Some people save newspapers that chronicle historic events. Years later, they wonder what to do with them. One person who saved newspapers from the first Gulf War recently gave them to me.

The main story from Feb. 27, 1991, was about the liberation of Kuwait City.

I glanced at it and then looked at the rest of the front page. On the bottom of the front page was a local story about the efforts to expand the convention center for a football team.

Here was the first sentence of that story: "Expanding the Cervantes Convention Center would generate millions of dollars a year for state and city treasuries and would lead to thousands of jobs, according to reports disclosed Tuesday by the state and by backers of a stadium and convention center expansion downtown."

Thousands of jobs! Millions of dollars!

We know how all that turned out. That's part of the fun of reading old newspapers.

I thought about that when I read in a more recent newspaper that NFL commissioner Roger Goodell used to have good relationships with St. Louis business leaders and could pick up the phone and discuss with these leaders how best to deal with difficult issues. He told that to my colleague Bernie Miklasz, and Bernie then mused aloud that the Old Guard has moved on, and he wondered who in the business world might step up to replace them.

What an interesting question.

Things have changed in 20 years. We used to know who was running things. We don't know any more.

Think about the media. Everybody knew that Joseph Pulitzer owned this newspaper. Robert Hyland ran KMOX. Ray Hartmann owned the Riverfront Times.

Who can name their replacements?

Same thing in the business world. August Busch III ran the brewery. He had replaced his father, Gussie Busch.

Who's in charge now?

William Stiritz ran Ralston Purina, but people still associated the Danforths with the business.

Then Stiritz sold it to Nestlé. Who runs Nestlé?

This is one of the byproducts of mergers and consolidation.

From banks to breweries to department stores, local identity has been lost. This is not unique to St. Louis. It has happened everywhere.

Cities used to have locally owned banks, locally owned department stores, locally owned newspapers. People knew the names of the people who ran things.

Now most business entities are subsidiaries of something.

Not that long ago, the heads of companies were often the people who had founded the companies. Or the sons of the founders.

In those days, an organization like Civic Progress could speak with authority because the bosses could speak for the companies. That is not the case in a branch office town.

In other words, I don't know who Goodell could call.

Plus, there is the other problem. This isn't 1991. We know how that projection of thousands of jobs and millions of dollars in city and state treasuries worked out. It was a sham.

Some of the figures from the studies cited in the front page story are almost laughable. The studies predicted a $33 million a year increase to restaurants.

Has the downtown restaurant market boomed? No. In fact, ask the St. Louis Convention and Visitors Commission. When Dan Dierdorf was chairman of the commission, his downtown restaurant, Dierdorf and Hart's, shut down. Kim Tucci, currently vice chairman of the commission, shut down his downtown restaurant, Pasta House Co. Pronto.

So it was with most of the other projections. Laughable. But, of course, back then we didn't know.

Here is some more of that story from 1991. "Backers hailed the reports, saying that any state legislator who voted against the proposal would be irresponsible."

Given that attitude, it was probably easy for Goodell to get on the phone with business leaders and discuss ways to thwart the efforts of their opponents. By gosh, this stadium was going to pay for itself. Studies made that clear.

Now the game has changed. We don't need studies. We've had 20 years of real-life experience to see how much a downtown football stadium means for revenue and jobs.

Trying to convince the public to overlook that experience would be a tough sell for business leaders, even if we had some.

By the way, back in 1991, the first Gulf War wasn't called the first Gulf War. It was just the Gulf War.