Area high school students run through a mock version of the Berlin Wall on Monday at the University of Missouri-St. Louis to mark the 20th anniversary of the taking down of the wall. The two sections of wall were pulled apart so students could “make their way to freedom.” Photo by J.B. Forbes.

A reader called this morning to say he was bewildered and disappointed by how the St. Louis Post-Dispatch marked the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.  The paper published a Page One photograph of high school students taking part in a ceremony at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.  Otherwise, nothing about the anniversary was in the paper.

The caller said that even if one of the 10 items in the World digest had been about the Berlin Wall, he would have been disappointed. He wanted a full story reporting the events in Germany, and he wanted it on Page One.

The caller had seen and appreciated the preview story that appeared on Page A11 Monday. But running a full story in advance of  the events and then just a local photo marking the historic occasion was inappropriate, he said.

Tuesday’s newspaper had a tight newshole — the amount of space allocated for news stories. After determining what was needed for front-page stories and local news, there was limited space for nation and world stories. Just nine full-length wire service stories appeared in the news pages, with one on A1 (“Sniper’s execution set today”) and five on the Business page. In addition to the 10-item World digest, there was an 11-item Nation digest, a three-item People digest and 10 digest items in Business. The editors on duty Monday opted to let the local photograph represent our Berlin Wall coverage.

For the record, here’s the start of the Associated Press’ 987-word account:

BERLIN (AP) - Ulrich Sauff and his wife stared at the mammoth domino pieces marking the path where the Berlin Wall once stood and reminisced about life in the barrier’s shadow.

“It was like a prison,” said Sauff, 73, who lived on the Western side of the wall. “For us ‘Wessis,’ the few kilometers from our old home to our new home (in the East) was unthinkable.”

The Sauffs were among those who gathered Monday to celebrate 20 years of unity, marking the day the wall came down. Thousands cheered as 1,000 colorfully decorated dominoes along a mile-long route were toppled to symbolize both the moment the wall came crashing down and the resulting fall of communist governments in Eastern Europe.

It was the finale to a day of memorial services, speeches and events that attracted leaders from around the world, including former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev…