A new generation is offering us hope.

Rose, my wife, who among many bother things also proofreads SJR copy, asked me a short while ago, "This country experienced a traumatic, world-changing event, the presidential election, and this issue fails to take any note of it."

I mentioned Rev. Tabscott's reflections on page five, but while these were his thoughts triggered by the election, they actually do not deal with the election.

The front pages and the inside pages of the St. Louis-Post Dispatch, The New York Times, The Financial Times, every magazine and news outlet, every broadcast outlet, were overflowing with minute-by-minute coverage.

So, I confess, whatever we could say would be redundant.

Yes, I never thought that our country would have the maturity to elect an African American.

Yes, I relish at the pledge and now enacted openness of the new administration.

Yes, I welcome the return to law and order by our intelligence and defense agencies.

Yes, I rejoice at the regained international stature of the United States.

And, yes, I wish that Claude-Jean Bertrand would still be alive. He was a frequent visitor and loved America.

He was a professor at the University of Paris, a media ethicist, a student of American civilization, who for three decades turned a critical eye towards the media, wrote Ioannis Papadopoulos in Media Ethics Magazine.

He designed a Media Accountability System (MAS), which he defined as any non-governmental means of inducing media and journalists to respect the ethical rules set by the profession.

To him The St. Louis Journalism Review was a key tool in setting such ethical rules. We communicated frequently and some of his ideas were published in SJR.

He wrote 20 books, lectured in 58 countries and established a Web site about MAS that was moved to the Reynolds Institute for Journalism at the University of Missouri (http://www.mediaaccountability.org).

I mention him here because he--a lover of America--told me when Bush was reelected, "After all I said, now I am glad that I am a Frenchman. How could they?"

Well, Claude, you would be proud of us now.

One more thought that this election is a transformation beyond politics, economics, wars and race.

Most readers will have heard of the mother, who told her daughter that this was the first time an African American was elected president.

Incredulously, the girl wondered why no African American had ever been elected before.

A new generation is offering us hope.

On the local scene, the board of trustees of the St. Louis County Library considered a protest by the Citizens Against Pornography about a dozen titles on the shelves in the teen section of the Library. The list includes "Alice on her Way," by acclaimed author Phyllis Reynolds Naylor and "The Little Black Book for Girls: A Book on Healthy Sexuality," published by St. Stephen's Community House.

The board's response: the library administration was instructed to review the teen collection, and the process used to add books to this collection. The trustees also decided that the collection will consist of 6th through 12th grade level material and will receive a "High School" label, according to Brian Brain, assistant director-adult & support services of the St. Louis County Library.

While not literally rejecting the protest, the proposal will leave all the books on the shelves. The board deserves our congratulations.

To stand up against the misguided attempts at censorship requires stamina and the fortitude to make unpopular decisions; unpopular with well-intentioned but shortsighted citizens, who fail to understand the core principles of a free society.

Charles L. Klotzer is the editor/publisher emeritus of SJR.