The “East End” held the city’s “foreign colonies” and “most of the factories and factory workers.”

The survey, the Post-Dispatch reported on Sept. 25, 1917, found conditions that tend to “weaken the family relationship: Bad housing, many divorces, common-law marriages and other marital irregularities, desertion, nonsupport. Of 15,000 births in the district within a year, 750 were out of wedlock.”  Read more of this post

The influence of big business

“The influence of big business has always been present in our federal government. But there have been some checks on its control. The mere presence of a Supreme Court, a House of Representatives, a Senate and a President would not be sufficient protection against the utter centralization of power in the hands of a few men who might hold no office at all. Even in the case of Hitler, many shrewd observers feel that he is no more than a front man and that his power is derived from the large munitions and steel barons of Germany. …

“Now one of the first steps which Fascism must take in any land in order to capture power is to disrupt and destroy the labor movement. … I think it is not unfair to say that any business man in America, or public leader, who goes out to break unions, is laying foundations for Fascism.” — Heywood Broun, journalist and founder of the American Newspaper Guild, quoted in 1936 (from George Seldes’ “Facts and Fascism.”)

The ‘talking newspaper’

Found by accident, while searching for something else, this Sept. 10, 1911 feature published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch about the Telefon Hírmondó, the “talking newspaper” of Budapest. Newspaper subscribers would receive news dispatches via a special telephone.

One paragraph in the article about the new news delivery platform has a familiar ring to it: an argument that the new technology would enhance, not threaten, print newspapers:

It may appear at first that the “telefon hirmondo” would seriously cripple the newspapers by depriving them of circulation, but such is not the case. In the first place, only newspaper subscribers can avail themselves of the service, and the advantage of having the news telephone in the house therefore attracts many who would not otherwise be subscribers. Moreover, in the telephone message, the subscriber is given only enough of the news to make him hungry for details, and he consequently looks with greater interest for the arrival of his printed sheet.

These exit signs could be characters in a novel

Alta Alderson (Exit 161, Interstate 64, West Virginia); Louisa Ashland (Exit 191, I-64, Kentucky); Antonio Barnhart (Exit 185, I-55, Missouri); Bill Gillette (sign along Wyoming Highway 59 north of Douglas); Ebenezer Goodman (Exit 146, I-55, Mississippi); Cooter Holland (Exit 4, I-55, Missouri); Marie Lepanto (Exit 41, I-55, Arkansas); Victoria Luxora (Exit 53, I-55, Arkansas); Jerome Dixon (Exit 172, I-44, Missouri) and Waddy Peytona (Exit 43, I-64, Kentucky).

Gathered these from recent trips. Got any others? 

‘Never be satisfied with the surface of the news.’

“In this space I cannot hope to describe his singular abilities or indicate the range of his sinewy, searching mind. Through one rule which he laid down for reporters he may be glimpsed. This was the rule: ‘Never be satisfied with the surface of the news.’ If he considered the pupil worthwhile he would explain: ‘There is a formal and superficial aspect of every story. It may be a police report, a lawyer’s brief, an application for a trolley franchise, or a President’s message to Congress. As such it may have a proper place in your story. But to print that alone may result in misleading the reader partially or completely. Read more of this post

‘What’s the use of living if you can’t help somebody else?’

Occasionally, a gem shows up in the archives of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. This item, published on March 11, 1917, shows how a worker found the courage to demand a better shake from her employer. This is taken from the much-longer story, which is included at the end of this summary.

Getting arrested has become a “regular thing” for Madge Keith, 24. In 14 weeks of picket duty at Robinson’s, a restaurant in downtown St. Louis, she’s been picked up by police 25 times. “And I might be arrested 25 more — but it’s all in a day’s work with me now,” she told a Post-Dispatch reporter.

She’s on strike for a wage increase. “We don’t want so very much, either. The restaurant pays $1 a day and 8 hours’ work. We want $1.10 a day 8 hours’ work. We couldn’t get it. So we struck.”

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‘Pockets of volume’ ‘Locally heavy’ ‘Hearts go out’ ‘Great’

Weather words: Cone of concern. People are bracing. Blanketing. Dampening. Spotty mix. Icy patch. Wintry mix. Barreling. Lashing. Churning. Taking aim. Little blustery. Frozen stuff. Ridge of high pressure. Packs a wallop. Packing winds of. Packing a punch. Gusty winds. Heavy rain. A line of showers. Intermittent. Periods of rain. Severe. Isolated. Spot. Strong. Sun is starting to peek back in. Pop-up shower. Stray and scattered and residual showers. Hit-and-miss. Notches. Hooks. Locally heavy. Couple sprinkles. Rumbles of thunder. Breathing a collective sigh of relief. Weather-related disasters: Shredded lumber. Twisted metal. Reduced to rubble. Wide swath of destruction. Raked.

Social unrest words: Reckoning. A watershed moment. Tipping point. Turning point. Game-changer. Real change. Not just treat the symptoms. Substantive change. Time for healing. Remove the cancer. Rush to get back to normalcy. Systemic changes. Highest ideals. Speak your truth. Boots on the ground. Seats at the table. In the room. Power to inspire and heal. Having a conversation. Root causes.

We keep entering ‘a new and dangerous phase’

The week-long offensive to retake the ISIS stronghold (of Fallujah) has now entered a new and dangerous phase. [CBS News. May 30, 2016]  The Palestinian president today accused Israel of provoking a “religious war” … amid mounting concerns that their long-running conflict is entering a new and dangerous phase. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Nov. 11, 2014]  Declaring a victor before a negotiated settlement could mark a new, dangerous phase of the crisis surrounding the vote to succeed President Hamid Karzai. [The National Journal, September 11, 2014] The 48-page report released Tuesday is grim, Read more of this post

The armadillo in all of us

It may be small-brained and shortsighted, but the armadillo has managed to take over most of the Americas.

Only one armadillo showed up for this year’s “World Famous Armadillo Festival” in Hamburg, Ark., and it couldn’t have cared less.

After a ceremonial weigh-in and photo shoot with the reigning Teen Miss Armadillo (a local high school beauty), the creature was released in the designated “racetrack” — a makeshift chicken wire enclosure — where it immediately began to nose around for bugs and grubs. Read more of this post

Jinx Rag

“Dedicated to the famous cartoonist Jean Knott.”

Knott (1883-1937) worked at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, where he drew the popular “Penny Ante” strip and other cartoons. In 1916, he joined the Hearst syndicate.

Recent accounts say Lucian Porter Gibson of St. Louis (1890-1959) wrote “Jinx Rag” in 1915.  But a clip from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, published on Oct. 8, 1911, says Gibson and Jesse Dukes “jointly composed” the song. Little is known about either man. Copies of the score include the instruction: “Not Fast. Don’t Fake”

The exposure era

 “One of the chief requisites of a successful author-exposer is that he shall take himself and everything he touches most seriously. An appreciation of the humorous would be likely to mar what would otherwise be masterpieces of exposure literature. … He takes the world seriously, he demands to be himself taken seriously, else he may brand you as one of ‘The System’ or a sympathizer of that aggregation of corruptors.” — The Exposure Era in the Magazines, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 8, 1906.

The homicide record: ‘A truly terrible state of lawlessness’

In December 1915, The Spectator, a weekly that covered the nation’s insurance industry, looked at the large increase in mortality caused by homicide in the previous decade. It focused on 30 leading cities. Many of its findings are familiar, including a condemnation of “the unrestrained sale of firearms.”

The largest numbers of homicides were recorded in places with the biggest populations, including Chicago and New York City’s then-biggest boroughs (Manhattan, the Bronx and Brooklyn).

But the highest homicide rates were found in cities in the South, led by Memphis, Tenn., which recorded a rate of 63.7 homicides per 100,000 people in 1904-1913 and 72.2 in 1914. Those numbers, wrote statistician Frederick L. Hoffman, “reflect a truly terrible state of lawlessness and indifference to human life.” A distant second was Charleston, S.C., at 32.7 in 1904-1913 and 33.3 in 1914, followed by Savannah, Ga.; Atlanta; New Orleans; Nashville, Tenn.; and Louisville, Ky.

St. Louis  —  the nation’s fourth-largest city until 1920, when it was overtaken by Detroit and Cleveland — had the eighth-highest homicide rate, according to the 1915 ranking.  Read more of this post

Patience in the face of adversity

. . .

“If God send thee adversity, receive it in patience and give thanks to Our Lord and bethink thee that thou has deserved it, and that He will make it turn to thine advantage.” — Louis IX

Guiding principle

I have not a whole series of journalistic principles. I have only one principle, and that is represented by an effort to make it harder for the rich to grow richer and easier for the poor to keep from growing poorer. –– E.W. Scripps, 1910

We can only hold together, having supporting us the army of our followers, so long as we fight hard and win battles for them; so long as we fight against privilege and successfully and by degrees transfer continually some of the privileges of the few to the many. — E.W. Scripps, 1915

One year, 250 links

A lot was written about #Ferguson. Some of it was interesting. Some was good. A few things were important. http://bit.ly/1ww93uA

Seeing the world through the eyes of the Globe

People who knew Martin Duggan as the elderly, avuncular host of a St. Louis PBS talk show also remember that he was a veteran newspaperman, the former editorial page editor of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat.

They may remember the Globe-Democrat as a conservative voice; they may forget, however, how reactionary, how out-of-step with the times, and how often foolish that newspaper could be.

In early 1983, the same year the Newhouse chain announced it was closing the Globe-Democrat, I interviewed Duggan for a profile of his newspaper’s editorial page. He was 62; I was 24.

‘Your work is not important. It is merely interesting.’

A scale of basic values for an individual, or for a newspaper, in [O.K.] Bovard’s thinking, started with the concept of man as primarily an economic animal, whose life being was shaped to a great extent by his search for the necessities. But, while food, clothing, and shelter as basic needs of man provided the skeleton of his news philosophy, it was large enough to include such factors as the right to work, the right to know and learn, and medical care for the sick. Until a bed existed in every hospital for every sick and needy person, or until a desk was provided in every schoolroom for every child, Bovard felt that the question of a symphony orchestra for St. Louis should remain relatively unimportant. Thomas B. Sherman, the paper’s music and book critic, might argue that music should be classified as a necessity, but Bovard would not have agreed. This concept of news values explains in part Bovard’s desire to minimize the entertainment features of the paper and his eagerness to replace them with more solid stuff. He told Marguerite Martyn, who wrote about fashions and women’s activities, “Always remember, your work is not important. It is merely interesting.” When men were unemployed and starving, he grew impatient with the “fluff” and trivia that filled great quantities of newspaper space.” – James W. Markham, “Bovard of the Post-Dispatch (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1954) pp. 137-138

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‘Worst in the world for discovering genius’

“Your newspapers are really wonderful in many ways; they are positively audacious, astonishing, but they are the worst in the world for discovering genius. … It was an awful shame that a second-rate critic from England should have to be called in to tell Americans who their poets are.” — John Cowper Powys (St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 29, 1915)

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Happy in Ząbkowice Śląskie

https://vimeo.com/90680375

Formerly Frankenstein, Silesia.

A strategy based on more campaign ads, less industry competition

E.W. Scripps Co. is in the process of shedding its newspapers as part of a combination with Milwaukee-based Journal Communications.  The newspaper-free E.W. Scripps will focus primarily on broadcast and digital. Its future, outlined by CEO Rich Boehne (excerpts below), anticipates a windfall of heavy campaign spending in a post-Citizens United political marketplace. It also looks to a future with fewer competing media voices in local markets.

Boehne & Co. have been singing the same tune for more than four years. In a 2010 presentation to analysts, E.W. Scripps gloated about the windfall it garnered from midterm elections. “We took more than our fair share — by design” read one slide in the presentation that was headlined: “2010 political winners: GOP and SSP.” (SSP is the ticker symbol for Scripps.)

Some idealists may think such a strategy — one that depends fewer competing news organizations and on 30-second, often vitriolic and misleading, TV spots — is cynical, Read more of this post

Mr. Mooney

(C.P.J.) Mooney was a newspaperman’s newspaperman. He would, if necessary, throw out features and even advertisements to make room for news. Incidentally, under his editorship, the Commercial Appeal not only attained the biggest circulation in the South but it probably reached its all-time high for profits. News-room reports had it that, one year, the paper paid dividends of sixty-four percent! Maybe Mooney had the right idea after all — give the public a newspaper, thorough, fair and interesting, and all these other things, including profits, shall be added unto you.

People would buy a copy of the Memphis afternoon newspapers with their heavy headlines about some tragedy, read the story and then remark: “Well, let’s wait and see what the Commercial Appeal says in the morning.

“Get the story first but get it right” was one of Mooney’s mottoes. On the wall of the office hung this:

“The three essentials of reporting: First, Accuracy; Second, Accuracy; Third, Accuracy.” — From “Cub Reporter” by Boyce House, 1947.

Charles Patrick Joseph Mooney is still regarded as the greatest editor of The Commercial Appeal, the daily newspaper of Memphis. He died in 1926, a full decade before the paper became a link in the Scripps chain. Mooney ran the newspaper, but he kept the title of managing editor. Nobody held the title of “editor” or “editor-in-chief.”