Mary Edwards

Each year, the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism releases a report about the state of the news media.

The Center’s report for 2013 shows the newspaper industry is down significantly, specifically employment, which is down “30 percent since 2000 and below 40,000 full-time professional employees for the first time since 1978.”

The report identifies six major trends:

In 1996, Molly Barker wanted to give girls the tools necessary to help them navigate through the challenges of adolescence and chart their course to healthy lives as adults.  She started with 13 girls in Charlotte, North Carolina using a curriculum in which the main tool was running.  The organization that resulted, Girls on the Run, now serves 120,000 girls a year in 170 branches all over the country.

In 1996, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher visited Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, the same place where almost 50 years earlier, Winston Churchill delivered his famous “Iron Curtain” speech.  During her visit, Thatcher gave a speech that still has relevance today, especially in light of the continuing threat of nuclear weapons by North Korea.

In 1961, a parent of one of Charles Schweighauser’s students told him that a planetarium was being built in Forest Park and suggested that he apply for the job of director.  He figured that he was too young, but applied anyway.  Much to his surprise, he was hired the day before his 25th birthday.  Almost two years later, on April 16, 1963, the James S. McDonnell Planetarium opened its doors giving St. Louisans a state-of-the art way to view the universe in its star chamber.  The space race between the U.S.