Dick Weiss has spent years using journalism to tell stories about marginalized communities and the systems that shape their lives. As chair of the River City Journalism Fund, he helps support reporting that aims to deepen understanding while giving young writers from marginalized communities paid professional experience. Weiss says he encourages writers to “think bigger, not smaller” and hopes to eventually pass the organization’s leadership to the next generation of storytellers.
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Organization: River City Journalism Fund
Title: Chair
Age: 74
Hometown: I grew up in U. City, two blocks from Clayton
Education: U. City High class of ’69; inducted Alumni Hall of Fame 2024
Interests / Hobbies: Writing, editing stories about marginalized communities; swimming, riding public transportation
What motivated you to get involved in this work/community/activity? I grew up just a few blocks from here at Pershing near Jackson Avenue. A street car ran in front my house (yes, I am that old) and if you hopped on board it would take you from 63105 to 63106. One digit apart as far as the Post Office was concerned, but worlds apart in ways that I couldn’t then comprehend. But thanks to the For Sake of All Project, later renamed Health Equity Works, it has became totally and vividly comprehensible to all of us. According to a report from For Sake of All, I grew up in a neighborhood where I could expect to live to the age of 85, while the children in 63106 would only have 67 years on this earth. These are called the social determinants of health, and the difference came down to this between us: I am white and they are Black. I will turn 75 in November so if I had been born in 63106, actuarially, I am dead. We talk a lot these days about privilege. Just being alive at my age is privilege. Well, you can’t really help it if you were born to privilege. As my faith and my family have told me it’s what you do with it that matters. So in the wake of Ferguson, and with inspiration from so many others in the racial equity movement, Sally and I started Before Ferguson Beyond Ferguson (which was later rebranded as the River City Journalism Fund) and recruited a dozen other people to help us tell the stories of St. Louis families that across generations have struggled to gain their purchase on the American Dream. We had shared the stories of three families online, on the radio, in the newspapers and in booklets made available to schools, houses of worship, and civic organizations. After we had written our stories, we staged events where we brought the families whose lives we had portrayed to bear witness to their experience. At each event, this was what we said: We did not ask you here to make you feel guilty or to ask you for money, but instead to give you a sense of possibility. We ask you to think about one thing you can do to advance the cause of racial equity. We didn’t invent this concept of generational storytelling. It is timeless. But I took particular inspiration from Isabel Wilkerson, a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter, and the author of a book called the Warmth of Other Suns. In that work, Wilkerson chronicled the migration of African-Americans from the South to places like Chicago, New York, Detroit, and Los Angeles. In doing so, she focused on several generations of individual families. In the reading, you were able to identify with the moms and dads, grandmas and grandpas, sisters and brothers and take them into your heart. Not long ago, Wilkerson was interviewed about her work on NPR. She described how when African-American families arrived at their destinations from the South, they were shunted to the wrong side of the tracks and hemmed in by all manner of laws and public policy prescriptions. This is what happened in our town, too. Wilkerson believes changing laws and public policy is important, but insufficient. She calls for “radical empathy” … as she states it … “to put ourselves inside the experience of others, to allow ourselves the pain, allow ourselves the heartbreak, allow ourselves the sense of hopelessness that they are experiencing… And so,” Wilkerson said, “I view myself as on kind of a mission to change the country, the world, one heart at a time…I feel as if the heart is the last frontier, because we have tried so many other things.” So we join Isabel Wilkerson in her work. We offer our stories as a means not just of changing laws but of changing hearts.
What’s the most enjoyable aspect? I particularly enjoy working with young writers from marginalized communities. We have been able to give them a first class, paid professional experience by getting their work published in mainstream media.
Can you briefly share a few standout memories? RCJF created The 63106 Project, a series of stories which looked at how families in the 63106 zip code coped with COVID. These weren’t just one and done stories. We followed several families over the COVID years reporting on their challenges and their resilience. In part because of our reporting, their outcomes turned out better than could have been expected.
Can you share an insight about this role that most people don’t know? We hope people get some insight from our work about how systems work in our region to the detriment of people in marginalized communities. We provide evidence-based stories that touch both the heart and the head.
What’s one key piece of advice you’ve embraced? Encourage writers to think bigger, not smaller. Too many self-censor fearing a story will cost too much money or take too much time. We can help focus or narrow the story when necessary, but it’s important to give people a great sense of possibility about your story.
What’s the greatest challenge? Getting eyeballs on our stories.
Where do you find inspiration? The work of my colleagues.
What are your future plans or ambitions? To grow RCJF and pass on leadership to the next generation of storytellers.
