The Globe

I thought this morning of the long-gone Saint Louis Globe-Democrat.

One paper came to my house, and then Dad would bring the other home with him. I asked Mom once why she read the Post, and she told me about the Pulitzers and their creed.

“So why does Dad read the Globe, then?”

“Because he’s friends with the writers,” she answered diplomatically. Dad’s office was on 12th street and he drank at the same bar with the Globe writers (example: Pat Buchanan).

No paper was expected to be wholly objective. The Pulitzers even had their platform published in the paper.

[We] will always fight for progress and reform, never tolerate injustice or corruption, always fight demagogues of all parties, never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty.

I don’t know if the Globe had a published platform, I assume it was “always support privileged classes” and so on. I was young, so all I knew was the Post had the Weatherbird. A cartoon on the front page! Always indicating the weather and often the Pulitzer take on the headline.

While the Post had a cartoon on the front page, the Globe had offensive photos. About a week before the paper folded in 1980, the MGM Grand caught fire. If the Weatherbird had traveled to that page he would have looked upward in horror at the huge close-up photo of a woman grieving at one of the funerals.

At any rate, there was no kerfuffle in my house about the conservative slant of the Globe and the liberal slant of the Post. It wasn’t FOX and MSNBC. If you didn’t agree with the tone, don’t read that paper.