Donald Suggs, publisher and executive editor of The St. Louis American, was recently honored as a recipient of a 2024 University of Missouri Honor Medal and shared his thoughts on journalism and his ownership of the American for 40 years to students at the Missouri School of Journalism.
“At the American, we have special concerns for the vulnerable and the marginalized,” Suggs said, addressing a community journalism class taught by Associate Professor Elizabeth Stephens, executive editor of the Columbia Missourian.
“We seek to uplift the Black community by telling stories that would not otherwise be told.”
Suggs recalled how his culturally diverse upbringing, and the constant presence of newspapers in his childhood home, taught him about the connections between journalism and a just, equitable society.
Active in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, he was offered a place on the faculty of Washington University’s dental school — where he would have been the first Black faculty member — before the offer was rescinded due to his race.
His past — and that of his father, whom he called “a brilliant man” with “a deep understanding of quantum physics” who “was never convinced that he was special” — served to underline to students the important role of news in expanding audiences’ understanding of the world beyond the status quo.
“We have to look at things in a larger perspective than how they are presented to us,” Suggs said, noting that the St. Louis American does so through a community focus that avoids stereotypes and easy, canned narratives.
We had very little materially, but we always had a newspaper,” Suggs said of his upbringing in northeast Indiana.
“I was taught to be of some service in a way that goes beyond yourself, and I’ve always been fascinated and intrigued by journalists and the role they play in society.”
Suggs’ tenure has seen the newspaper not only dramatically rise in circulation but introduce more content raising awareness of health disparities in the Black community.
Programs like Newspapers in Education, which provides free newspapers to public elementary school students with an emphasis on STEM education, have also aimed to increase news literacy and education outcomes among young people.
In fact, Suggs has made the newspaper the nexus of a wide range of efforts and events designed to uplift the people of St. Louis.
The nonprofit St. Louis American Foundation provides scholarships to students in need, hosts events like the Salute to Excellence Awards Gala to recognize educators and other community figures, and supports youth-focused nonprofits in the area. Suggs, who is also the namesake of scholarships at no less than 12 colleges and universities in Missouri, sees these programs as additive to principled, ethical journalism.
“My life has been very much enriched by being involved with the St. Louis American, and I’ve had many more rewards than I deserve — but you still see the people who are left behind and mistreated,” Suggs said.
“There is no excuse not to be engaged and make things more inclusive, more compassionate, more caring. Journalists are a group I admire no less than health care workers: they are giving voice to a community with journalism people need and can depend on.”
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