Christine Bertelson has been editorial page editor of the Post-Dispatch for five years. In November, Miriam Pepper was named to the same position at The Kansas City Star after six years as the newspaper’s reader’s advocate.

The similarities are almost beyond coincidence. They’re about the same age – Bertelson is 52, Pepper 49. Both grew up in the St. Louis suburb of Clayton – and their fathers used to share rides to work. Both began their careers at the Post-Dispatch.

Given all that, perhaps it’s more remarkable that they barely know each other.

“She’s a very nice, even-tempered, smart person,” Bertelson said of Pepper. “But I didn’t know her well at all.’’

Pepper concurred. She said their closest encounter came when Pepper took a job as the Post-Dispatch’s first female sports writer in 1975. Bertelson was on her way out of St. Louis to take a job with the Burlington (Vt.) Free Press and subleased her apartment to Pepper.

Bertelson made her way back to the Post-Dispatch in 1986. She was an award-winning columnist before taking over the editorial page in 1997.

Pepper didn’t stay long at the Post-Dispatch, taking a temporary job with The Associated Press in Jefferson City in 1976 before landing, and sticking, at the Star, where she did just about everything before becoming reader’s advocate. Never hesitant to criticize the paper, editor Mark Zieman once told her the name of her column should be changed to “Wrong Again.”

Arthur Robards Bertelson. Selwyn Pepper. The names simply sound like they belong to newspapermen, conjuring images of smoke-filled newsrooms, the rattle of typewriters, shouts of “Copy boy!”

Selwyn Pepper, now 87, started as a reporter at age 16 in 1931. He worked his way up to city editor, news editor, features editor. By the time he retired, Pepper was reader’s advocate (the Post-Dispatch no longer has one). “So far, we are the only father-daughter team to have held that position,’’ Miriam Pepper said.

Arthur Bertelson, who died in 1996 on his 89th birthday, retired in 1972 after 32 years at the Post-Dispatch. Known as an outstanding grammarian with impeccable writing, he was managing editor during a period of tremendous upheaval.

“He was managing editor at a tumultuous time in the civil rights movement, when there were a lot of passionate emotions in our society,”said Richard Weil, a longtime Post-Dispatch veteran who is now investigative projects editor.

Christine Bertelson is just as passionate. She takes pride in the fact that some, including the late Gov. Mel Carnahan, believed Post-Dispatch editorials turned the tide enough in St. Louis County to doom the statewide concealed weapons bill three years ago. She choked back tears as she recalled a school-bond election last year. Bertelson and her 11-person staff, concerned about the city’s deteriorating schools, wrote daily editorials supporting the measure. Each editorial carried a picture of a child. “It passed,’’ she said of the bond issue. “If we don’t speak out, who will?’’

Bertelson threw some readers for a loop when she took over the opinion page, hiring a new cartoonist, running photos and illustrations, sometimes editorializing on offbeat topics such as sports and pop culture. One thing that didn’t change: the unabashedly liberal stance that, in relatively conservative St. Louis, sometimes creates a stir.

“We’re still a liberal page, but we don’t march in lockstep with anybody,” Bertelson said. Bertelson makes room for contrary points of view from letter writers, guest columnists, experts. “Now, because we’re the only daily paper, we think it is important that views different than our own be expressed.”

Miriam Pepper seemed destined to a career in newspapers. Her father remembered how, even as a young child, his daughter seemed to soak up the dinner-table conversation about the inner-workings of the Post-Dispatch. Pepper passed by a hospital emergency room on her way to grade school. A blaring ambulance or scurry of activity would prompt the young reporter-in-waiting to quiz any available policeman or ambulance driver. She’d race to a pay phone and call dad at the office. He’d give her a quarter for each tip, a dollar if it actually made the paper.

“So of course, I thought there was big money in journalism,” she said.

The Peppers have combined to share in four Pulitzer Prizes. Selwyn Pepper was part of a team that won three for the Post-Dispatch; Miriam was part of the Star team recognized for its reporting on the collapse of the Hyatt Regency Hotel skywalk in 1981.

Like her counterpart in St. Louis, Miriam Pepper said she and her staff of nine work hard to be fair to all sides. “Readers judge you by your fairness,” she said.

Unlike the Post-Dispatch, readers have differing opinions on the Star’s political stance, Pepper said. “Some say liberal, some say conservative. We want to be perceived as presenting well-written, strong opinions, but we want to be perceived as being quite independent.”

Pepper said a possible redesign is in the works with a new look and maybe more columnists. She’s looking at other op/ed pages from around the country – including the Post-Dispatch – for ideas.

The two women with so much in common hope to get to know each other better. Selwyn Pepper figures they have a lot to talk about. “It’s interesting, the two girls coming out of the same environment,” he said. “It makes us all proud.”

– Written by Jim Salter, Associated Press