Meet Bob Duffy, journalist, college instructor and erstwhile opera performer
By Nicki Dwyer
Bob Duffy’s public life has centered on the arts — music, the visual arts and literature. Originally from Little Rock, he came to St. Louis in the mid-1960s to attend Washington University, where he majored in English, and then spent three semesters working on a combined master’s–PhD program.
In 1972, Duffy was one of the founders of the West End Word, “an expression of my love for the Central West End where I have now lived off and on for more than half a century.” The newspaper changed hands several times, ceased publication in 2020, and was resurrected in 2021 as CWEA Griffin by Jeff Fister, one of the former owners.
But it was the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that was Duffy’s professional home from 1973 to 2006. During that time he worked in every department except sports, principally the Music and Arts page, Everyday section as fashion editor, and later the City Desk, where he worked the night shift. Over the years, he became known as the guy who was called on if an article about just about anything was needed.
Top of Duffy’s mind is a piece he wrote on a collection of porcelains owned by St. Louis Cardinal’s Hall of Fame catcher Ted Simmons. For another assignment, he did his homework assiduously and conducted a “great interview” on nationally recognized artist Ellsworth Kelley, who had an exhibition at the St. Louis Art Museum. “Parts of that interview have been reprinted in a couple of books, which makes me really proud.”
Following the sale of the Post Dispatch in 2005, Duffy took a buyout. Shortly thereafter, several of his PD colleagues — Dick Weil, Margaret Freivogel, Bill Freivogel, Dick Weiss and others — started the St. Louis Beacon, one of the pioneering long-form news publications presented to readers online only. “It was, and I think readers will agree, a bold adventure, a way of looking at St. Louis’ resources, successes, wasted resources and failures. The Beacon was guided by the wisdom of the first Joseph Pulitzer and his successors.”
Eventually the Beacon was folded into St. Louis Public Radio and soon lost its identity in the world of short stories compressed to fit a conventional public radio format.
For the past 32 years, Duffy has managed to enjoy an alternative career as an adjunct instructor at Washington University. In recent years, he’s taught a course called “Communication that Works,” which is designed to give practical business skills to undergraduates not interested in business school. “Teaching is wonderful, and I have had three decades of experiences in which I learned as much as I taught. I’ve taught in Washington University’s Sam Fox School, in University College and in the College of Arts and Sciences.”
And then there was the year that was like no other, when Duffy “ran away” and joined the opera. “In 1981 I was a supernumerary (extra) in An Actor’s Revenge, an opera given its premiere by Opera Theatre of St. Louis. “This gig prompted me to run away and join the opera, and I worked there for a year, when it became clear that newspapering, not the great and exciting world of opera, was my metier.”
These days Duffy is working on a couple of long-form projects, a memoir and a biography of the late Morton D. May and his life in art. “May’s gifts of German expressionist painting and works of art from indigenous cultures worldwide have brought great distinction to the St. Louis Art Museum, an already comprehensive and vivid public museum, ‘Dedicated to Art and Free for All.’”
The many important influences in Bob Duffy’s life include his late mother, many other family members, his two sons, teachers, students, bosses and colleagues, and a wealth of friends who continue to enrich and inform his life.
Duffy said he’s a “happy” resident of the Central West End. “I’ve lived in big houses and small apartments, and now live in a converted car factory with my husband of nearly six and a half years, Martin Kaplan, and a cat and a dog.”
“Marty is as supportive and generous as a husband could be. He is the brains our our enterprise.”