Time to assess the initial coverage of the incredible Joplin tornado by The Kansas City Star and local TV stations.
The highest grade, an A+, goes to KMBC, Channel 9, which had at least two reporters and one or more camera crews on the scene and devoted at least the first 15 minutes, it seemed to me, of its 10 p.m. newscast to the disaster.
Anchor Lara Moritz and chief meteorologist Brian Busby stood on the set and delivered the news in front of a backdrop of video from the storm. Their positioning — not sitting behind the desk — sent a clear signal that something big was afoot.
Amazingly, The Star had no one on the scene last night, at least no one who was reporting for the morning edition. It relied on “staff and wire reports,” with the staff reports being provided by two reporters, Brian Burnes and Eric Adler, who made calls from Kansas City.
From this corner, The Star gets a grade of D-minus.
The Star did send a reporter, Brad Cooper, to Reading, Kan., to cover that city’s tornado, which struck Saturday night. But only one person died in that tornado, and it’s a very small town, near Emporia.
By contrast, Joplin — with 50,000 people in the city and 174,000 in the area — lost at least 89 people, and the level of destruction was jaw dropping. (At 4:15 p.m., CNN was reporting that the death toll was 116.)
More details…
I didn’t learn about the storm until 9:58 p.m., when I saw it on CNN’s website. The CNN story quoted an American Red Cross official as saying, “I would say 75 percent of the town is virtually gone.”
I gasped…But it was a gross exaggeration. On a CNN video report today, an official-sounding person says that 25 to 30 percent of the town suffered “major or significant damage,” and Channel 9 was saying last night that the southern third of the city suffered major damage. There’s a big difference between 75 percent and 25 or 30 percent (or even 33 percent).
After scanning the lead CNN story, I ran to the TV and started flipping channels. It was clear that KMBC, the top-rated station in Kansas City, was well ahead of at least two others — KSHB Channel 41 and KCTV5.
I’m not much of a TV news devotee, so in my haste to get the best report, I overlooked FOX4.
Today, representatives of all three stations — 4, 5, and 41 — said they had crews in Joplin last night and that they aired reports on the 10 p.m. newscasts.
Peggy Phillip, news director at KSHB Channel 41, said that her station sent one crew at 6:45 p.m. — 45 minutes after the tornado struck and put another on the road about half an hour later. KSHB’s coverage led off at 10 p.m., she said, with “a multi-media journalist reporting live (by phone) over video” from The Weather Channel.
By 10:15, Phillip said, the station had one of its journalists on camera, at the scene.
Someone on the assignment desk at KCTV5 told me today that they had four people on the scene last night, but, in my channel flipping, I was underwhelmed by the station’s coverage. As I recall, they were emphasizing local weather at the top of the hour. For a station renowned for hyperventilating about even the prospect of bad weather, Channel 5’s coverage seemed totally disproportionate to its usual hyperbole.
Now, more about The Star’s coverage…
The danger of using “staff and wire reports,” instead of sending reporters to the scene is that you get a lot of second-hand information.
Sure enough, in the third paragraph of today’s front-page story, The Star picked up the CNN quote from Kathy Dennis of the American Red Cross: “I would say 75 percent of the town is virtually gone.”
Even as I gasped when reading that on CNN’s site, I was skeptical. The Red Cross official could not have surveyed the entire town, so how could she say 75 percent of it was gone?
It was irresponsible and very unwise of The Star to run that comment without having its own reporter on the scene, and the quote draped a shroud of skepticism over the entire story.
Perhaps more ignominiously, The Star relied on The Wichita Eagle, a fellow McClatchy-owned paper, for significant coverage. The credit line at the end of the lead story attributed the reporting to The Associated Press and The Eagle, as well as Burnes and Adler.
The Star’s coverage also included a stand-alone, 12-column-inch story on Page A-8 by The Eagle’s Beccy Tanner, from Joplin.
Why is this important?
Well, according to MapQuest, it’s 184 miles from Wichita to Joplin. From Kansas City to Joplin, it’s 157 miles. Who has the quicker, easier access?
But, no matter, The Star was all over that tornado in Reading, Kan. — population 231.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
The relative distance of Wichita and KC to Joplin isn’t really relevant to Beccy Tanner’s report. As her story clearly states, she was in Joplin because of a wedding.
You can criticize the Star’s lack of response to this, and the Star has always been vulnerable to weekend breaking news because of their skeleton staffing, but it’s unfair to imply that Tanner’s first-person coverage was somehow a sign of the Eagle’s greater commitment to coverage. Her presence was a total fluke.
I stand admonished on that point, Harwood. The gist doesn’t change, however: The Star should have been there.
And don’t forget, not only did the Star make that the money quote up top of the story, it also used that quote in the secondary, boldfaced headline.
I didn’t even notice that, Hearne…Thanks for dropping by!
P.S. See Hearne’s treatment of the same subject at kcconfidential.com.)
Fitz,
In the 1990s, The Star had a Springfield reporter who was responsible for pretty much everything between the Ozarks and Arkansas. I think that beat became of casualty of the belt-tightening that occured about a decade ago.
I can’t fault The Star for sending a reporter to Reading, KS. After all, that tornado hit Saturday night and I’m guessing that the bosses started planning Sunday’s Web site and the next day’s paper in the morning or early afternoon_ hours before the Joplin disaster occured. I’m sure it seemed at the time a good idea to send a reporter to Reading, KS, where I’m sure the local convenience store still sells The Star.
Since I’m not with The Star anymore, I can only speculate as to how many reporters and editors were working when this tornado hit Joplin. All of this started happening around 6 p.m. so it would not surprise me if there was only one editor and one reporter and a copy editor in the newsroom. While the reporter was busy making phone calls, the editor was probably having to monitor the televisions, wires and Web sites; getting swamped with phone calls from the Metro AME, as well as the managing editor, the editor and the publisher(none of whom have had to worry about losing their jobs); and then being forced to call the few remaining reporters on The Star’s payroll to see if they can come in and work on the storm coverage. Doing all that is about as easy as trying to steer a tug boat on the Mississippi River near Vicksburg right about now.
Keep in mind too that The Star has laid off all the staff that were regular nightside reporters and editors. And they laid off Bob Lynn, who was the long-time weekend editor and arguably the best editor at The Star before the layoffs occured.
The last time a red ball story like this broke on a Sunday was in April 2007. That was the Ward Parkway Shopping Center shooting. It broke around 3 p.m. I was on duty that day. Tony Rizzo, who had the early morning cop shift, went out immediately to the Valero station on Bannister where the shooter fired shots at a cop. Once we heard on the scanner that the shooter was at Ward Parkway and firing shots, I and another reporter bolted out of the newsroom and out to Ward Parkway. Bob Lynn directed the coverage like a maestro and several other reporters helped. We covered all the bases and had quite a story in next day’s edition.
But that happened a year before The Star started laying off reporters and lower-level editors. Weekend staffing, from what I heard, has since operated at skeleton crew levels. The consequences of that is when a big story like the one yesterday breaks_ and especially if it is outside the metro area_ readers of The Star are going to get wire reports. And that is because The Star is no longer prepared to cover big breaking news stories on weekends.
Everything you say is true, Mike (and, by the way, I love the term “red-ball story”), but weekend staffing isn’t the issue, I don’t think.
The scenario should have gone like this: The assignment editor immediately calls the managing editor at home; the m.e. says, “We’ve got to get someone on the road as soon as possible.” He either gives the assignment two or three names of people to call at home, or, more likely, he calls the metro editor and has her call people at home, until she finds someone who is ready, willing and able. And, as you know, when the metro editor calls you at home, it’s not a casual invitation; it’s a directive, and you’d better be ready to go.