Charles Klotzer’s St. Louis Journalism Review has been taking on water for years. As the public’s interest—and the paper’s money—ebbs, will the ship go down with its captain?
For 37 years, Klotzer has been the prime reason the St. Louis Journalism Review has survived. He started it in 1970, he financed it through the ’80s, he found a home for it at Webster University in the ’90s, and when it became homeless in January, he took it back in. (Disclosure: St. Louis Magazine co-owner Ray Hartmann is a member of the SJR Board of Directors.)
When Klotzer started SJR, it was one of the few locally produced journalism reviews in the country. At the apex of the rush to judge media in the ’70s, there were dozens of such publications. That surge faded. Now SJR is the only hard-copy local journalism review in the country—it’s gone from pioneer to survivor to anomaly. And now that the publication’s godfather is approaching the less populated reaches of the actuarial tables, and there is no sign that the public has suddenly found a new urge to read it, there is a real danger that SJR may stop the presses forever.
The spry Klotzer is taking measures to make sure that doesn’t happen, even over his dead body. “I want to disappoint all those people who are hoping with my demise that SJR will go out of business,” Klotzer says. To that end, he’s trying to find a soft place for his pet publication to land, much likethe university affiliation he arranged at Webster in 1995. (That fell apart when the Webster hierarchy decided after 12 years it would no longer spend the estimated $30,000 per year it cost to publish SJR.)
Now what’s standing in the way of finding a new home for SJR is the fact that some schools (Washington and Saint Louis Universities) have the money but no interest, and others (the University of Missouri–St. Louis, Lindenwood University) have interest but no money. One possibility is Southern Illinois University Carbondale, where former Post-Dispatch reporter and editorial page writer Bill Freivogel is the director of the journalism program. Talks on several fronts are continuing.
Until a deal is struck, Klotzer is spending the publication’s last dollars and collecting financing from his own coterie of concerned citizens to keep the ship afloat. Given how good the 40-page June issue looks and how well it reads (it’s better than any edition printed at Webster), you’d never know it was a publication gasping for its last breath.
Concerns about life after Klotzer aside, it’s hard not to wonder if there’s a reason SJR is the last metropolitan journalism review in the country. Even if the case can be made that such publications are needed, apparently they aren’t wanted. If they were, Klotzer and his cohorts might not have such a hard time finding readers.
To say nobody reads SJR is an exaggeration, though it depends on how “nobody” is defined. In a market with a population of 2.7 million, about 5,000 copies of SJR are distributed monthly (or sometimes about 10 times a year), the vast majority through mail subscription. A cursory check of a few of the seven places where SJR is sold reveals that about 30 are sold per month at World News in Clayton and Westport, and a couple dozen more are sold at Left Bank Books in the Central West End.
Even after all these years, those close to Klotzer believe he is still inspired enough to think he can beat the odds. He believes in the power of the printed word.
“He’s totally into his interpretation of the Pulitzer Platform,” says Roland Klose, who worked for Klotzer in the ’80s and is now editor of the Illinois Times in Springfield. “He believes in the Pulitzer Platform more than the guy who wrote it, Joe Pulitzer, did. He’s really into kicking that predatory plutocracy down to the ground and stomping on it.”
In his best dreams, Klotzer sees SJR as an agent for social change, beyond just bitching and moaning about media. “With the decline of incisiveness of the local media, we have an opportunity to express our views and call media into account,” he says. “We are not affected by public opinion, advertising or outside pressure. We reflect the conviction of the editorial board in the hope of creating a society which reflects fairness and justice.”
The board’s other conviction is to maintain SJR as a print publication. An Internet presence is acceptable, yet Klotzer cringes when someone suggests that a website or a blog could take the place of SJR. “There are a million blogs,” he says. “We are the only locally produced journalism review in the country.”
But it’s that approach—doggedly sticking to print and continuing to employ a staff of writers that includes a high number of ex-Post employees—that frustrates some other local media mavens. Mike Anderson is the man behind stlmedia.net, a website and message board for local journalists, with an emphasis on electronic media. He believes SJR drifted during its years at Webster and needs to be revamped.
“It’s not going to be an easy thing to fix,” Anderson says. “They’re staying with the same crew of writers. That’s good—their praises should be sung highly for not dumping everyone. On the other hand, where are they going to find new writers? I’m a few years away from 60, and I don’t want a bunch of people my age writing in a journalism review. People who write for journalism reviews now should be in their twenties and thirties.”
Anderson and Klotzer have a past. Anderson worked on SJR’s website for several years before leaving over a disagreement with Klotzer about his payment. The spat appears to be over, yet it goes unresolved. Anderson says Klotzer offered him an “insulting” amount of money for his work; Klotzer says the whole dispute is “so silly I won’t talk about it.” Anderson also retains the rights to the stljr.org domain name, which he says he tried to sell to Klotzer at cost, though they failed to reach an agreement. (Visitors to the site in June were greeted by the smiling mug of KTRS 550 yakker Frank O. Pinion, another of Anderson’s clients.)
Anderson is attempting to launch stlmediareview.com, a website he says will be a “factual and unbiased” examination of radio, print and television media from a St. Louis perspective using the latest in video and audio technology. But apparently there isn’t an epidemic of interest in a media review website, either: Anderson announced the new site in February; through mid-June, the latest entry was still dated February 20.
Anderson insists that his attempt to start a media review website is not a reflection of his opinion of Klotzer. “I have nothing against the man and nothing against the Journalism Review. The paper just needs to advance,” Anderson says. “We have moved on to a whole new way of doing things, watching things, seeing things. If you don’t join that revolution or at least get on a boat and join that flotilla, you’ve got a problem. That’s the problem with the St. Louis Journalism Review. Mr. Klotzer has an enormous amount of knowledge about print media, but he has no knowledge of new media.”
One thing the two share is a thin budget. In his efforts to launch the site, Anderson is telling potential writers that initially they will not be paid. Klotzer admits that the only way he navigated SJR’s eternal imminent demise was by covering its losses with profits from his day job, running FOCUS/Graphics out of an Olivette storefront. And that, he says, is why all the other locally produced reviews disappeared through the years.
“Sooner or later volunteers run out of energy and money,” Klotzer says. “We happened to stay alive because we always completely separated the financial end from the editorial end.”
Those days, for good or for ill, are gone. Klotzer has to come up with a different plan. For the last three issues, former Post toasties Roy Malone and Avis Meyer served as editors. Meyer says he did it gratis.
“I did the copy-editing, wrote articles and headlines and screwed up my life for three months for nothing,” Meyer says. “I didn’t get paid one red cent, and I refuse to take anything because I think so much of Charles.”
Meyer, who was a copy editor at the Post-Dispatch for more than 20 years, is a communications professor at Saint Louis University. He’s since stepped down as co-editor of SJR and is being replaced by Don Corrigan, the editor of the Webster-Kirkwood Times. Malone, who is retired from the Post-Dispatch, will stay on as the other co-editor.
That the publication isn’t flying off the shelves—and never did—doesn’t surprise or discourage Meyer. “You have to know what the hell is going on in media in St. Louis to even be interested in it,” he says. “The introductory course for journalism in this city is watching local TV news. The senior-level course is reading the Post-Dispatch. SJR is like grad school.”
If SJR sales figures are any indication, apparently there aren’t that many aspiring grad students out there—yet Klotzer refuses to quit. “After 60 years of doing journalism,” he says, “it’s difficult to stop. It’s likean addiction.”
For the past 37 years, local journalism junkies could feed their monkeys monthly with SJR. Sometimes it was a good fix with a decent high, and sometimes it was akin to smoking oregano—it looked like the real thing, but there was absolutely no buzz. No matter how high-minded the intent, how many interesting ways are there to say that the Post-Dispatch ain’t what it used to be and that electronic media have the attention span of a gnat?
The struggle SJR continues to face is that of providing interesting, insightful and incisive coverage of media that too seldom demonstrate those attributes in their own coverage.
Meyer always suspected that SJR was an existential extension of Klotzer, and his recent stint as co-editor convinced him. “Reality is going to descend,” Meyer says. “One of the reasons I admire the guy is that he’s an idealist. He’s convinced that the magazine will go on forever like this. Most of us aren’t. I think the every-other-month deal is almost inevitable.”
Klotzer is convinced he’ll find a new home for SJR, and he’s sure that when he’s no longer around, the editorial board that inherits the nonprofit will keep publishing the print version. The true believer in him doesn’t see it as just a way to hector the Post-Dispatch from beyond the grave—he sees SJR as a way to affect the social order.
Klotzer’s father left Berlin in 1939 when he still had a choice to either flee Germany or end up in a concentration camp. The Klotzers spent eight years in Shanghai before settling in St. Louis in 1947. For Charles, freedom of the press isn’t just a stodgy old concept.
“In Pakistan and Russia, they are clamping down on media,” he says. “Not to have the ability to learn what is happening is destructive to democracy. An independent media is crucial in our system of politics, to achieve some measure of social justice. This is a small way of being able to point out the shortfalls of society.”
In Germany, as a 13-year-old, he found out what can happen when people don’t know what’s going on. In America, as an 81-year-old, he’s finding out what happens when people don’t care. He’s not one of them. “I still manage to get excited about this,” he says. If only somebody else did, too.
