Posts Tagged ‘Emily Rauh Pulitzer’

Pleasant, gracious and relaxed Emily Rauh Pulitzer chimed in about her late husband, Joseph Pulitzer, Jr.,’s

Post-Dispatch: “The quality has clearly deteriorated.  Lee Enterprises has faced a really difficult economic situation.  What Lee did with the Post-Dispatch is not different from what has happened in other cities.  Nobody has figured out how to deal with the Internet.  Journalism is very important and without journalists with good education you don’t have a democracy.  Not-for-profit journalism is very important. That’s where KWMU, NPR, The Beacon and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting come in.”   The latter is headed by former P-D scribe Jon Sawyer and subsidized by Emily and Joe’s first cousin, David Moore. The mention  that  a former P-D editor blamed Emily for the current situation of the Post by selling it, got a quick response.  She said, “How simplistic. My vote was one of three. We saw the handwriting on the wall.”

EMILY FIRST ARRIVED in our town from her native Cincinnati in 1964.  The daughter of reform Jewish parents – Harriet, a travel agent, and Frederick, an insurance executive – she had worked at the Fogg Museum at Harvard and later at the St. Louis Art Museum.The columnist met Emily in the kitchen of her Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, where she had just finished lunch with her colleagues.  She burns enough energy to light up Grand Center, where the foundation building is located. The sleek structure, where an auto factory and showroom once stood, is no place where pigeons roost and will undoubtedly leave an indelible trademark of quality on Washington Avenue. Then, it was onward to her spacious office, where she chatted about St. Louis.  Her vision?  “It has great potential, but mixed leadership. It has a bad government system and no one really has power.  Ironically, the first Joseph Pulitzer was instrumental in separating the city from the county for which we now suffer. He wanted the separation, because the city council was so corrupt.” She then proudly touted the upcoming biography of the first Joseph Pulitzer by James McGrath Morris, “Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print & Power.”  The author is due for a book signing on March 23 at Left Bank Books.

Emily Rauh Pulitzer

Q & A: On the current state of the Art Museum in Forest Park, Emily turned to the construction.  “The focus on the building has reduced parking and gallery space and they will be further reduced in the future.”

On President Obama? “We had great hopes, but he’s inherited a horrible mess.”

On Health Care Reform. “The system needs a major overhaul. It’s clearly a compromise.”
On same-sex marriage? “Why shouldn’t everyone have the same rights?”
One of her  favorite reminiscences of Joseph Pulitzer, Jr.? “A group of us were in the kitchen in Richard Gaddes’ lake house preparing dinner. Joe walked in and asked, ‘Anything I can do to help?’ There was a roar of laughter.”
FINALLY, asked if she’s an artist, Emily shook her head and admitted, “I’m a terrible artist. I’m an art historian and art critic.”