In 2010, I created a St. Louis Cardinals Facebook fan page called “We Are Cardinal Nation” and tied RSS feeds to it from local sources that he frequently read, creating one place to go to see all the local Cardinals news, rumors, and such. I told friends about it and occasional people I saw on Facebook talking about the Cardinals. Early on it was a lot of fun because it was a really tight knit group of intelligent baseball fans and we had some really great baseball discussions. It started to grow fairly quick and the next year (2011) I started a page to post information about the River City Rascals and snapped some photos at games. I ended up being offered a job with the Rascals in 2012 to be their Official Scorer. Having played baseball and softball my whole life, I was very excited to do that. I took batting practice and shagged balls every day with the team, it was great. I ended up being given control of their social media as well and grew their following from 1,200 to over 15,000 that summer, but was fired via email after the season ended and told “any intern can run social media.”
In 2013, I decided to merge the two pages (Cardinals and Rascals) into one and cover more local sports, and really focus on the minor league teams that didn’t get a lot of coverage. I came up with 5 names for it and ran a poll… the name that received the fewest votes, was the one that grew on me the most, and Arch City Sports was born. Launched in January, and our own blog site created in the following weeks. I still attended Rascal games as a fan, and started to work on my photography skills at their games or across the river at Gateway Grizzlies games. I was offered a job by the Missouri Monsters arena football team to help keep stats for the games, and I occasionally took some photos. The same owner at the time started up an indoor soccer team, reviving the old St. Louis Ambush name, and renamed the Monsters, the St. Louis Attack. I covered all these teams, and started recruiting writers for the site. We brought in most of our followers with Cardinals news but the focus was always on the smaller teams that never got consistent coverage. By the end of that 2013 summer, I was offered a job with the St. Charles Chill to be their Team Photographer. While the team only lasted a single year because of ownership issues, and the eventual CHL/ECHL merger, it was by far the best experience I have ever had. The team, the staff, the fans, it really made me fall in love with hockey more than I ever had. Jamie Rivers was our head coach, met a bunch of former Blues players there. Bart Hull was a part of the staff, such a great guy, and met his brother Brett and father Bobby while there. I traveled to some road games in Quad Cities and to Kansas City and photographed there. I had so many ideas for the next season, was heartbroken when it folded.
In 2015, I was offered a job doing stats for the St. Louis RiverSharks and Gateway Steam basketball teams, but only did that for a handful of games, before shifting to doing photography instead. Had a meeting with the GM of the teams and was offered a chunk of money to advertise the league on my site. I was starting to realize that this was growing pretty well and being noticed by a lot of people. I then started applying for media credentials with teams and colleges in the area. I had grown up a huge Billikens fan and wanted to attend SLU out of high school, but joined the military instead. But I have photographed a lot of SLU teams, but especially their basketball ever since then. Have been to Memphis, Springfield, and Peoria to cover games, prospects, or rehab assignments for guys like Yadier Molina and Adam Wainwright. We have covered the St. Louis Slam, St. Louis Surge, roller derby, and more.
During these past several years, I had also been running a large message board with a Collective Soul fan club, and had been working with their management and friends helping spread the word about them and got backstage passes and photo passes to shows. I had decided that I wanted to figure out how to photograph concerts, so I hit up a contact with a local radio station and was introduced to a guy that handled that sort of thing for them. I ended up shooting a festival and multiple concerts for multiple radio stations that were all under the same parent company… but only when their regular people weren’t available. I briefly started up a sister site to cover music (was Arch City Entertainment – but quickly realized that was the name of an escort/stripper service when I kept getting phone calls at 2am – so changed it to RewindSTL), but decided I didn’t want the headache (or cost) of multiple sites… and figured everybody loves music, even sports fans. So I rebranded Arch City Sports into Arch City Media.
Covering music opened so many more doors, but I kept finding myself limited when a band wasn’t coming through St. Louis. I also felt the same way about sports… something big would happen outside of the St. Louis realm, and I couldn’t really talk about it… and if I did, people would say “what does this have to do with st louis?” That weighed heavy on my mind for a long time because I love sports and I love music… so I occasionally would just post, it was my site, I could do what I wanted lol.
Covid put a HUGE damper on the site crushing everything we usually would do and a lot of our contributors moved on to other things or graduated college and moved away and into new professions. We shut down multiple podcasts we were doing. I myself got a job in an Amazon warehouse, was super depressing.
When things started to pick up again, I just got it going and continued to grow it, but mostly on my own with a handful of contributors… not the 40+ we used to have. Started finding new contributors and photographers to bring on here and there, but also found I was just being used by some people for the access, personal gain and such, not for the site’s content or growth… I really found myself burned out trying to keep people happy and thought about selling it or just shutting it down towards the end of 2023. Was a really rough 3-4 years.
I had never planned on this continuing this long or growing into what it has, I thought it might lead to more photography gigs with teams or media companies… or somebody would ask me to help with their social media.
Something clicked in my brain in summer of 2024 though, I started getting that creative itch and drive again, and a lot more motivation. I started to put some things in motion and test some things. I decided that a reboot of sorts was needed and rebranded to Litehouse Media to open up covering of all music and sports… and could also dive into movie reviews and foodie type stuff. While some followers criticized the name as boring and generic, Lite is my last name. While I understand the flashiness of a local type name, there are actually multiple sites out there that have the same or similar name as our former name and it was always leading to confusion.
Since the rebrand, the following on all socials has seen some significant growth and a lot more engagement. The content has remained the same plus the additions of more music coverage and more sports news. We have contributors coast to coast in the United States and are growing the number of people involved here all the time. Writers, Photographers, and Podcasters. A lot of really talented people.
2025 is our 12th year and it feels like the beginning all over again but with a huge foundation already laid. Hope you enjoy our coverage and we are still doing this after another decade.
– Mick Lite
