When St. Louis Got the (Newspaper) Blues

By: Mark Fitzgerald Patrick Gauen recalls it as a Hollywood moment, a scene that might have been too corny even for Frank Capra. On a rainy Sunday night in February 1984, he and General Manager Richard H. "Dick" Amberg Jr. were crossing Tucker Boulevard to watch the presses roll on the first edition of the revived St. Louis Globe-Democrat. The paper's owner, Advance Publications, had shut it down for two months before being forced to sell to the third person crossing the street ? an energetic 31-year-old named Jeff Gluck. Globe-Democrat circulation drivers spotted the new owner and began honking their horns and driving by slowly in spontaneous appreciation.

Before morning, that rainy night would turn into a blizzard that paralyzed delivery ? and the Capra-corn moment with the drivers would months later fade to a scene more fitting for a Martin Scorsese gangster epic. "I went into Jeff's office, he's on the phone and he motions for me to sit down," recalls Gauen, then the paper's top editor, "and he says to whoever's on the other end, 'Well, how much extra is it if they carry guns?'" Gluck was about to break the Teamsters' delivery contract ? and hiring security guards for the new drivers.

There were many other memorable moments at the Globe-Democrat under the new owner. There was the weekly employee race to the bank to be sure paychecks cleared ? that is, when checks were issued at all. The day the UPI wires fell silent for hours as the news agency demanded payment. The health benefits that disappeared and reappeared almost every other month. By 1985, the newspaper that had once sponsored Lindbergh's solo flight across the Atlantic couldn't afford air conditioning in the newsroom.

At a time when a new fervor for local ownership of the newspaper is gripping many cities, the Globe-Democrat experience recalls the usual warnings about answered prayers. And it's not the only one.

To some residents and former employees, the Boca Raton (Fla.) News is another example of a paper that suffered when it went from chain ownership to local hands. Knight Ridder lavished attention on the paper, which in the early 1990s underwent a radical makeover as part of the chain's then-groundbreaking 25/43 Project to win back baby boomers. Readers liked it, and circulation spiked ? but advertisers were confused by the makeover and stayed away.

By 1997, Knight Ridder had sold the News to Community Newspaper Holdings Inc. (CNHI), which in turn quickly sold it to an individual investor. Another local owner picked it up a few years later. In 2001, the local alternative Broward Palm Beach New Times declared: "Boca Raton's hometown newspaper, once a paragon of journalism, has become a laughingstock."

Without the resources of a chain behind it, the News had a tough time competing, says Marco D. Commisso, who was a business reporter at the paper under Knight Ridder and business editor when it was locally owned. The News, he notes, is a small paper in a crowded market. "Local ownership was a lot of empty promises," Commisso says from West Palm Beach, where he now practices law. "We lost seasoned reporters, the paper shrunk ... it's almost like we became a mom-and-pop shop after being a multimillion dollar company." Craig Swill, the fifth proprietor since 1997, bought the paper early last year (see Shoptalk, page 66).

Underfunded local owners are a recipe for failure, says Dick Amberg, the former Globe-Democrat executive who is now vice president and general manager of The Washington Times: "You need to look at the local owner, and ask ? does he have deep pockets? Does he have knowledge of the business, or will he bring in people with knowledge of the business?" In Globe-Democrat owner Gluck, he says, both factors were lacking.

Gluck was full of audacious ideas ? not all of which he could be talked out of by cooler heads. One result: a new afternoon paper called the St. Louis Evening News. Shortly after, bleeding money, the Evening News unceremoniously folded. "We couldn't get its obit in the first edition, but we did in the second," Gauen adds. (Gluck could not be reached for comment.) Amid the bouncing checks and stopped payments, the newspaper company was forced into involuntary bankruptcy. The Globe-Democrat was revived by two local businessmen, but folded for good in 1986.

"It was a Herculean effort," says Amberg. He was "sorrier than can be" for former Globe-Democrat employees, "and the people of St. Louis."