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Welcome To St. Louis Public Radio And The Beacon

Margaret Wolf Freivogel
Beacon File Photo

Monday, St. Louis Public Radio and the St. Louis Beacon merged. This milestone marks the end of more than a year of effort. But in a sense, we've just broken ground for the news organization we intend to build.

Its foundation is constructed from solid principles. We believe that facts matter. We believe that fairness matters. We believe that if we pay attention to facts and fairness, then our work will matter to you and the future of our region.

We also understand that the world has changed. People get news, share it and discuss it in all sorts of ways -- traditional broadcast and print, of course, but also online, in person and through ever-expanding forms of social media. We want to get better at listening to, learning from and informing this new world.

You can already see our new organization begin to take shape. As one small example of how we intend to work, we are kicking off a series of stories that focus on little-known problem solvers in our region. Today, the spotlight is on Michael Palmer, who's developed a program to teach kids how to write code. Soon, you'll be hearing about a pint-sized pundit, a medical worker and college students who are helping to feed their neighbors.

Over time, our work will take many forms. With a newsroom of more than two dozen, we'll have more reporters on air and online. We'll be able to provide more of the story behind the stories. And we'll be finding more ways to make complex topics understandable and to share the experience and expertise of our region.

While our work will vary in form, certain commitments will hold true -- to connect with you by whatever means you find most useful and convenient; to dig beneath the surface of the news and look for connections among disparate developments; to explore our region's underlying problems and opportunities and how people are addressing them. At a time when all of us are inundated with a digital flood of infobits, we will search for clarity amidst chaos. At a time when opinions and ideologies grab the limelight, we will examine the world with the light of many perspectives.

The St. Louis region is working to reinvent itself to meet the economic, social, political and cultural challenges we face. Our new organization is reinventing itself, too. Please join with us as we work to illuminate, investigate, challenge and celebrate the developments and issues that matter to you and the future of the St. Louis region. Please join with us as we build.

 

Margie Freivogel and Tim Eby discussed the merger of the two organizations on our talk show, St. Louis on the Air.

Margaret Wolf Freivogel is the editor of St. Louis Public Radio. She was the founding editor of the St. Louis Beacon, a nonprofit news organization, from 2008 to 2013. A St. Louis native, Margie previously worked for 34 years at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch as a reporter, Washington correspondent and assistant managing editor. She has received numerous awards for reporting as well as a lifetime achievement award from the St. Louis Press Club and the Missouri Medal of Honor from the University of Missouri School of Journalism. She is a past board member of the Investigative News Network and a past president of Journalism and Women Symposium. Margie graduated from Kirkwood High School and Stanford University. She is married to William H. Freivogel. They have four grown children and seven grandchildren. Margie enjoys rowing and is a fan of chamber music.