The Local Beat
BY WILL DOBBS-ALLSOPP
Traditional print journalism may be on the decline, but celebrity journalism is in vogue. In the last few months, electoral augur Nate Silver and Wonkblog guru Ezra Klein have each launched highly anticipated sites. This summer, former New York Times executive editor Bill Keller and Pulitzer-prize winning journalist David Leonhardt are rolling out two more non-traditional news operations. Yet the most important media experiment of the year may well be the recent merger between online news site The Beacon and St. Louis NPR affiliate STLPR, two St. Louis news organizations lacking any semblance of a national brand.
The Beacon was the progeny of print media’s decline. A group of former St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporters and editors – either laid-off or bought-out as the paper cut costs amid falling circulation numbers and advertising sales – launched the online publication in 2008. All too familiar with the challenges of sustaining traditional revenue streams, The Beacon’s founders decided to operate as a non-profit organization by soliciting contributions from philanthropists in the greater St. Louis area. Throughout its nearly six-year existence the site provided its reporters with a platform to continue their coverage of local stories, even as the city’s storied daily shrank its reporting efforts.
In late 2012, however, the site’s leadership began thinking about making a change. The Beacon had recently cooperated on a few projects with St. Louis Public Radio (STLPR), owned by the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Beacon editor Margaret Freivogel and STLPR General Manager Tim Eby quickly realized that their organizations were far more effective as partners than as competitors, largely because The Beacon and STLPR shared both a business model and a vision: they were non-profit ventures that saw local reporting as a vital public service. Drawing inspiration from a proposed partnership between the University of New Orleans and NPR that never came to pass, Freivogel and Eby started talking about a merger. A short year later on December 10, 2013, having received a favorable report from a media consultant and approval from the UM Board of Curators, the two organizations officially became one.
The merged organization, operating under the St. Louis Public Radio name, now has a fully integrated newsroom and employs around 60 staffers. Freivogel leads the news section while Eby remains in charge of the overall operation. Naturally, there have been growing pains. Print journalists and editors have had to adapt their craft to a broadcasting format and vice-versa. And everyone is still adjusting to a world where as many articles are read on smart phones as on computers. But it is clear that with the addition of The Beacon’s experienced reporting corps, STLPR will bring a much-needed boost to the city’s diminished media presence.
STLPR’s online presence, however, leaves much to be desired. As was true of The Beacon, the need to avoid the enormous costs of print, as opposed to any innovative vision for how the Internet can augment news consumption, dictates STLPR’s decision to publish online. As a result, the site offers little more than conventional articles supplemented with the occasional radio clip. One would hope that an exclusively digital publication would make the most of the chance to pioneer creative storytelling platforms but, alas, such is not the case.
This is a forgivable banality, however, because STLPR’s true potential lies in the creation of a sustainable business model for local journalism. One of the underappreciated tragedies of print media’s decline is the damage that it has wrought on local newsgathering efforts. Journalism’s migration to the web has promulgated the illusion that geography is now irrelevant, that worldwide accessibility to nytimes.com can compensate for the loss of Denver’s Rocky Mountain News. It can’t.
Local news relies on a persistent focus on the community, and that is exactly what the revamped STLPR offers. Its non-profit model appears to provide a feasible alternative to the ailing print-advertising scheme. Though both STLPR and The Beacon relied on philanthropic contributions, they drew from largely distinct donor bases: STLPR had a large network of small donors, while The Beacon relied on a tight group of affluent philanthropists. As a result, the merger hasn’t resulted in a significant donor overlap. Indeed, STLPR has already raised $3 million of its target $5 million to cover the cost of integration. If successful, St. Louis’s merger could provide a feasible model that can be applied to other cities with struggling print media. Local NPR affiliates could partner with experienced journalists and begin to rebuild local new networks in cities across the country. More than Vox.com or FiveThirtyEight, the STLPR-Beacon merger has the potential to radically alter the domestic news landscape. Watch closely.