Posts Tagged ‘Post-Dispatch’

St. Louis Centre is finally such a distant memory that St. Louis officials have given the structure a new name, Seventh Street Garage (and retail).  The once-popular (for about a year) downtown mall, will become three floors (750 spaces) of parking for US Bank Building and One City Centre, a two-floored movie theater, and 70K of first floor retail – owned by the Missouri Development Finance Board.  Clayco and Environmental Operations will partner as the developers of the $31 million project.  The columnist plans to arm-wrestle the St. Louis Business Journals’ savvy Lisa Brown and the Post-Dispatch’s able duo of business reporters named Tim for the details of the new retail users.

Buried at the bottom of a Post-Dispatch story about the City of St. Louis’s meeting with a jackpot of developers, lawyers, and property owners interested in applying for the sole available casino license on behalf of a city project was the news that St. Louis county was planning to issue its own Request for Proposals for a competing county project.  That news is  a sweet victory for a loose coalition of neighbors and conservationists who feared that the deck had been stacked for North County Development, a quartet of lawyers and other monied interests who reportedly have a contract on several parcels of Spanish Lake property owned by St. Charles resident Bill Coleman near the famous Confluence of the Rivers conservation site.

Retired Post-Dispatch investigative reporter Carolyn Tuft remains bitter over the attempted refusal by the Newspaper Guild to allow her to attend the recent vote on the new contract offered by Lee Enterprises. She explained, “I wanted to support my brothers and sisters.  The guild also turned away retirees.  Finally, there was a vote to allow me to remain, since I had an 8-day window until retirement. Even the attendance by the international president of the guild, was discouraged.”  Tuft said that she remains ill as a result of a mugging and beating she endured in 2007 by three men on a P-D parking lot.  “One of them drew a gun and pointed it at my face,” she recalled. “I chased one of them down the street.  No one from the paper came to help me.  The company told the cops that there was no gunman. As a result, I have since suffered from stomach and brain problems. I later testified against one of the guys and he has since been sentenced to 10 years in prison. The getaway car was similar to those used in the Joyce Meyers Ministries’ fleet. “  Tuft, as most remember, was the author of a revealing series of searing articles about the ministries.

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.”

Tom Klein has defected from the Post-Dispatch to join the Cardinals.  He was sports copy editor at the daily and is expected to ditto on the baseball club’s publications. . .

The St.Louis Pro Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists will bestow honors on those inducted to its Print Hall of Fame at a luncheon on March 11.  The inductees are: former broadcast scribe and commentary page editor Eric Mink, St. Louis magazine’s Ray Hartman and Print Hall of Fame founder Frank Absher – all of whom will participate in a panel discussion on their careers and the journalism industry of today.  Mark Vittert, another inductee to the Hall of Fame, never a journalist, but his financial support made possible the birth and operation of The Riverfront Times and the Biz Journal. The bash is at noon at the Lucas Park Grille.

Skilled scribe Tom Uhlenbrock is ankling the Post-Dispatch to work for  Gov. Jay Nixon to promote Missouri tourism.  It all began when he was sent to the daily’s education team and that was it. He clocked out. Kudos to the guv for recognizing a great guy for a great job.