The nonprofit news initiative Press Forward has big funding and a big mandate: It’s spending $500 million to “reimagine local news,” an ambitious attempt to shore up local media outlets. It announced its first list of grantees last week, with 205 local newsrooms, each with budgets of less than $1 million, getting on average $100,000 each for operating expenses.
But one $100,000 grant recipient might surprise people who pay attention to local journalism in St. Louis. While the St. Louis Argus has a storied history, the publication employs no full-time journalists and has done little outreach to readers (no Facebook updates in a decade, no Twitter). Its distribution seems limited to emailing PDFs of its work to subscribers.
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And most of that work is not its own. A review of the Argus’ website and recent newsletters shows stories and photographs taken from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, St. Louis Public Radio, St. Louis Magazine, KTVI (FOX2), and STLMade, the Greater St. Louis, Inc.-funded initiative to bring good news to the region. The Argus hasn’t asked for, or received, permission to reprint those stories and photos, according to editors at each. (After getting a query from SLM, at least one editor reached out to its publisher to question the usage.) Using photos and text without permission is not only a violation of industry norms but can also violate copyright law.
After SLM reached out to the Argus last week seeking a phone interview, the publication deleted a story that it had taken from St. Louis Magazine. Pressed again for a response yesterday, publisher Talibdin El-Amin responded to questions in writing, saying that the Argus had taken stories from “public news aggregators” and defending the reuse of other outlets’ work.
“Our contributors are solid, but to meet the information needs of the community we—like everyone else—need more support,” he wrote. “To offset the gap, we curate relevant content from Google News, Yahoo, Newsbreak, and other public news aggregators, which also ask us to share content we pick up.” He added that the publication always attempted to credit the authors and organizations. “If there were any omissions, then it is not intentional and very correctable. It’s our mission’s focus to inform and empower the community by meeting their information needs.”
Reached for comment yesterday, a Press Forward spokeswoman shared a blog post written by staff about its selection process. “At this time, we can’t comment on individual applicant acceptances or declinations,” she said.
David Carson, a longtime photographer for the Post-Dispatch now on leave for a nine-month John S. Knight Journalism Fellowship at Stanford University and also vice president of the United Media Guild, is one of the people whose work the Argus used without permission. He said he was frustrated to see what he characterized as “stealing” from a competitor.
“The idea of what the Argus is trying to do by serving their community is great, but it is frustrating to see them openly steal my work and the work of my co-workers at the Post-Dispatch,” he says. “The Post-Dispatch pays employees’ salaries and health benefits, buys equipment, and provides continuing training for staff. For the Argus to take the work without permission and make money off our stolen labor by selling ads around it on their website is outrageous.”
He adds, “Intentional copyright infringement is theft. I don’t care if they gave us ‘credit’ for using the content. The Post-Dispatch can’t use Argus ‘credit’ to pay electric bills or pay journalists.” He notes that the paper recently had to lay off some staffers. “It would be unfair to directly blame the layoffs on the Argus, however, the Argus leeching off the Post-Dispatch doesn’t help keep me or my co-workers employed.”
On its website, the Argus says it’s the oldest continuously operating Black-owned business west of the Mississippi River, a claim that couldn’t be independently verified. What is true is that, for decades, it played a key role in the region’s media landscape. The paper’s first managing editor, J.E. Mitchell, was both a co-owner and the head of the local NAACP, and the Argus saw its mission as advocating for the Black community in addition to covering it.
Nearly a century after its founding, the Mitchell family sold it to George Hasan, and Antonio French (later an alderman, and after that a writer for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch) became a prominent contributor.
These days, the paper is owned by El-Amin, who was a state legislator representing St. Louis before pleading guilty in 2009 to soliciting a bribe from a local gas station owner. Court records contain a partial transcript of El-Amin persuading the businessman to pay him instead of a lawyer to deal with his problems at City Hall. El-Amin told him, “I think what you need, you need some room, you need those clouds off your head, and I would help take those clouds off.” He also offered to take the bribe in a series of installments.
After serving time in prison, El-Amin was fined more than $500,000 for campaign finance violations, which at the time was “likely the largest ever issued by the state’s campaign watchdog agency,” according to Post-Dispatch archives.
El-Amin says he hopes to use the Press Forward funds to “create plans and execute for sustainability, which includes collaborations and partnerships within the industry to better serve our community of readers. As the oldest Black newspaper in Missouri (with over 114 years of service), we are in a regrowth / building phase. We won’t let the community down.”
Editor’s Note: Author Sarah Fenske volunteers as executive director of the nonprofit River City Journalism Fund, which applied for a grant from Press Forward and was not successful. Fenske was not involved in the grant application.
