Audio Features

Face masks are hot, itchy and awkward. But they're among the best ways to help keep the coronavirus from spreading. St. Louis doctors and public officials have been pleading for people to wear them in public for months. They say where, when and how you wear a mask makes a difference.

Applications to a USDA program to help farmers add solar panels is seeing increased applications. Falling prices of solar equipment is making the renewable energy a more viable option on the farm.

On the heels of financial struggles in higher education, the pandemic could land a death blow to smaller colleges dotting rural Missouri and Illinois.

Philadelphia-based group Monument Lab asked 750 St. Louisans to draw maps of the city from memory. The results provided different views of the city's history, along a familiar racial divide.

The coronavirus lockdowns in Illinois came just as Fairmount Park Racetrack was set to start the 2020 horse racing season in March.The racetrack was shuttered until June, when Illinois allowed live horse races to resume at tracks around the state with one caveat: no spectators.

Curators from the Missouri Historical Society are documenting how St. Louisans have coped with the coronavirus pandemic. The collection includes photos, videos and journal entries that capture what it's like to live during a pandemic.

When St. Louis Treasurer Tishaura Jones and her challenger in the Democratic primary, Alderman Jeffrey Boyd, ran for the first time in 2012, both pledged to revamp the office.Jones specifically said she would shift the responsibility for parking elsewhere and focus on banking and investment.Eight years later, the treasurer’s office is still in charge of parking, which bothers Boyd.

The Clay family’s staying power in St. Louis politics is unmatched.For more than 50 years, Lacy Clay and his father, Bill, have represented Missouri’s 1st Congressional District — creating one of the strongest political organizations in the state’s modern history and one that’s withstood a number of tough challenges.

When her illness first began, Celeste Marx didn’t think much of it.She felt more tired than usual and, at times, surprisingly weak. Then she started coughing — and whenever she coughed, she felt like she was going to throw up.“I just thought, ‘Oh my gosh, what is happening to me?’” said Marx, who lives in south St. Louis County. “I just felt so incredibly lousy.”

If you’ve followed the scores of Black Lives Matter protests that have filled St. Louis-area streets for nearly two months, you’ve likely seen their work in your social media feeds.Citizen journalists have livestreamed or live-tweeted nearly every demonstration following the police killings of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Louisville this spring. Most have no formal journalism training and no newsroom team or subscriber base supporting them. But many people in the region’s Black community consider them credible news sources.