A literate St. Louis - really!
A story ran in the Post-Dispatch over the weekend that touted St Louis as the sixth most literate city in the nation, based on a set of six criteria.
Post-Dispatch Book Editor Jane Henderson wrote in her Saturday story about the study conducted by Central Connecticut State University that we ranked us above such other larger cities including Boston and San Francisco.
The study measurements pertained only to the city and did not include St. Louis County.
According to the study, those six indicators of literacy tracked were: newspaper circulation, number of bookstores, library resources, periodical publishing resources, educational attainment and Internet resources calculated per number of residents. In some categories, St. Louis held steady because other cities showed a greater loss in
areas such as newspaper circulation.
Although the city ranked high in literacy, it was ranked lowest in education — 50th out of 69 cities.
What do you think. Is the study off-base, considering it did not take into account the entire region on both sides of the Mississippi River, and the diverse suburban counties that surround St. Louis? Would our ranking have gone up or down if the entire region was included?
Regardless, it’s nice to turn over a new year on positive news such as this.


Pray tell WHO decided the stzndards that were used to determine “literacy”. I’m still laughing.
Lew, is it too late to make that the top news story of the year?