Not Your Average Mischief Maker

Written by Craig Kaminer / Photography by David Kovaluk

The first time I met Sarah Fenske was at a new business presentation for the Riverfront Times (RFT), where we (my former agency Twist) were proposing an aggressive campaign to relaunch the RFT to mean The Real F’ing Truth. We knew it was a bit over the top, and may even offend some, but considering the history of the weekly, I was convinced we were on the right track.

Sarah was the editor-in-chief and came to the meeting a little late. I had never met her before so I was surprised that the badass editor behind the RFT was charming in every way. She was wickedly smart, in the know, not scared of speaking the truth and challenging conventional wisdom, not to mention having the looks of a model, the athletic appearance of a runner, and the sense of humor of a stand-up comedian. She appeared to like the campaign and felt it was on strategy for the brand. But as luck would have it, the campaign never went anywhere. The RFT was changing (as were most print media). With a few defections and a slight change in focus and resources, the campaign which I was convinced would work so well was dead before it got out of the gate.

Fast forward nearly a decade, Sarah took the job as host of St. Louis on the Air on St. Louis Public Radio, the local National Public Radio affiliate, filling the role that Don Marsh had held since 2005 and vacated suddenly in 2019 following a series of questionable comments he made to or about women. Fenske was the perfect candidate for this role as she is direct, fair, and doesn’t shy away from uncomfortable topics. She seemed like the perfect person for the job at the perfect time in St. Louis media history so I remained in touch with her, listened to her show, and occasionally sent her an email with my thoughts, a suggestion, and even a pitch or two.

As a hard-working, deep thinking, and research-oriented reporter, she has adapted well to life on the radio. Her guests are wide-ranging: exploring issues and challenges confronting our region, discussing the latest innovations in science and technology, taking a closer look at our history, or talking with authors, artists, and musicians. Sarah brings you the stories of St. Louis and the people who live, work, and create in our region. While politics are not part of her show, most people would say that NPR leans left, but Sarah is happy to spar with any and all perspectives.

I Zoomed with her recently to find out about her childhood, her family life, her take on the state of journalism, and what she loves most about St. Louis. Our conversation was fast and furious, witty and sarcastic - as is Sarah - and I fell more in love with her style and radio personality. What follows is an excerpt of our conversation:

According to Sarah, she’s from the boring suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio, and the second kid in a family of five. “This was a big family without a lot of money. We were just a pack of feral children running loose. My dad taught high school English and at that point, my mom was staying at home with us. We were just a wild bunch.”

“I had the privilege of my parents still being married and all that good stuff. I was attracted to journalism because I really liked writing. My family is middle class enough that nobody encouraged me to be a novelist or what I really wanted to do; be a playwright, because these were not considered feasible careers. They said I should be a teacher, like that’s what women were meant to do. But I wanted to write. And so I thought, ‘I could get paid to be a journalist. I’ll write profiles and features about people.’”

“I got my first internship but it was unpaid because I didn’t have a journalism degree. I wasn’t in a journalism program. I had no idea what I was doing. The editor of this magazine, who must have seen the troublemaker in me, asked me what I really wanted to do? I told him I wanted to write a profile where people will see that person - just saying what I thought he wanted to hear. He responded that he didn’t think that is what I wanted to do at all - instead telling me that he thought I really just wanted to get somebody indicted! I had never thought of myself that way. Then he added, ‘Yeah, you wanna go out and bust the bad guys.’ Yes I do!”

“To this day, I’m not sure if it was what he saw in me or because no one had ever given me any career advice that I followed that path. That internship helped open the door to my first position at a daily newspaper. And yeah, I wrote stories that got the mayor indicted. There was something in me that wanted to make the world better than it was. If people were doing something wrong, I had this righteous anger. As I’ve gotten older, I have more sympathy than righteous anger, but you know, hell hath no fury like a 21-year-old given a chance to write for a newspaper.”

“My Twitter handle says ‘seeker of truth, maker of mischief.’ That was what I was up to in all my years at weekly newspapers - actively causing some mischief. I don’t know that mischief is what they want me to do at St. Louis Public Radio,” she says with a chuckle. “And I respect that. This job is fun in different ways. I think the mischievous side of me now is more something I say as a parent. I’m fairly amused by life, but I’m not actively stirring things up anymore. But for 20 years, that was a lot of stirring things up!”

Fenske first came to St. Louis in 2010 as managing editor of the RFT. She then spent several years in Los Angeles at a weekly newspaper before returning to St. Louis in 2014 with her then-fiance, who was from a family who has been in St. Louis for several generations. “Because I’d already spent a year living here and was now part of this family, I had a grasp of St. Louis and felt more confident that I got this city. When I joined RFT as editor-in-chief, it was about how do we begin to cover this complicated city and help it be a better version of itself? When I decided to come to St. Louis Public Radio, I knew it was a new challenge and that it was going to be so hard and so scary. I knew I might be bad at it for a while, but I wanted to see if I could learn something new. That was the challenge I needed after 20 years of print journalism.”

SL: What have been some of your best jobs and assignments? “I worked as a columnist at the Phoenix New Times, one of the oldest alternative weeklies, and when I was there they were one of the most profitable. They were just crawling with experienced writers, all guys in their fifties and sixties who’d been there for 30 years. And then there was me, this kid in her late twenties, who’d moved there from Ohio, and just wanted to be a journalist. After I had been there for a couple of years, writing long-form cover stories like the RFT style, they asked me if I wanted to be the columnist? I did that for about three years. I loved it because every week I could write whatever I wanted. I could be honest about what I thought, I could challenge people, or I could write about my dog. I did a little bit of both and just loved it. I loved that everything was my beat. And I loved the deadline. I’m a quick person and not always super organized so I liked those shorter, regular deadlines which allowed me to work on bigger stuff on the side. I also got to post online. It turns out that’s really where I was happiest. I had a hell of a time and got to do some work there that I’m still proud of to this day. Phoenix was a great city to be a journalist. There weren’t enough journalists to cover all the corruption that was happening in that city. It was a crazy place to live.”

SL: What are people saying about you now? “I think that the show has really cultivated a loyal crew of listeners. We interviewed this guy, Colin O’Brien, who put together that whole stunt about Date Colin O’Brien and created a website where he was the only bachelor. He told us that our program, St. Louis on the Air, is the only local radio show where people actually talk about what they heard on it. It’s just the greatest compliment. I feel like we are hopefully setting the conversation for what St. Louisans should be caring about, the people that they should be listening to, in order to understand the city better, and engaging in a dialogue about the issues that we need to be paying attention to. That’s the goal and I think there are days that we reach it.”

“The audience is the best part of working for NPR. So many smart people tune in to National Public Radio and the ones who live in St. Louis tune into St. Louis Public Radio. Those amazing people aren’t coming to us because I’m here; they’re already here. I just have to not lose them.”

SL: What impact is the current political climate having on you and your work? “That’s a good question. You know, people are really angry at what they see as the other side; and they get angry if the other side is given a platform. Recently we had on Mary Elizabeth Coleman, the state representative who wants to ban abortion in Missouri. To me, she’s a newsmaker and an obvious interview. Why is she doing this? What’s she up to? What would she say to her critics? There are definitely people who say we should not give her a platform. People want to deplatform their critics. They want ‘em kicked off Twitter. They don’t want ‘em on the airwaves. And that’s not something I believe in or am comfortable with.”

“I also don’t believe in inviting people on the show just to harangue them. I try to ask a direct question and then give them the space to respond. I’m not there to argue with them. I’m there to try to engage them. And I think that can be hard in this political climate. Then at the same time, you have people who just want to insult us as being woke or being totally liberal. I don’t think that’s true. I don’t think it’s true of the program that I’m putting on the air, but there are people who feel absolutely certain that’s what I’m doing and that they know what my politics are. And I don’t think they’re right.”

SL: What kind of stories are you looking for? “I want to tell stories that will help people understand St. Louis better. Anybody who can come on as a guest and help me show that or help us understand that, I’m into. We tend to have a lot of professors because their studies are interesting and can help us understand the nation, not just the community. Because they’re St Louisans, I feel that’s part of the St Louis story.”

“I also think we need to be talking about injustices. I’ve always been interested in wrongful convictions. The idea of being wrongly accused of something is the most horrifying thing. I want to write about injustices when they can be righted and exposed wrongs when it would be helpful for them to be exposed. And then, during this pandemic, which has been most of my career on the radio, I have looked for ways to give people something that might make them smile, give them a note of hope, because I think we just all feel so beaten down.”

SL: When you are not on air, what do you do with the remainder of your time? “So every interview we do, we end up writing a story about it for our website. We also make a podcast so people can stream the interview at their convenience. You’d be surprised how much time that takes. I also spend a lot of time thinking about who we should book as guests and then trying to book them. I feel it is part of my job to be wildly up to date with everything happening in town and spend time talking to sources. I read all the publications in town, try to stay up on things, and think about what we should be doing.”

“I touch base with old sources or talk to people. I write a weekly newsletter. It’s funny, when I came over I thought one hour a day on the radio; this is gonna be a part-time job. I’ll just be sitting at home in my jammies. But it has not been like that at all. It seems like you could do this stuff quickly, but it’s a lot more complicated. We also feature a lot of books on this show, usually a book a week. I try to read all the books. If we’re interviewing an author, I feel like I owe it to them to read the whole thing. Sometimes that takes a long time.”

SL: Tell us about your home life. Spouse? Kids? “My husband John is a lawyer and we have two little girls, one six and the other three. We live in Lafayette Square and love living in the city. The kids are having a great childhood where they know all their neighbors and play in Lafayette Park. We practically live at Clementine’s Creamery so they get to enjoy the fancy ice cream. Life is good. Having these two little kids has been a game-changer. It’s just fun being a mom. When people ask why do you love living in the city of St. Louis, I always say because I can afford to live in this neighborhood. If we lived in Los Angeles, we would have to be venture capitalists to live in a neighborhood like this.”

“I think there’s so much energy in the city right now. There are so many young families. What most people don’t understand is that there are bidding wars over houses in Shaw, Tower Grove South, and Lafayette Square because people with young kids want to be in those neighborhoods and to stay in those neighborhoods. The friends I know who have left Lafayette Square are sad because they wanted a bigger house in the neighborhood but there were too many other people who wanted it too - they were heartbroken about moving to Ladue!”

SL: What do you think St. Louisans don’t appreciate about our city? “Most St Louisans don’t appreciate the city enough. You have a lot of people who are afraid to come into the city, or they have this sense that their own little suburban downtown is good enough. I say to those people, ‘I hope you will come back and check out what’s happening in the city neighborhoods. Just walking around the Central West End on a nice night is so invigorating or to walk around Lafayette Square. I think that’s something I’d like to see more St. Louisans doing. I think our parks are wonderful. Come spend an afternoon here, see what’s happening in the city these days. I try to get all my out-of-town friends to spend a weekend in St. Louis. I show them an amazing time and they’re always happy to come back. They think of St. Louis as a fun party town. My next mission is to get some people from Jefferson County to do the same thing, you know?” sl