The state of rural journalism in the United States is parlous. Just how parlous is hard to tell. Journalism in rural America comprises mainly newspapers. Few rural radio stations cover local news in the way that newspapers do, and the few TV stations that can be classified as rural cover vast areas and are not…
Sixty-one years ago, Percy Green began a hunger strike in front of the office of then-St. Louis Treasurer John H. “Jack” Dwyer to demand the city remove tax money from Jefferson Bank, which had no Black employees. Green, who had already been branded a “habitual troublemaker” by the St. Louis Globe-Democrat and secretly targeted for…
A stickler for straight-forward writing and AP style, Linda Lockhart did not pass away or transition. She died on May 4, 2025 of complications associated with cancer. She was 72. Lockhart worked in more than half a dozen newsrooms in the Midwest, from St. Louis to St. Paul to Madison to Milwaukee and back to…
The number of full-time statehouse reporters who cover capital cities has declined 34% since 2014. To fill this gap, college students are providing a substantial amount of statehouse coverage, including in Illinois and Missouri. There are now 34 university- or college-led statehouse reporting initiatives in 30 states across the country, according to the University of…
In an age of digital media, podcasts and streaming, the good-old-days of community radio seem to be at an end – not with a bang or even a whimper. It’s more about lawyers conversing in bankruptcy court. In St. Louis, KDHX is deep in the red and close to pulling the plug. That’s not the…