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The developer of an AI-driven "smart assistant" for veterinary exams took the top prize in a startup pitch competition hosted by Nestlé Purina PetCare Co., the St. Louis-based pet food maker.

Six Flags St. Louis will introduce a new smoke-free policy for the upcoming season, banning smoking, e-cigarettes, and vaping devices inside both its main theme park and the water park.

ST. LOUIS - Grammy-nominated artist and R&B singer Chris Brown is set to perform in St. Louis this summer as he embarks on his 30-date "Breezy Bowl XX" tour. The upcoming concert will be held at the Dome at America's Center on Friday, Sep. 5, 2025, and will also feature fellow R&B stars Bryson Tiller [...]

An initiative effort begun Friday by a well-known Missouri Democrat would, if passed by voters next year, force Tesla to close its St. Louis and Kansas City showrooms. Brad Ketcher, a St. Louis attorney who was chief of staff to Democratic Gov. Mel Carnahan in the 1990s, said he hopes the effort spreads to other […]

ALTON – Tiana Gipson, candidate for Ward 2 Alderwoman and the Alton School Board , stopped by Our Daily Show! on Riverbender.com to share more about her experience and priorities ahead of the April 1, 2025 elections. Gipson was appointed to the Alton Community Unit School District #11 Board of Education in 2023. In the race for Ward 2 Alderwoman, Gipson is challenging longtime incumbent Carolyn MacAfee and competing against another challenger, Martha Pfister. Asked why she decided to run in both the school board and aldermanic races, Gipson expressed a passion for giving back to her community in every capacity possible. She added that her conversations with city officials like 4th Ward Alderwoman Rosetta Brown, Mayor David Goins, and others also inspired her to run. “Acts of service always been a great passion of mine … I said, ‘You know what? Let me give it a shot, and see how I can better equip the community that I love,’” Gipson said.

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Lexis Dotson-Dufault’s second pregnancy, like her first, was marked by incessant vomiting. She suffered from the pregnancy-related condition hyperemesis gravidarum, and she wasn’t prepared to parent. So in late summer of 2022, after deciding to terminate at a California reproductive health clinic where she was already a patient, she was surprised when the doctor refused […]

Local newspapers play an indelible role in American journalism, reporting some of the country’s biggest stories from its smallest communities.

So when authorities in Marion, Kansas, and Clarksdale, Mississippi, attacked their local newspapers for coverage with which they disagreed, the outlets themselves became the story. And outrage quickly ignited across the U.S.

In February, a judge granted the City of Clarksdale an order requiring The Clarksdale Press Register to delete an editorial raising questions about transparency within the city’s government. And in 2023, police raided the Marion County Record’s newsroom and its publisher’s home over the paper’s use of a public website to verify a news tip.

In both cases, the officials involved had longstanding grudges with the newspapers over critical coverage long before the attacks made national headlines.

To get a first-hand perspective on the fight against these unconstitutional efforts to quash free speech, we spoke to Clarksdale Press Register Publisher Wyatt Emmerich and Marion County Record Publisher Eric Meyer in an online webinar on March 26, 2025.

Meyer said the similarities between his and Emmerich’s experiences are “just overwhelming.” One of those similarities was the backlash that followed.

“When they were raiding our office, I said, ‘This is going to be on the front page of The New York Times,’ and they laughed at me,” Meyer said. “It was on the front page of The New York Times.”

The police raid of the Marion County Record and the takedown order issued to The Clarksdale Press Register both stem from prior butting of heads with their local governments. In Meyer’s case, the paper had a “contentious” relationship with the town because “we had the audacity to actually report news and reported in a way that was not positive and uplifting to the city.”

Similarly, Emmerich said Clarkdale’s mayor took issue with their editorials “because he didn’t like our coverage,” and even organized a boycott against the paper. “The mayor offered me $30,000 to fire the editor,” Emmerich said. “We were the fly in the ointment, and he wanted to get rid of us as best he could.”

“He’s a younger mayor and just doesn’t understand the role of a traditional newspaper,” Emmerich continued. “He assumed that because he was mayor, the newspaper’s job was to do what he told us to do, and we didn’t do that.”

But even as tensions boiled over and the local governments in Marion and Clarksdale tried to throw sand in the gears of accountability, Emmerich and Meyer kept their papers’ presses rolling.

“It was two all-nighters to put out the paper because we lost everything,” Meyer said. “They took our backup drives. We didn’t even have our name plates.”

Emmerich said stunting a local paper like his, either in court through publishing gags or through other means, could decimate the community’s access to reliable information. Similarly, Meyer said he sees his paper as a challenger to assumption and an excavator of truth — not a placater to the public or the local government.

“We need to understand that there is a role for journalism in society, and that role is not necessarily being the cheerleader for the town,” he said. “We are here to present the views that aren't heard, to explore the facts that aren't explored.”

It’s been over a year since the police chief who led the raid on the Marion County Record resigned, but the fallout hasn’t ceased. Meyer said he is “keeping the lawyers busy” by suing the county, the city, the former police chief, and other individuals involved in the raid.

“We got so many subscriptions out of this. We’re the 121st largest town in Kansas, the 57th largest county. A year after the raid, we had the eighth largest paid circulation in the state.”

Eric Meyer, Marion County Record publisher

Meyer also plans on filing wrongful death suits. His 98-year-old mother, Joan Meyer, died a day after police executed a search warrant at the home they shared. Her death, he believes, was caused by the stress of the raid.

By standing up to intimidation that flew in the face of the journalism their papers produced, Emmerich and Meyer both experienced an outpouring of support thanks to the nationwide attention their cases received.

“We got so many subscriptions out of this. We’re the 121st largest town in Kansas, the 57th largest county,” Meyer said. “A year after the raid, we had the eighth largest paid circulation in the state.” Marion is a town of less than 2,000 residents.

Keeping a small town newspaper’s finances in check is essential, especially at a time when one-third of U.S. newspapers have shuttered since 2005. But Meyer and Emmerich agree that success isn’t just measured in dollar signs or subscriber rates. Their papers must hold power to account in order to fulfill their mandates.

“Because there's so little good local journalism, the good local journalism that is there tends to be very powerful and gets results,” Emmerich said. “And unfortunately, one of those results is pushback from the city council in the form of intimidation tactics and such.”

Despite being lifted, the publishing gag against The Clarksdale Press Register “did hurt us,” Emmerich said, but “we weathered that storm.” The paper is still vulnerable, however, because Mississippi is one of several states that lacks an anti-SLAPP law protecting journalists from legal actions known as strategic lawsuits against public participation that are brought in order to chill speech.

Still, both Emmerich and Meyer believe the risks they are taking to report the truth and hold officials accountable outweigh the consequences of playing it safe. After all, a public that is disengaged from its reality “sure as hell hurts democracy,” Meyer said. And in a country that routinely distrusts and villainizes local news, these attacks did not occur in a vacuum; if they can happen in Clarksdale or Marion, they can happen anywhere.

“People don’t think they can change things. I've written the same editorial probably 50 out of the 52 weeks in the year, just with different ways of expressing it,” Meyer said. “If you don't believe that you can make a difference in something, all you listen to are slogans. If you believe you can make a difference, you'll look at facts.”

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Planned Parenthood provided abortions Thursday at its St. Louis clinic for the first time since Missouri voters approved overturning the state’s near-total ban on the procedure.

FAIRVIEW HEIGHTS - LovelyLoons Luxury Event Rental and Balloon Decor has a new space in Fairview Heights, and owner Nancy Quiroz couldn’t be more excited. Quiroz founded LovelyLoons three years ago, and it has taken off as the top spot to rent chairs, backdrops, tables, tents or “anything you might need,” she said. They also help plan parties, weddings, quinceañeras and more. Their new store, located at 111 Union Hill Road in Fairview Heights, will open on April 2, 2025, and offer party supplies and rental items for all events. “I started with my daughter. She had a birthday party and we hired someone, and I was like, ‘Maybe I could do that too. I could probably start doing it and making other little kids happy,’” Quiroz remembered. “It just took off. We started with one party and it just took off.” Over the past three years, the family-owned business has expanded to offer a variety of services. They specialize

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Around 8:30 a.m. on March 28, 2025, District 5 officers were called to the 4000 block of Laclede after two people were found dead inside an apartment. Homicide detectives responded and located an adult man and adult woman both dead. At this time, the cause of deaths are under investigation. The investigation is early, but […]

The post Investigation Into Two Deaths Underway, No Current Search for Suspects appeared first on St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department.

This hasn’t been a good week for those who believed that Donald Trump would bring in the “best, most competent” people around. Fresh off the revelation that a bunch of the top cabinet and security officials were accidentally sharing classified info with a journalist using Signal on their private phones (rather than, you know, secure […]

This DevDojo Pro subscription gives you access to a set of tools to help you build your next great idea. Start with the Page Creator, where you’ll find Tailwind CSS Page Builder, a tool for crafting beautiful landing pages. Then, move on to Wave SAAS Starter Kit, where you’ll learn how to build your Software […]