Illustration by Danny Elchert
Time was, you read whatever got tossed on your lawn. Now, most of us take our news electronically—and for all the repetition, there’s still startling divergence. We clicked on stltoday.com, stlbeacon.org, and globe-democrat.com every day from mid-December to mid-January…and we always knew where we were.
Take January 4’s big-photo features. On the Post-Dispatch site, “Rams,” “Chesterfield Mall,” “Prized Dwellings,” and “Sunday’s Best” were in rotation. We clicked over to the Beacon and found “MSD faces big challenges in reducing sewage overflows into Mississippi.” At the Globe-Democrat? A blurry shot of P.J., a lost golden Lab guide dog who’d made it home. So the winners are…
Homey Yet Lurid: The Globe, which blends weather, traffic, and heart tugs with crashes, shootings, and meth labs. It scooped a salvage-yard blaze in Alton, a Cahokia teen found dead, a woman (mug shot pictured) “charged with glass-mug beating,” an experimental fetal surgery, and a “lesbian legislator pregnant for gay couple.”
Cutest: Stltoday.com wins, paws down. We clicked on the “Zoo Babies” feature like everybody else—but a reader’s pet photo every day, right below the cyberfold?
Earnest and Wonky: The Beacon, which is so smart and serious, reading it feels like the intellectual equivalent of flossing. The day the Globe featured (with large photo) the second water-main break on Manchester Road, the Beacon headline read “Faith, community, and medical leaders have conflicting views on Senate health-care bill.”
All Things To All People: Stltoday.com might feel like a parody of the Post-Dispatch in its glory days, but it still has the most comprehensive mix.
Rarely Breaks a Sweat in Breaking a Story: The Internet’s advantage is supposed to be timeliness, but the Beacon doesn’t even try. On Christmas Day, it featured an update: “Citygarden quickly captured St. Louis’ heart.” Three days later, that was still the top story.
Never Dull: The Globe, with relentless crime coverage in neighborhoods usually paid scant heed, and plenty of don’t-hold-back political commentary.
User-Friendly: Stltoday.com, which allows visitors to see featured stories at a glance. There’s an awful lot of clickability crammed onto that first page view.
Seasoned: The Beacon got the grown-ups the Post should’ve kept. Pros there include Jo Mannies, Mary Delach Leonard, Bob Duffy, and former SLM editor Harper Barnes.
Worst Typo: Stltoday.com’s misspelling of veteran journalist Martin Duggan’s surname. They’ve had 40 years to learn it’s with a double G.
