Building the Platform

A change in the way the people of St. Louis get their news may be on the horizon, as Chad Garrison relates in the May 9 issue of the Riverfront Times:

In November 2005 the St. Louis Post-Dispatch cleared its North Tucker Boulevard headquarters of proverbial deadwood when it offered longtime staffers a buyout package worth tens of thousands of dollars. From the editorial department alone, some 40 staffers — all age 50 or older — took the bait.

Now a few of those early retirees are planning a return to journalism — and they're taking aim at their former employer. By early this fall, they plan to launch St. Louis Platform, an online paper they believe will one-up the Post-Dispatch in both content and technological savvy. Heading up The Platform are former Post editors Margaret and Bill Freivogel, ex-managing editor Dick Weil, former features editor Dick Weiss, and ex-writers Robert Duffy and Laszlo Domjan.