“Flash mobs” started out as a fun social networking phenomenon. Groups of people would assemble through e-mail, texting or other communication to perform some odd stunt before dispersing. One of the more famous is the “Frozen Grand Central,” when a couple of hundred people froze in place for five minutes inside New York City’s Grand Central Station.
So of course, it attracted the attention of advertisers looking for the next novel way to attract customers. Now such gatherings — disdained as true “flash mobbing” because of their less spontaneous nature — are being organized to hawk products from cell phone service to a fledgling St. Louis kettle corn business.
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Ron is in charge of the main news sections of the Sunday Post-Dispatch and supervises newsroom production of the daily paper several nights a week. He has worked at newspapers since 1976 as a reporter, copy editor, layout editor, deputy sports editor and news editor. He has been at the Post-Dispatch since 2006. 
