Linda Lockhart, a longtime St. Louis journalist, leader in the local Black press corps and mentor to many, died Sunday. She was 72.
Friends, family and colleagues remembered her as a devout Lutheran and a lover of precise language and consistent adherence to the AP Stylebook. Her career included tenures at St. Louis Public Radio, the St. Louis American, St. Louis Beacon and St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
“I think just here in the last day or two [about] what will I miss the most … and it really wasn't a place or a specific thing that happened. It was her storytelling,” Lockhart's daughter, Rachel Seward, said Monday. “She always loved sharing stories about her career and the experiences that she's had. … That was when she would light up and she would be smiling and telling her stories.”
After becoming the first Black student to graduate from Lutheran High School South in 1970, Lockhart went off to study at the University of Missouri School of Journalism in Columbia with a full-ride scholarship from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
After graduating from Mizzou, Lockhart started her 45-year journalism career as a police and education reporter at the Post-Dispatch.
“I walked into the Post-Dispatch newsroom in the summer of 1974 when there were still spittoons,” she recalled during a 2019 appearance on St. Louis on the Air. “The telephones were ringing and the AP bell was dinging, and there was just noise and people yelling and calling out for a copy boy to come and get their stories and take them over from the reporters to the editors.”
It was during her first tenure at the Post-Dispatch that she met her husband, Steve Korris, who was a reporter at the St. Louis American.
“It was very enriching for us, because they were both very curious, engaged, connected people. The reason they met was journalism,” Seward said. “So if they hadn’t both been journalists, I wouldn't even exist, so that's a big part of their story.”
Lockhart left the Post-Dispatch in the 1980s to edit at newspapers in Wisconsin and Minnesota but wound up back in St. Louis at the Post-Dispatch in 1997.
Becoming a trailblazer
As a young Black woman, Lockhart said she entered the journalism industry during a time when there were growing numbers of women and people of color being hired. But Lockhart said she wanted to see more commitment from publications to grow representation of minorities in newsrooms.
She was a founding member of the Greater St. Louis Association of Black Journalists and also served in the National Association of Black Journalists and the St. Louis Press Club to advocate for Black journalists and help train new ones. She was recognized as a “Living Legend” by the St. Louis Black journalists chapter in 2014 and was inducted into the St. Louis Media History Foundation Hall of Fame in the print category in 2024.
“From her distinguished career at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, where she served in multiple roles including reporter, copy editor, makeup editor, night city editor, wire editor, and Metro section editor to her pioneering service as one of NABJ’s first non-founder board members, Linda’s voice helped define the soul of Black journalism,” NABJ President Ken Lemon wrote in a tribute on Instagram.
Among her peers in the industry was Margaret Freivogel, whose friendship and working relationship with Lockhart spanned decades at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, St. Louis Beacon and St. Louis Public Radio.
“Linda's professional and personal life and my professional and personal life were very parallel in many respects. But of course, she was African American, and I'm white, and it was striking to me that many things were so much more difficult for her because of the racism in the society,” Freivogel said. “But she persevered through all of that, kept her independent point of view and kept moving forward.”
Reinvention in radio and digital
Lockhart left the Post-Dispatch in 2007 and was recruited to work at the digital newspaper the St. Louis Beacon, which merged with St. Louis Public Radio in 2013. Freivogel noted Lockhart’s commitment and acumen throughout her roles at different news organizations.
“The thing that Linda epitomizes for me is that she had very high standards for herself and for the people around her, and she was very forthright in expressing her insights and opinions, but also doing it in a way that preserved goodwill in relationships over many years and over agreements and disagreements,” Freivogel said. “I think she was better at that than anybody else I've ever known.”
As an outreach specialist at St. Louis Public Radio, Lockhart helped build out the Public Insight Network, a product of Minnesota Public Radio and American Public Media that helped connect journalists with news sources.
“The idea was to help us find sources in the community that we would not otherwise necessarily know about,” Freivogel said. “Linda was very dedicated to recruiting ordinary people to be part of this network, so that their insights could become part of our reporting and our understanding of what was going on in the community.”
After Lockhart’s retirement in 2019, she spent a few months as interim managing editor at the St. Louis American. Seward said her mother remained involved with mentoring high school and college students and getting them excited about the profession. Those experiences were vital in helping her stay motivated after a cancer diagnosis in 2023.
“She was still going to lunches and meeting with her colleagues from [the local NABJ chapter] up until just a few weeks ago,” Seward said. “So that was always incredibly meaningful to her, and I think a big part of how she kept her stamina and wanted to really keep adding value and continuing to tell stories, continuing to get other people excited about telling stories.”
Lockhart died of complications of cancer. She is survived by her husband, Steve Korris; her children, Rachel Seward and Paul Lockhart-Korris; her grandchildren Avery Augusta Seward and Jermal Leon Seward III; and her sisters, Cornelia Levels, Marsha Reis and Antoinette Collins.
A funeral service will be held on May 10; a location is yet to be determined.
