By Steve Whitworth

STAFF WRITER

My name is Steve Whitworth, and if that seems familiar to some readers of The Telegraph, then they may remember me from my previous stint at the newspaper from 1996 to 2013.

I'm back at The Telegraph, where my focus will be on covering Godfrey and Jersey County.

I was born in St. Louis and lived in suburban Hazelwood, Missouri, until I was 9 years old. Then my parents bought a farm near Troy, Illinois, where they built a thoroughbred racehorse breeding and boarding operation.

Growing up on a horse farm meant I spent a lot of time riding horses when I was a kid, and we always had other pets, such as dogs, cats, and chickens. It also meant my father put me to work feeding and watering the horses, cleaning out and bedding their stalls, and helping when we picked up and stored bales of hay and straw. All of that gave me an appreciation for farming and the hard work that goes into it.

After graduating from Triad High School in 1976, I attended the University of Iowa, where I received a bachelor's degree in English in 1982.1 then attended Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, where I earned a second bachelor's degree in mass communications/journalism in 1984.

My first job after J-school was at St. Elizabeth Medical Center in Granite City, where I was a public relations specialist.

In 1985, I took a job with United Press International in New Orleans, where I mostly covered sports, including all the New Orleans Saints and Louisiana State University home football games that year. I also covered the Sugar Bowl at the Superdome on Jan. 1,1986.

In 1986, I transferred to UPI's St. Louis bureau, where I was a news reporter. I eventually became bureau chief in St. Louis and then Missouri state editor, also responsible for our bureaus in Jefferson City and Kansas City, until UPI closed all its Missouri bureaus in January 1992.

I did freelance work for UPI, Bloomberg Business News, and the Daniel J. Edelman public relations firm for the next four years.

In July 1996, I took a full-time position with The Telegraph. During my 17 years here, I worked on the copy desk, spent a year in our Edwardsville bureau as a reporter, then returned to Alton to work on the city desk. For most of my tenure, I served as the night city editor. I also provided much of the newspaper's political coverage, making trips to the Illinois State Capitol in Springfield to cover legislative issues, interviewing candidates for election previews, and doing telephone interviews with members of the U.S. House and Senate representing Illinois and The Telegraph readership area.

I left The Telegraph in October 2013. In early 2015, I began working with a small public relations firm in St. Louis specializing in the food and agriculture spaces. Much of my work there focused on insect pollinators and the effects that pesticides had on them. But the firm lost the client that was paying for my work at the end of 2024, so I was let go.

I bought a house in Glen Carbon in 1998 and still reside there. My brother, sister, and I still own the farm we inherited from our parents, and our neighbor grows corn and soybeans for us. My main duty at the farm these days is mowing the grass.

My main hobbies are swimming laps, birdwatching, spending time with my Maltese-Pomeranian mix, Daisy, and rabidly following University of Iowa sports, along with the St. Louis Cardinals, St. Louis Blues, and English Premier League football.

Music is also one of my biggest interests, especially attending concerts by artists whom I like. My tastes run from blues, country, and classic jazz to rock and roll. Maybe my favorite genre is alternative country, or Americana, and I'm partial to artists from the St. Louis area who helped create that genre, such as Uncle Tupelo, Bottle Rockets, Wilco, and Son Volt.

Now, I'm excited to be back at The Telegraph and looking forward to getting reacquainted with the community and the issues that matter to our readers. I hope to continue the traditions of excellent journalism that were passed along to me by some of the great reporters who I worked with here before, including John Focht, Jim Kulp, Ande Yakstis, Dan Brannan, and Dennis Grubaugh. John Badman, the best photographer with whom I ever worked, recently retired, but I'm thrilled to be working again with our longtime sports editor, Pete Hayes, and reporter Scott Cousins, who attended SIUE journalism school with me.

If you have any questions or story ideas for me, please feel free to contact me at steve.whitworth@hearst.com.