Jason Noble, The Kansas City Star’s Jefferson City correspondent the last several years, has resigned and is moving to Des Moines to take a reporting job with The Des Moines Register.
Noble, who has been with The Star about seven or eight years, ran into a buzz saw earlier this month, when inaccuracies undermined an attempted “expose” that Noble wrote about Republican State Sen. Rob Schaaf. After Schaaf wrote a three-page letter of complaint to The Star’s political editor, the paper published a four-part correction.
In a brief telephone interview from his Jefferson City office Thursday, Noble confirmed a report I picked up on Wednesday that he was parting ways with The Star.
“I am leaving The Star and going to The Des Moines Register, and it’s entirely my own volition,” Noble said.
He declined to elaborate or to discuss the correction, but it is obvious that the move to The Register was in the works well before July 10, when the Schaaf story was published.
The application, interviewing and screening process involved in selecting a reporter for a salaried position at a major metropolitan daily customarily takes at least two to three months.
A man who answered the phone on The Register’s Metro desk yesterday said that Noble’s first day of work would be Aug. 9.
In one way, Noble was very fortunate: He landed a new job before, or about the same time as, the Schaaf story came crashing down around his head. In another way, he was unlucky: The snakebit story will overshadow his years and his good stories at The Star.
After Metro columnist Steve Penn was fired for plagiarism a few weeks ago, I wrote a blog entry under the headline “A horrible way to pack up your pencils.”
Same applies for Noble. A cloud accompanies him to his new job; he’ll be watched like a hawk.
***
Missouri State Sen. Rob Schaaf
The damning story led the Sunday, July 10, edition of The Star. Ten days later, The Star published a seven-column-inch piece on Page A2 correcting three key facts in the main story and one in a sidebar.
Any reporter will tell you that while one factual error in a story is regrettable, having to correct several errors in one piece of work is ignominious.
The story was an attempted “gotcha” of Schaaf, a first-year senator from St. Joseph.
Noble sought to establish in the story that, during the last legislative session, Schaaf had steered a bill he didn’t like to a committee where he is vice chairman.
There, the bill — which would have more strictly regulated Missouri’s medical-malpractice insurance industry — died.
The story implied that Schaaf, a 54-year-old physician, was dead-set against the bill because he has a significant financial interest in a company called MoDocs that which insures physicians. The bill that died in Schaaf’s committee, Noble wrote, “would have required his company to substantially increase its cash surplus and rewrite its policies for charging customers.”
On its face, the story gave the clear impression of a legislator acting out of, and motivated by, self-interest.
Ah, but a really nasty devil was lurking in the details.
In several interviews with Noble before the story was published, Schaaf did his best to defend himself — saying he did not recall talking to Senate leader Rob Mayer about the bill and correcting Noble several times after Noble referred to him in conversation as “co-owner” of MoDocs.
After the story appeared, Schaaf said, he talked with Noble and disputed several things that Noble had written. Getting no satisfaction from Noble, he said, he and his 22-year-old son, Robert, a recent Harvard University graduate, laid out Noble’s grievances in a three-page letter, which they sent to Bill Dalton, The Star’s political editor.
Schaaf, who previously served eight years in the Missouri House, said he got Dalton’s name and title from a Senate staff member.
The letter, which Schaaf posted on his state website, is measured and direct.
After laying out his objections, Schaaf said: “In conclusion, I again ask that the Star print a public apology and retraction. Mr. Noble reported very dishonestly…”
Schaaf said he later spoke with Dalton, who has been a KC Star editor for many years, and that Dalton told him the paper was planning to run a four-part correction. Other than that, Schaaf said, Dalton essentially told him, “We stand behind the story.”
That’s exactly what I would expect an editor to say under such circumstances. Similarly, when I asked Noble yesterday why he didn’t want to talk about the correction, he replied, “The correction speaks for itself.” Nothing he says about it now will make any difference or lessen the gravity of the errors.
The correction appeared on Wednesday, July 20. Among other things, it said that Schaaf was not “co-owner” of the insurance company but “co-founder, secretary, treasurer and chairman of the board.”
Where his co-ownership comes into play is with a holding company that has a contract to supervise MoDocs’ day-to-day operations.
The correction also acknowledged that Noble’s story had incorrectly stated the manner in which Schaaf receives compensation for his MoDocs-related work.
In addition, very damningly, Noble had reported that after the bill had been introduced “lawmakers recalled that Schaaf rushed to the office of Senate leader Rob Mayer, who is responsible for assigning bills to committee.”
Turns out, though, it was just one lawmaker — not two, three or several — who, under the cloak of anonymity, told Noble he had seen Schaaf hurry off to Mayer’s office.
Along with the sloppy errors pertaining to Schaaf’s corporate ownership and compensation (and a third one about a previous medical-malpractice reform bill that had been assigned to Schaaf’s committee) the facile and incorrect conversion of the singular “lawmaker” to the plural “lawmakers” gave the distinct impression that Noble was out to skewer Schaaf.
You can’t do that. You can’t do that. You can’t do that!
When a reporter sets out to expose someone’s perceived wrongdoing, he or she had better have all the facts down pat — double verified — and then keep the story free of anything that looks like he or she has it in for the subject. Errors of the magnitude that Noble made tend to indicate he was in such a hurry to stick the knife in Schaaf that he plundered through the reporting like he was knocking over bowling pins.
The result: Schaaf wins, and The Star looks like crap.
“The article about me was so over the top that it just feels like they were out to get me,” Schaaf told me yesterday. “…The whole thing is just a hatchet job.”
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
Distorted justice for readers of the Star is justice no less. A four bagger, based on your opinion of “sloppy reporting” is grounds for termination. I’m sure there are lots of hungry and unemployed reporters who would love that gig in Jeff City. Send in the clowns. There’s got to be clowns!
I’m wondering just how The Star will handle “that gig in Jeff City,” Smartman. They will have lost two relatively high-salaried people within a month — Noble and Steve Penn — and you know they don’t want to add anyone new to the payroll, unless they absolutely have to…
I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict that they don’t replace Noble, who lived in the Jeff City area, with a permanent Jeff City correspondent. They very well might assign someone out of the main office to cover the legislative sessions and have that person return to KC after the sessions. The luxury of a full-time State Capitol correspondent might be a thing of the past.
Mistakes happen, what makes them so egregious is the mentality in journalistic circles that the peons aren’t allowed to criticize them, essentially the same mentality one runs into when cases of police misconduct arise.
Indeed, my comments on this blog last week are the perfect example. Not one factual refutation was submitted, just insults, and that’s the way it always is.
Mike Hendricks recent farcical participation in a Democrat anti-Yoder flash mob is yet another example of this mentality. In this case Hendricks joined other Democrat activists in trying to disrupt a private gathering of Yoder and his supporters. At no time did he present any credentials indicating his association with the paper, he was attired in a t-shirt and ball cap and engaged in misconduct that resulted in the Overland Park police having to correct his behavior.
He then went back and wrote an opinion column, holding himself out as a disinterested third party and misrepresenting the event as a “Town Hall”. The only way the event could have been characterized in such a manner was if Hendricks is so stupid and so ignorant that he actually assumed that the obscure website that referred to the meeting in that term was the official Yoder website.
But that’s not the end of the story. The column was then submitted to the AP wire as a news story without the AP’s knowledge and even after the AP was advised that an opinion column was being sent out under their logo as a news story they failed to correct it, or correctly label the piece.
Adding to the despicable nature of this event was the fact that the Democrats drug a 95 year-old, wheel chair bound woman out into a heat health advisory in 100+ degree temperatures (which alone should have generated a story on elder abuse) purely as a political prop, endangering her life in the process.
In addition, members of the goon squad went around photographing the license numbers of the vehicles in the parking lot in an attempt to intimidate the participants. That, of course, wasn’t mentioned in Hendricks’ propaganda piece.
This is typical of what we get from The Star and yet nothing was done to correct Hendricks’ misrepresentation (other than to put Town Hall in quotes in a second version of the story) of either the event, or it’s online misrepresentation at AP as a news item.
It is this arrogance and blatant ethical misconduct (where journalistic ethics are purely situational and never applied when the intended victim is a conservative) that brings about such vitriolic hatred of your profession.
Whether you like Yoder, or not. He has been one of the most open and transparent politicians I’ve seen. he has held legitimate town hall meetings in all corners of his district, including Wyandotte County and Lawrence. Hendricks’ conduct and the conduct of the members of the goon squad that he participated in will only serve to stifle meaningful dialog instead of encouraging it. Yet another badge of glory for The Star’s trophy case.
Hold your calls, we have a winner! Congratulations, Mr. Altevogt, you have earned the coveted NonSequitur Award for your relentless and lengthy meanderings about things we weren’t talking about. Tell him what he’s won, Jimmy.
Or perhaps Jimmy could explain the connection to you in a language you understand. Anyhow thanks for proving my point that none of you folks ever try to refute the facts about your misdeeds, you just insult the messenger. Keep up the good work, it seems to be really working well.
And, as always, I repents my uppitiness for speaking without being spoken to.
I love that, Harwood — “Hold your calls…”
But I happen to have a soft spot in my heart for John. I battled with him for a few years, but we agreed to bury the hatchet, and so I’m prepared to indulge him, even when he veers off the point at hand…He’s been agitated about this Hendricks thing for a few days now, and he needed to get it out of his system.
The reason that I started my blog was that I was posting comments on another blog, and one time the blogger used my comment without giving me credit — just ran it as if the blogger had written it. I thought, “Hell, I don’t need this; I’ll just start my own.” And off I went.
John’s got plenty to say and might benefit from his own site. Meantime, he’s always welcome here…And the NonSequitur prize is an absolutely free one-year subscription to jimmycsays!
I’ll take it if I can have a two-year subscription for the same price.
As you might say, John, “Done.”
Of course the guy ran off to Iowa, Did ya see the ranking in Money ??????
Not a word earlier on Grandview / Hickman’s Mill earlier ranking in Forbes. As the worst small city in America! [and deservedly so ……….. $256K art fence ’round Ruskin High School any one ????????????]
In MoKan: ya want to be recognized —— stand up! Heard —– speak up! Appreciated ——— shut up!
Did a little research, and it looks like Money magazine (patron of Lenexa) ranked West Des Moines No. 75 among the “Best 100 Places to Live” in 2006. Yeah, how could Jason resist that carrot on a stick?
You know how Money made its selection, don’t you? I heard that the reporter’s mother lives there.
Fitz, I hope you’re wrong. It would be shameful for the Star not to have a seasoned full-time reporter in Jeff City.
The thing that has always amazed me about The Star’s lack of coverage in Jeff was never any reporting on the monkey business that takes place after hours. The citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah would blush if they knew what went on behind closed doors and the double entendre meaning of “in session.”
To continue our discussion of national ADD day, let me say that I agree with your analysis of Noble’s story, Fitz, except I would have gone light on corrections with regard to the nature of Schaaf’s relationship with the company, since there was a significant relationship. Just not the one Noble said, Same with the issue of compensation. Again, there apparently was compensation, and so the point is made that a conflict exists in which Schaaf has a financial interest. That’s the essence of the story and the sloppy research doesn’t appear to have much of an effect on the bottom line.
But, as you point out, he also gave erroneous information about the number of his witnesses. That could not have been a function of faulty research. He knew who he talked to. And so it’s not just the impression that Noble is out to get Schaaf (and why wouldn’t he, if the guy is dirty) that hurts the story, it’s the fact that Noble is exposed as a liar.
This then was my poorly stated connection to the Hendricks story. My point is that journalists have to be far more circumspect in policing themselves with regard to ethical issues, and they aren’t. They behave like cops accused of engaging in brutality they throw up their line of defense and the public be damned.
Hendricks is simply another data point for the analysis. He went to an event and behaved as a participant, but wrote about it as if he were an impartial observer. He then lied about the nature of the event, stating that it was a town hall when it was in fact a private meeting. This led to a second lie, namely that Yoder was trying to dodge his constituents when in fact he is one of the most accessible politicians I know of. Following that, his opinion piece was posted on the AP wire (without their knowledge) as a news story (where is that wall of separation when you really need it) where it remains to this day, an ongoing lie.
So where is the discipline? Noble lied about his source(s) and is off and running to another well-paid job. Hendricks lied about the nature of his participation in the event, the nature of the event itself, knowingly mischaracterized Yoder (I’m going to make a leap here and assume that it was Hendricks who posted his piece to the AP wire) and then misrepresented the nature of the document he posted to the AP wire. Where is the discipline?
AP is aware that there is an opinion piece running under its banner as a news item. They’ve done nothing. Nothing. He lied about the nature of the meeting. Unless he can come up with a screen shot of Yoder’s website advertising a town hall, that should be game over. Instead, The Star seems delighted that it’s website got a lot of hits and comments from people commenting on his column. Is this now the new standard of journalism, lie your ass off so your stories drive traffic to the web site?
Show me the discipline, because I can fill up pages with ethical violations that occur continuously because the industry fails to adequately police itself as it hides behind its own thin (insert appropriate color here) line.
Tony Botello despises Mike Hendricks as bad as John Altevogt
Talk amongst yourselves.