The mission-based newsroom St. Louis Public Radio and the St. Louis Beacon hope to create has the ambitious goal of providing issue–oriented, daily news specifically tailored to the strategic needs of the region — and delivering it through merged radio and digital platforms.

“What we are talking about here and what has us excited is that a lot of news that matters to people is not being well covered now,” said Margaret Wolf Freivogel, editor of the nonprofit news organization, the St. Louis Beacon. “The Beacon is doing some, and St. Louis Public Radio is doing some of it already. (But working together) we see an opportunity to do a lot more of it and better,” she said.

As in most places, St. Louis’s traditional newsrooms are shrinking. “The St. Louis Post Dispatch newsroom is an order of magnitude of what it used to be,” said Freivogel. “The commercial broadcast outlets and their websites are focused on what you would expect – crime, sports.”

The key: an editorial strategic plan

The proposed merged newsroom has defined news beats via an editorial strategic plan tailored to the economic, policy and information priorities of the St. Louis area. Beat reporters would be encouraged to become experts and their reporting would be showcased through a series of verticals. 

With the verticals, the proposed organization would "be creating context over a certain number of issues in St. Louis and developing reporters that are experts,” said Tim Eby, general manager of St. Louis Public Radio.  

The verticals would be central to sustainability as well.

“One of the business models is looking at funding the verticals through individual donors, corporate sponsorships and foundations,” Eby said. “The other piece is that we see excellent possibility of funding around events, again due to our authority and expertise we develop.''

The Beacon and St. Louis Public Radio had already conducted some strong, well respected online collaborations when they announced formation of a deeper partnership with a letter of intention last October. 

The St. Louis master narrative: from Rust Belt to reinvention

They envision a mission-based newsroom focused on the St. Louis master narrative, which starts with a city and region in the process of reinventing itself. 

“St. Louis was a great industrial power. It fell on hard times. Now, it’s working its way back in a 21st century way,” said Rusty Coats, principal of Coats2Coats, the digital news consultancy and husband and wife team that is working with management to develop the master plan for the merger.  “Education, biotechnology, the arts… as you work you start to see where your topic areas are from the news operations side.” 

“This new entity covers, investigates, celebrates and animates the master narrative of this community,” he said. “The 'master narrative' is the term, Janet (Coats' partner) uses to describe what the community is really about,” Rusty Coats said.

Coats2Coats conducted a systematic analysis of the news environment in St. Louis, examining the media landscape, and understanding the roles and beats of existing organizations. They helped the Beacon and the radio station fully understand what they are doing and what they would like to do in the future. Sub-groups explored different potential aspects of the alliance.

“We looked at: What might the content focus be? How would the business side of this work? Where will the money come from? What would the governance structure look like?” said the Beacon's Freivogel.

The opportunity inherent in shared reporting, business and governance became evident through this comprehensive analysis.

“We realized we were really talking about a full merger,” she said.

The most important benefit of the merger would be scaling to capacity. Because of cost constraints, digital newsrooms tend to think small in terms of growing — perhaps adding a staff reporter this year, a data analyst the next.

The problem with this, Coats said is “Sixteen years from now and — guess what? — you are now 20 years behind.”

The new St. Louis newsroom would consist of about 26 — combining the Beacon’s staff of 14 and Public Radio’s 12, said Eby.

Small for a newspaper but large for a start-up

“This is really a model for bringing together what on the outside may look like a small newsroom for a newspaper,” said Coats. “But it is large for a start-up.”

“That’s what’s really special in St. Louis. They will be able to level up, rather than incrementally fall further behind,” he said.

University of Missouri St Louis holds the license to St. Louis Public Radio and negotiations with them are still under way. 

The next step is to further explore how to connect a merged organization to academic programs and use its expertise to benefit students, Freivogel said.

One potential model is the "teaching hospital," in which students work with and learn from professional journalists and where academics conduct applied research to help invent new forms of digital news. The model has received the strong endorsement of key journalism funders.

In St. Louis, any new newsroom would be required to stand on its own financially. A $40,000 grant from the Knight Fundation helped cover the costs of exploring the alliance, and other funding was provided by Richard Weil, chairman of the Beacon board, Freivogel said. 

How to develop a new newsroom strategically

 “You start from Google Earth view – and then drill down to job descriptions,” said Coats. Here are steps  from Coats2Coats approach. 

• Define the master narrative of the place.
• Interview, poll staff of newsroom to understand attitudes, skill levels and identify strengths, gaps. 
• Conduct landscape scan of players and their strengths in local news ecosystem.
• Develop a multimedia, journalism matrix. 
• Put that analysis against the master narrative to reveal opportunities, competition.
• Engage major local (and national) funders in the conversation.
• Check attitudes of funders. donors — What do they think? 
• Listen closely. Funders care about the community. 
• Strategic development: 
• Content strategy.
• Finance strategy.
• Governance strategy. 
• Embed job descriptions, work flow for news within that strategy. 
• Apply a time-sensitive plan.  
• Mix with enthusiasm.