25 years: the ups and downs of St. Louis media.

The outpouring of media is so tremendous that the flow of information often seems regular and stable. Actually, the news stream is incredibly turbulent. In the last 25 years, St. Louis has seen major changes in its sources of information.

St. Louisans remember the St. Louis Globe-Democrat's long, agonizing death. The St. Louis Sun set all too quickly. Many other publications and media outlets, like the East St. Louis Monitor, have simply faded away.

Below is a partial list of the start-ups that succeeded and failed in St. Louis during the last quarter of a century.

1970s

WSIE came on the air in September 1970. Broadcast from Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville, it was established to provide educational broadcasts to southwest Illinois and St. Louis and to provide a broadcast experience to students in the mass communications program. Part of its mission, says station manager Roy Gerritson, is to enrich and preserve the rich cultural heritage of jazz music in our area. The staff normally consists of 30-35 students and five full-time professionals.

It is the only full-time jazz station in the St. Louis market. It supports the jazz community through a 24-hour information line and free on air announcements of club dates. The station has a directional signal away from St. Louis so as not to interfere with other broadcast signals.

KWMU signed on June 2, 1972, as KBMJ to serve the educational mission of the University of Missouri-St. Louis. It began offering classical music and public affairs programming, eventually adding a small mix of locally produced blues, jazz and alternative rock. In 1980, it added National Public Radio news. As it evolved, it ditched local programming and student-run programs for more nationally produced shows. News and information now make up the majority of broadcasts.

The Riverfront Times first hit the streets in November 1977 as a money-maker to support Ray Hartmann's "college newspaper" Profile St. Louis, begun eight months earlier. At first, the RFT was just a downtown newspaper. Eighteen thousand copies were distributed in the central business district east of 12th Street once a month. In March 1979, the Personals began, bringing in more money and attention. In 1980, Hartmann pioneered another advertising market when he began bar and music listings. Those two innovations, says Hartmann, "really built the paper" financially. Hartmann's third major innovation also came in 1980, when he became aware that people in other cities "were doing the same thing but with a political slant." The RFT took up more solid issues: Duncan Bauman's attempt to stack the Police Board; the city's subsidy of the VP Fair; and the Gateway Mali debacle. "People started taking us seriously," says Hartmann. "We got known for those kinds of stories. We won attention and respect." Current distribution is 100,000.

Webster-Kirkwood Times began July 13, 1978. Originally a monthly serving only Webster Groves, it expanded into Kirkwood in April 1979 and went bi-weekly the following month. In April 1984, it became a weekly. Its avowed purpose is "to provide a forum for the expression of community interests, personalities, culture, events and ideas." Publisher and general manager Dwight Bitikofer says the paper was started by three new graduates of Webster University who wanted a community newspaper.

The first couple of years the paper carried mostly features. It did not start covering local news, such as city council and school board meetings, until 1980. Eventually it became the dominant news presence in those communities. Surveys show that more Kirkwood and Webster residents get their community news from the Times, with a distribution of 40,000, than from the Suburban Journals and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch combined. In 1989, the Times purchased the South County News and merged it with the three-year-old Gravois-Watson Times to create the South County Times, which has a distribution of 35,000.

Cable TV made its big push into the metropolitan area in 1977-78 with prominent "rented citizens" and bribery scandals.

1980s

St. Louis Weekly - which grew out of the Tennis Press - was published by Vicky Levitt and Carol Jablonow from 1974 to 1985. When it was about to close down Ed Presberg bought it and published it as The Every Other Weekly. It returned to weekly publication before going out of business in December 1989. "We were trying to be a local version of People magazine," says Presberg. He blamed the publication's demise on the recession which curbed retail sales and retail advertising, and the advent of the Sun, "which basically gave away advertising."

The St. Louis Business Journal was the brainchild of Mark Vittert and Andrew Newman and debuted in October 1980. "We had a sense that a lot of business news was not being covered, that we could do more in-depth stories than either daily. That is still true," says publisher Ellen Sherberg, who started with the paper as a reporter in November 1980. With a paid circulation of more than 21,000, the Business Journal has established itself as a major source for local business news.

Gay and Lesbian News-Telegraph (now just News-Telegraph), appeared as a monthly on October 6, 1981. Early issues averaged 12 pages and they were distributed only in St. Louis. The current paper comes out twice a month and averages 44 pages. It has a distribution of 15,000, two-thirds of it in the St. Louis and Kansas City metro areas, the rest in small towns through southern Illinois, Missouri, Kansas and northwest Arkansas.

General manager Jim Thomas says, "The idea behind starting the publication was to provide a solid base of information for gay and lesbian community development. In a sense, the mission was political. But to do it effectively, we felt it had to be an independent, objective newspaper of record. We accept that being gay and lesbian is a perfectly normal and acceptable thing. We are a paper of record for that community."

Thomas denies that the paper has any unifying ideology. "We are as happy to run commentary pieces from people who identify themselves as conservatives as we are to run pieces by left-wing socialists who want to reach gay and lesbians." The paper began as an all-volunteer, typewritten effort.

Real growth started in 1990, after Thomas left his job at KWMU to work full-time on the News-Telegraph. The paper had to expand its territory, says Thomas, to support a paid staff and the production standards necessary to do quality journalism. It now has seven employees and two offices. Additional gay publications now in St. Louis are TWISL and LesTalk. Thomas says they are not competitors, but have different functions, "One is a bar publication and the other is an advocacy magazine."

KNLC, says director Larry Rice, went on the air in September 1983 with a multi-purpose approach: To try to zero in on minorities, to promote local community programming, such as performances by central city choirs, "to be a voice for the indigent, the homeless and the elderly, the people who aren't normally heard" and to bring together people with resources and people with needs.

"We also wanted to give local churches an opportunity to be on the air," says Rice. "We wanted to fill the religious vacuum in the media that is peculiar to St. Louis." The biggest change was getting the Fox Children's Network in August. "Most of its members are children in families with incomes greater than $40,000 a year," says Rice. "We hope to bring them together with the indigent."

Three times during the 1980s, the St. Louis Globe-Democrat went out of business. One of the city's two daily papers, it faltered under a joint operating agreement with the Pulitzer-owned St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The joint operating agency running both the Post and Globe decided to kill it on Dec. 31, 1983. The U.S. Justice Department ordered a sale instead. Novice publishers Jeffrey and Debra Gluck bought it for $50,000.

Less than two years later, on Oct. 31, 1985, they filed for bankruptcy, listing debts in excess of $8 million. The paper died on December 6, only to reappear on January 27, 1986, under the ownership of the Veritas corporation, formed by state Republican Party activists William E. Franke and John B. Prentis. It died again, for the final time on October 29, 1986.

Gluck returned for a short time in 1986 as president of National Web Printing Inc., publisher of the short lived St. Louis Dally News, despite the continued legacy of $1 milton in bad debt from his foray at the Globe. While publisher of the Globe, Gluck had launched an afternoon paper on April 30, 1984 called the St. Louis Evening News. That, too, died a rapid death.

Limelight appeared in July 1986. Gene Liss, a former owner of the American, Juanita and John Doggett, Henry and Margeruite Scott, and Stan and Kitty Newsome started the paper to highlight "good things" in the black community, such as weddings, affluence, stable marriages, and scholarships to Ivy League schools. "The idea was to show the black community as happy and successful and interacting in a positive way with the total community . . . a Ladue News approach to the black community."

There has been only one dramatic change, says Liss, and "that was forced on us." When the St. Louis American changed over to free distribution, "Our circulation fell. We had to go to free circulation." Besides social news, Limelight also is known for occasional wacky humor, such as a "live" interview with Elvis and a "report" on Rush Limbaugh getting stuck in a motel bathtub.

Globe Digest appeared soon after the Globe folded. It was put out by former Globe staffers who wanted to continue the conservative reporting and editorial slant of the old paper. They ceased publishing when the Sun came to town.

KDHX went on the air October 14, 1987. Volunteers grouped around the amorphous concept of "community radio," and calling themselves "Double Helix," had been trying to get a radio station since 1972, when the counter cultural KDNA went dark. The original intent was to resurrect KDNA. As time lapsed, interest rose in television. When St. Louis finally chartered cable TV franchises, Double Helix got the contract to provide local origination programming and operate the public access studio. Most shows produced for either KDHX or cable TV are put together by volunteers.

Take Five, St. Louis' African American monthly magazine, appeared first in December 1987. Publisher Sylvester Brown Jr. says he was trying to create an alternative to the white press and the existing black press, "Something that would go more in depth into issues and politics." He also wanted to create an outlet for local black writers. Take Five is a free publication coming out 11 times a year. Brown thought that after he built an advertising base with small black-owned businesses he would be able to crack the corporate market. It hasn't happened. Advertising agencies, he says, "don't respect the black consumer market or publications that reach that market. They have turned me down while advertising in small white publications such as the Ladue News and the West End Word that have smaller or similar circulations?

Also in the 1980s, ABC News, and the Chicago Tribune set-up and folded bureaus in St. Louis. The Wall Street Journal, operating in St. Louis since the '60s, also closed in the '80s.

Ralph Ingersoll launched the St. Louis Sun on September 1, 1989. The first new big city daily newspaper in 40 years changed the way St. Louisans read their news. The Post copied the livelier artwork and graphics, and the makeover of a handful of reporters into columnists and news personalities.

By most accounts, Ingersoll's big mistake was to underestimate how much St. Louis is a home delivery newspaper town. That mistake was being rectified, however. A home delivery system was in the works, and the paper seemed on the way to success when Ingersoll's financial house of cards began to collapse. The paper closed after a few months, in the spring of 1990,

WHSL TV46, the only black-owned station in the area, debuted in September 1989, broadcasting the Home Shopping Network.

St. Louis Magazine, started in the 1960s, went through several ownership changes in the 1980s. It folded in 1993, after a short run as an insert in the Business Journal. Local writer and former RFT staffer Gianna Jacobson twice tried to buy the publication. After it folded, she corralled investors for a new city publication, but pulled out when Ray Hartmann announced he was going to restart St. Louis, and was not interested in a partner. The magazine has come out as a Hartmann publication only twice.

1990s

Two more new television networks hit town: FOX and then WB.

St. Louis Life came out in late 1993 as Sports and Leisure, changing to St. Louis Life in December. The editors and publisher wanted to provide a general interest publication for families that focused on St. Louis culture, history and family entertainment. The magazine has expanded to include restaurant and movie reviews, a travel section and a children's section. Senior writer Bob Bourgeois says they want to write about St. Louis living, but not St. Louis celebrities. Distribution is 65,000.

St. Louis Times hit the streets in October 1994 as a publication for older adults. At first it focused on people over 55-years-old. Since then, it has lowered the audience age to 50 to get the tip of the baby boomers. Distribution is 100,000.