What a terrible day at The Kansas City Star.
For the editors to have to cut loose a longtime, reliable columnist and employee is crushing. I wholeheartedly believe editor Mike Fannin when he said, “We value Steve’s many years of service to The Star.”
He was talking about Steve Penn, longtime Metro columnist who got the axe Thursday.
It’s even more crushing for Penn; he’s finished as a big-time journalist.
***
First, let me explain why I’m a bit late weighing in on this. I was very busy today, and while I brought the paper in the house this morning, I didn’t open it until late this afternoon. I was out of e-mail contact, too, and when I finally got into it, I had three e-mails about Penn’s firing, including one from the ever-curious Mike Waller, a former Star executive editor, who is now retired and living in South Carolina.
At that point, I grabbed the paper…and my heart just sank.
After reading the story, however, (Page A5), it was abundantly clear that Penn gave the editors no choice: He was guilty of blatant plagiarism.
It was interesting to me, however, that the story didn’t use the “p” word — the last word any writer wants attached to their name. In that regard, the story went easy on Penn, who, I’m almost certain, is The Star’s first and only black Metro-front columnist at The Star.
One of the three e-mails I received about Penn came from a retired Star reporter who chastised The Star for subjecting Penn to “public humiliation” by detailing three specific plagiarism incidents.
However, a current reporter at The Star told me that in a case like this, with a high-profile columnist being let go, it was essential for The Star to lay out the reasons “chapter and verse.”
One reason for taking that route is that Penn almost certainly has a big following in the black community, and if The Star failed to lay out exactly how Penn had screwed up, The Star could have been (and still might be) subjected to the thing that strikes absolute terror into Star management — a black boycott. It happened one other time, way back, and ever since then, The Star has tread ever so lightly when it comes to the treatment of high-profile black people’s public transgressions.
As a prime example, I cite an infamous case involving former Kansas City Mayor Emanuel Cleaver. Less than six months after being elected mayor in 1991, Cleaver took his family to Disney World on city funds, claiming it was a city-related business trip. The Star’s Kevin Murphy and Marty Connolly (both are no longer with the paper) exposed it as a sham. What did Cleaver do? Blamed his secretary!
We (The Star) could have and should have hammered Cleaver so hard that he’d never see the light of another election day. Connolly and Murphy certainly did their part, but the editors watered down the story and played it very low and light on the front page…Editors have many ways to take the air out of a sensitive story, and they really slashed the tire on that one. Murphy and I, City Hall reporters at the time, never felt quite as confident about the paper’s motives and mission after that.
Cleaver, caught red-handed, was essentially let off the hook and went on, of course, to be re-elected in 1995 and later was elected U.S. representative, the post he still holds.
In the Penn case, then, the editors knew they had to be very, very careful to do all they could to avoid upsetting black readers.
In my opinion, The Star didn’t go far enough. It got the chapters right but not the verses.
Here’s my beef: The story included, word for word, two long paragraphs that Penn used in separate columns within the last four months. The story said that, in both cases, the words Penn used were “nearly identical” to the wording of two press releases he had received.
The story failed, however, to include the exact wording from the press releases. I believe the story should have included the press-release wording so that readers could judge for themselves the extent of the plagiarism.
I don’t doubt that it was “nearly identical,” I’d just like to see the variations side by side, or one after the other.
But here’s the saddest part of this, in my opinion: Penn’s journalism career is shot at 53. Oh, he might be able to scrape something up at the Pitch or The Call, but he’ll get nothing at a major metropolitan daily (not that he’d consider leaving Kansas City at this stage, anyway).
To some degree, I can understand how the debacle unfolded, but however it happened, it’s inexcusable.
My understanding comes from watching many a columnist grapple with the twice-weekly (in Penn’s case, I believe) or thrice-weekly deadline. The challenge is to come up with fresh, interesting material time after time, and the deadlines never stop. You finish one column, and it’s time to start thinking about the next one.
That’s one reason I was too much of a coward to ever seek a Metro-front column job; I didn’t want that much pressure. I wanted to write a lot of stories — I was extremely prolific — but I felt a lot more comfortable covering news developments rather than having to start with nothing and build a sand castle two or three times a week…Even with the blog, while I love to write frequently, I’m not under the gun to produce a certain number of posts every week or even entry month; I write when I feel like it and when I have something I think is substantive.
The pressure on columnists, then, is tremendous, and frequently the temptation arises to cut corners, use some readily available material that lands in your lap. Some of you will recall the late Gib Twyman, a sports columnist for The Star back in the 70s and possibly the early 80s. He, too, plagiarized and paid for it with his neck.
I don’t say this to detract from columnists in general, but some, as they get older (like Twyman and Penn) tend to get lazy. They push the deadline and push the deadline, and then they’re up against the wall; it’s 8 p.m., and the column has to be in by 9. What to do? Well, there was that press release about the Duke Ellington family stepping forward to help U.S. military veterans…
***
One day in the newsroom years ago, I was chatting once with Jim Fisher, one of the best reporters and columnists The Star ever had. We were talking about our longevity at the paper and how we expected things to unfold for us. I remember him asking me what my goals were at The Star. I didn’t immediately answer, and he said, “Keep your powder dry?”
I nodded, realizing he had hit it on the head. That’s exactly what I wanted to do; like any reporter or journalist who has been at the game a long, I wanted to make a career in journalism and leave on my own terms.
As time passed, I wasn’t able to keep my powder completely dry, but dry enough, and I was able to hold on for a 37-year career at The Star. I retired five years ago, at 60, on my own terms (although I have my critics out there who get their kicks asserting — always anonymously — that I was forced out).
I’m very sorry that Steve Penn, whom I like a lot and enjoyed working with, couldn’t make a career of it.
He came close, but the dreaded “p” word laid him low.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
Lewis Diuguid predated Penn, Fitz.
I stand corrected, Starguy.
I, too, lament Steve Penn’s departure. So sad that such a gifted columnist would undermine himself in that fashion. Can’t help but think of the contrast when The Star upholds journalistic ethics, while Murdoch condones — maybe even encourages — his reporters to use unethical, illegal, methods of collecting their information. Steve has done much to publicize the activities of the black community, maybe his future lies with a non-for-profit organization. When I think of Steve, what first comes to mind is his role in the establishing of CODA (can’t immediately think of what the initials stand for, but it helps aging musicians, such as burial expenses for Cotton Candy, among others).
I’m puzzled here. I once read a story about some quotes that were found at the Truman museum that were considered anti-Semitic by some. The original story was from the Washington Post and it quoted two folks commenting on truman’s remarks. Later in the day The Star had a story on the same topic and used the identical quotes from The Post story, only implying that the writers of The Star story had interviewed them. At the bottom of the article I believe it did credit the WP writers for “contributing” to the article (I believe that was the phrase), but the article clearly was written to give the impression that the interviews were done by Star staff? Why is that not plagiarism? It certainly seemed then, and still does, seem unethical to take the credit for another reporter’s work product.
Peg, I believe that Penn founded the Coda Jazz Fund. Coda is a musical term indicating a movement that concludes a piece of music, or in the case of the fund helps pay the funeral and burial expenses at the conclusion of a musician’s life. I don’t think the letters themselves mean anything separately. Having played with Cotton for several years, we were certainly grateful for the assistance and the jam session at her funeral was one of the most stirring musical events I can recall ever participating in.
Thanks for your insight Fitz.
Do you think the investigation of Steve’s work had been in place for a while, or is this part of a journalistic audit by the new publisher? Might more heads roll in this same fashion?
If others, (white folks), are similarly guilty, will The Star out them or perhaps let them resign and be dismissed as part of the ongoing staff reductions?
I always thought Jason Whitlock should have been dismissed after the “Drew Bledsoe is Gay” incident. What are your thoughts on that? Was fear of reprisal from the “community” part of the reason he got a pass?
Do you think the Star will replace Steve with another black journalist to appease the “community”?
I feel certain that the audit went on for at least a few weeks, Smartman. It was probably one of the first things that editors presented to Mi-Ai Parrish, when she took over as publisher last month. Of course, the termination required her blessing, but the pieces were in place, and the die cast, before she arrived, I would think.
I don’t think any purge is underway, where the editors are looking for transgressions by columnists. I think someone just picked up on the similarity between a press release and Penn’s column and reported it to an editor.
I believe The Star has treated all these cases the same, Smartman, that is, explaining columnists’ firings in articles. That’s the way to do it; be consistent…As for Whitlock, I think a suspension was probably the right call. It was a sophomoric, knee-jerk response to him being goaded by Patriots’ fans. He was still a little green at the time.
I’m sure The Star would like to replace Penn with a black journalist, but it might have to be someone from outside, and that would mean an additional expense. Can’t have that now, can we?
Fitz –I don’t think Cleaver went to Florida on city funds; the criticism was that he accepted free tickets from Northwest Airlines. The difference is the first would have been illegal but the second wasn’t.
See my comment below, Mike. Cleaver did break the law and got away with it.
Walking ever so softly across eggshells in order to avoid offending the “black” community (at the expense of the supposed honesty and integrity that we like to believe is part and parcel with first class journalism) is counterproductive and downright pernicious to the survival of the local fish wrap.
Languishing in the same necrotic straights as “Dead Tree Media” all over the nation, perhaps underestimating their customers and advertisers was, and is, foolish.
It may be that a more centrist effort from the Op-Ed folks, in addition to a more complete and honest take on local issues, without fear of reprisals from select groups based on outdated, over-rated ethnic paraidigms, would sustain circulation and garner more interest, and in fact, more respect and more ad dollars.
Its probably too late for The Star to re-purchase the respect that it once had. The Star’s agenda is obvious to even a guy who likes “musterd on his taters.”
It is a bankrupt, gutless, specious, dishonest agenda that permeates even the classified section.
Its NOT all the news that is fit to print.
There is a whole lot missing.
It isn’t that bad , Chuck. Are you feeling OK?
Thanks for everyone’s comments. Almost all points are well taken.
Here’s the “scoop” on Cleaver’s trip from a 1992 article that Kevin Murphy dug up for me from LexisNexis.
“An ethics panel says Mayor Emanuel Cleaver used his office for private gain and personal convenience by using public money and free airline tickets for a vacation. One violation involved billing the city $1,077 for hotel rooms, meals and a rental car while Cleaver’s family was on a vacation in Orlando, Fla., last summer.
“The mayor was ‘seriously at fault’ for waiting three months to reimburse the city, the Municipal Officials Ethics Commission said in a report released Monday. Cleaver also failed to disclose Northwest Airlines’ gift of six tickets, the panel said. The commission didn’t recommend whether Cleaver should be prosecuted for the violations.”
He wasn’t prosecuted, but he did use city funds, which was what made the story as explosive as it was. If it had just been airline tickets, it would have taken a lot of punch out of the story.
Also, Kevin told me that former Star investigative reporter Marty Connolly had the lead by-line on the story. I had forgotten that, and I am changing the text to include Marty.
Thanks, Kevin. You’re a helluva reporter, and you were a great running mate at City Hall!
By the way, Twyman wasn’t just a columnist in the ’70s and maybe ’80s – he was a front line sports columnist in 1992 or 93 when he took the bullet from then editor Art Brisbane.
It was a very awkward bullet, as I recall. In which he twisted around in his column at least once trying to half-ass explain things away before Art pulled the plug.
It’s not that hard writing a column two times a week. Or even three, in my opinion. I did it four and five a week and had three to five different topics in each. I was doing quite a bit of reporting too but that’s less so the case with the Metro columnists.
They more often than not play off something in the news by adding perspective and detail. They don’t have to start from complete scratch as you did when unearthing a brand new news item.
I did feel bad for you, Jim, when you got fired at the Star. Put in my complaint with Zieman on your behalf. You got a raw deal…
Kidding, of course!
Thanks for the correction, Hearne; I just couldn’t remember when Twyman got the axe, but I do recall now that it was Art, who became editor in about ’91, who sent him packing. The firing involved quite a shouting match, as I recall, between Brisbane and Twyman in Brisbane’s glass-enclosed office in the newsroom.
Now, about my firing…You promised me you’d never breathe a word about that. Fine friend you are!
While race may play a minor role in how a story is handled, or if comments are to be allowed below a story, I think there are far more dominant factors at play in how matters are handled at The Star.
For instance, much has been mentioned about Cleaver’s Disney trip, but there is also the six figure salary from KC’s impoverished school district for Mrs. Cleaver’s “strategic planning, the small business loans that were to go to the minority community that went to Mr. Cleaver instead and his failure to pay taxes in a timely manner on his car wash. I gleaned these stories from The Star concerning Cleaver’s habitual ethical lapses. And so Mr. Cleaver’s continuing escapades did not escape The Star’s intrepid city hall reporters. Indeed, many of these stories were current at the very time that Mr. Cleaver was in a heated primary race with the squeaky clean Jamie Metzl and yet The Star’s endorsement went to Cleaver over Metzl. Race over integrity? I think not.
Then there was the recent endorsement of Clyde Townsend for a position on the KCKCC board. Ms. Shelly was most forgiving of Mr. Townsend’s fairly recent conviction for public corruption when this very same columnist denounced TJ Reardon for a 25 year old drug conviction absent any evidence of recurring misconduct. Townsend is black, Reardon is white.
Stopping there, one might conclude that race was a factor, but I think they would be wrong. The news division still advised us of Cleaver’s ethical shenanigans, even if editorial ignored them. And how to explain the case of a white judge accused of being drunk on the bench. His opponent was a black attorney and yet The Star’s endorsement went to the alleged sot. And what to say about the Star’s editorial denunciation (again from Ms. Shelly) of Nolen Ellison, a distinguished black appointee to KCKCC’s board with national educational credentials and experience running a similar institution, as a troublemaker. Seems Mr. Ellison had the audacity to suggest an audit of the college’s books.
Indeed, the common factor among those tarred and rejected by Shelly isn’t race, it’s reform. The same year Reardon was denounced for his criminal past, Shelly also slammed Ben Hodge for his boat-rocking down at JCCC, scurrilous acts that included questioning no-bid contracts and violations of open meetings statutes (heaven forbid The Star would support that radical agenda).
In the time that I was active politically and also had some experience dealing with the inner workings of The Star its editorial agenda seemed to be guided by Mr. Brisbane’s luncheon companions at The River Club far more than the brothers in the hood. Indeed, Mr. Brisbane seemed to follow in his namesake’s footsteps of typing leftist platitudes with one hand whilst clutching a large paycheck with the other, earned in the service of the rich and powerful.
That may not be as romantic an image as bending over backwards trying to give people of color a leg up, but I think an extended look at the data would find that it is a far more accurate predictor of behavior than one guided by the perception of racial altruism.
To Peg: Steve Penn, although a nice and friendly person, was a terrible columnist and based on his prior performance and production, should never have had the job in the first place.
…Also, the Star needs to be much more precise on the propriety of what information can be used from a press release and what can’t. Lifting whole passages without any condensing or editing is lazy, but I don’t know that it necessarily qualifies as plagiarism. The very nature of a press release is that it is information provided to a media source that can be used as the media source sees fit.
oh hey Altevogt! I was wondering where your verbal ass-wipings went. You’re over here.
Regarding the Truman story, I still would argue that even if outright plagiarism did not take place the ethics of knowingly suggesting that you were responsible for someone else’s work product should have been grounds for suspension at a minimum. The Post writers did the interviews and the Star writers wrote the piece to suggest that they had done the work. Stating later that the Post writers “contributed” to the piece does not get the Star writers off the hook ethically.
On a story of that nature, you’re quite correct; it is very possible that, given the variety of input, that a copy editor may well have written the information surrounding the quotes given the local bylines assumed that they were interviewed by the locals, or simply were unsure of who had done what by the time they got the text.
I keep forgetting that I was the only one I know of who had the luxury of sitting down with a copy editor to put my column on the page. That alone was worth the price of admission since every copy editor I worked with at The Star was outstanding.
What most of us out here do not realize is that many writers have no idea of what’s done with their material until they read it in the paper themselves. I’ve chatted with several reporters who were surprised by material added later by editors, or articles that were restructured by copy editors, altering the meaning of a paragraph, or phrase in the process.
There are definitely different standards for conduct at The Star. Some time back some poor guy who plays in a band wound up playing at an event that turned out to be a party for a politician. If memory serves they made him give his pay back and then suspended him. Yet it was OK for members of the editorial board and reporters to go down and participate in the partisan events of Bob Meneilly’s little hate group because they were pals with Brisbane and sat on the boards of the same “charities” and foundations.
Indeed, Brisbane himself was Co-Chair (along with one of Meneilly’s acolytes) of The Partnership For Children when it got in trouble for taking sides during the Prob B battle. Not surprisingly, both Meneilly’s people and the Partnership people were given favored status at The Star.
Then there are Derek Donovan’s litany of ethical problems that were completely ignored by Fannin when Derek had his meltdown a while back. After an idiotic voice mail he left wound up online he threatened to use, and used, his blog and his column to engage in a personal vendetta if the voice mail was not taken down. Fannin was well aware of it and did nothing. In addition, he blocked people from commenting for no other reason than they were critical of him after he was repeatedly caught in one lie after another. What does it say about your paper when the most abusive person there is your “reader’s” representative and you do nothing about it?
And while we’re discussing favoritism, does Miriam Pepper actually do anything down there? She and Abouhalkah are about as narrow minded as you can get while Steve Winn was an excellent editor and about as fair as you could humanly get and yet Miriam was promoted over him and he was one the first out the door of the editorial department along with Trudy Hurley.
I remember that column that Zieman wrote. It appeared two months after I was laid off from The Star. It really showed how arrogant and out-of-touch with reality Zieman is. Within four months of that column being published, The Star had another huge round of layoffs_ the fourth_ and the Metro and Business sections were combined into the A-section. “Jaw-droppingly dumb”- couldn’t have put it in better words.
What I do not understand is why, when original news is the one thing The Star has that most bloggers cannot even begin to compete with, why you would get rid of Julius Karash, Rick Alm, Mark Wiebe, Melodee Blobaum and a host of other top notch reporters and keep the likes of Barb Shelly, Mike Hendricks and Lewis Duigiud. You could fire the entire bunch in editorial and i would argue the paper’s reputation would go up.
The institutional memory that’s gone now is priceless. You can hire the brightest kid in J school, but you can’t give him the institutional memory a Jim Sullinger had. The loss of those reporters constitutes a real loss in value for a subscriber to that newspaper and yet what would you really lose if Miriam Pepper and her entire department was gone tomorrow?
If times are really that tough, why is this newspaper getting rid of the one resource that makes it competitive?
I don’t remember if Alm was laid off or left on his own, John, but I know that my buddy, Mark Wiebe, took a general buyout offer; he wasn’t forced out. He well could have been laid off later, but he was one of the smart ones, like Kevin Murphy, who saw the writing on the wall and got the hell out.
Correct, but why isn’t he still there and Pepper given a buyout offer? Weibe provided a product that most bloggers cannot compete with, Pepper, Shelly, Diuguid, et. al. do not and the fact that he was given a buyout offer would have been a clear signal that his time was drawing to a close. I’m not sure what the exit strategy for any of the people I mentioned consisted of, I just know they’re gone before their time and that they took a lot of news gathering and analyzing experience with them. Again, why is the one resource that makes The Star competitive being squandered while essentially a department of (low quality, but expensive) bloggers is kept on staff? Is that kind of decision being made across the McClatchy chain, or is that a local strategy?
John, I don’t think you understand how The Star has handled the buyouts, as opposed to the layoffs. Each time they have offered a buyout — which has been occasionally but not every time they were preparing for a round of layoffs — it’s a blanket offer. It applies to everyone. Pepper could take it; Diuguid could take it; Zieman could take it. So, some people took management up on the buyout offer, perhaps thinking they would later get cut loose, or, as I know it to be in the case of Murphy and Wiebe, to give themselves time to lay the groundwork for getting other employment.
The layoffs, on the other hand, are pointed at individuals. We all know the drill now; the marks are called in one at a time and told they’re finished. Who wants to go through that?
I was hoping for a buyout before I retired in 2006, just after McClatchy took over. At a newsroom staff meeting just before the deal closed, I publicly asked McClatchy c.e.o. Gary Pruett if the company was planning any buyouts. He said, “No. When we take over a newspaper, we plan on adding staff, not reducing.” (Those may not be his exact words, but it’s close.) At that point, I realized there was going to be no parachute for me and that I’d have to make my own arrangements. A few weeks later, I did.
Gotcha, thanks for the clarification and you were right, I didn’t. That still doesn’t change my basic question. Is the strategy of losing reporters and retaining bloggers company wide, or unique to KC? Is that where they perceive the market to be moving, or is it just more of the favoritism that has turned the place into an upside down managerial pyramid?
I may have just gotten my answer. I went to The Star’s “news” section by clicking on the news tag at the top pf the page. What popped up is essentially a 3 column presentation with ads on the right, I list of opinion columns in the center and a list of stories on the left. This is the news page. Why am I inundated with pictures of opinion writers? Why aren’t they relegated to the opinion page? Why aren’t there pictures of the journalists who wrote featured news stories on this page, they don’t promote news stories on the opinion page?
Guswelle with the stunning news that Medicare scammers don’t care about you, no kidding? Steve Rose with a puff piece about his old pal Fred Logan (and what conceivable reason could Channel 5 have for using Logan as their “news” analyst. Is that a sponsored position?). There’s a real general interest column for you. Thanks, Steve. Hendricks writing anything. Sanchez, who at least has a brain, but really, the news page? Is this the wave of the future for “newspapers”.
Just an editor’s note here: If any of you are having trouble with what looks like a “double posting” on your comments, I have the fix for you. What this looks like (I have experienced it and at least one commenter has, too) is when you go to make a new comment after already having posted one, the old one is still in your “leave a reply” box…I don’t know what’s causing it, but to clear it, just highlight and delete the old comment and proceed to write the new one.
I have contacted wordpress and hope to have a fix soon.
A reminder to those who weren’t around or haven’t followed John very long: To John, a “hate group” is anyone he disagrees with politically, who isn’t as religiously fundamental as he is, and/or who criticizes his tactics and “facts” based on his belief in a “liberal conspiracy.”
Copying news releases is harmless dishonesty, a victimless crime. While it may share some elements with plagiarism, copying news releases is obviously done with the implied or even explicit permission of the news release’s author. Sure, Penn could have reworded the tripe, but it still would have been tripe. Too bad that’s never been a firing offense at the Star.
I think that the Star should hire someone to cover Steve Penn’s beat. I don’t care what color they are as long as they know the central city and can express the feelings and goings-on in the community. I read the article from Friday’s paper from some guy from the East Coast and was not impressed. Perhaps they could find guest columnists from Kansas City to present their opinions and observations. They could even come from the KC GLOBE or the Call.
It is a shame that Mr. Penn lost his job. Many people lose their jobs for what he did, but it is a shame that a supposedly large metropolitan newspaper only has one voice coming out of the black community. The fact that The Star was satisfied with that is a shame. It only took him 20 years to get the job in the first place, and he had to convince the powers that be that a black perspective was even needed in this city.
Yes, the paper has gone downhill in general. Only when we have a local person step up and run the paper like the founder of the Star, William Rockhill Nelson, will we have A PAPER FOR THE PEOPLE.