Racial turmoil spills over into Post newsroom.

During a meeting of African-American staffers at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Feb. 17, Readers' Advocate Chuck Stone quit.

Stone says he was dismayed by the anger he felt in St. Louis, both outside and inside the Post's newsroom.

That evening, after appeals from both black staff members and Post Editor Cole Campbell, Stone reversed his decision. But not before writing a "farewell" column in which he characterized the meeting as his "trial."

"I've never gotten as much flack as I've gotten in St. Louis," Stone says.

Stone is a professor of journalism at the University of North Carolina and one of the founders of the National Association of Black Journalists. He has a long history of crusading against institutional racism in America's media.

Stone was hired to be a temporary part-time readers' advocate during the city's highly contenious mayoral race.

After he decided not to quit, he was asked to write a different column which still contained some of the flavor of the first.

According to Stone's revised Feb. 23 column, reporter Yvonne Samuel and feature writer Cynthia Todd orchestrated the meeting.

Stone also wrote that he felt the meeting was triggered by his favorable comments about investigative reporter Carolyn Tuft in his Feb. 16 column.

In that column, Stone defended Tuft against accusations that she is racist. He praised her work at the Belleville News-Democrat, including a series on racial discrimination by Belleville police. Following that series, Tuft was harassed and threatened by whites in Belleville.

But in her reporting about city hall for the Post, she has been the focus of vitriolic and sometimes hateful complaints from parts of the black community, especially those who support Mayor Freeman Bosley, Jr.

Tuft says the newsroom became a "nightmare" following the meeting, which she attended without invitation.

Following the meeting, Tuft wrote an open letter to the staff at the Post, expressing her concerns. She considered quitting over the racist claims because she says she felt like she was left to fend for herself.

"The only person who stood up to defend me was Chuck Stone, a man I barely know," she says.

Since then, however, she says the paper's editors are making sure she knows they are behind her.

In Stone's original Feb. 23 column, the one that was never published, he said that Samuel believed the Post had "mistreated" blacks so long that they had given up on it. If Samuel did say this, she was right.

One of the problems with this furor over Stone's defense of Tuft is that it obscures the real issue. Many thoughtful blacks believe that vague but powerful bias in the Post's reporting over the years has killed its credibility.

"It's the subtle things (they) do," Sylvester Brown, editor of Take Five Magazine, said at a recent Society of Professional Journalists meeting.

Many blacks believe that the lack of black editors over the years is a big part of the Post's problem.

"African Americans must be in positions of power, not just reporters but all they way to the top, to bring that sensitivity to the front," James Buford, president of the St. Louis Urban League, said at the SPJ meeting.

Still, Stone believes the Post is not racist.

"It's not a racist paper," Stone says. "There has been no orchestrated attempt by the Post to destroy the mayor.

"I think Bosley must be held culpable for trying to put the Post-Dispatch out of business."

But he does believe that the Post makes unthinking racist mistakes, such as a Feb. 13 front page which had four single-column photos of black suspects (three of them police mug shots) running down the page.

With this kind of portrayal of blacks, it's no wonder some black staffers are angry. Stone questions how they use that anger, however.

"Yvonne Samuel is a very dedicated person, passionate about justice, but she feels so strongly that she overindulges in attacking the problem in ways that turn off people," Stone says. "She's Chuck Stone 30 years ago."

(Samuel did not want to be interviewed for this article.)

Although Stone agreed to continue his role at the Post, the turmoil that led to his almost-resignation remains.

The general election will be over-soon and Chuck Stone will be back in North Carolina. The Post staff, the mayoral candidates and their supporters, and the St. Louis public will, however, still be here. They will have to pick up the pieces.

"There needs to be a lot of sustained conversation about the value of differences," Campbell says.

Some information for this article was provided by Ed Bishop

RELATED ARTICLE: Pre-Posted

Ed Higgins editor of the editorial page at the St.Louis Post-Dispatch, has announced he is taking early retirement.

But sources say that, before his position was posted, five Post staffers were invited to apply for the position. Those staff members were: Dale Singer, Donna Korando, William Freivogel, Greg Freeman and Christine Bertelson.

Becky Mollenkamp is a St. Louis free-lance writer.