I think the editors down at 18th and Grand are starting to wise up.
I’m seeing increasing signs of The Star serving up a broader menu of stories — primarily more national stories — than the steady diet of local stories, which reflected the off-kilter philosophy that has drained many major metropolitan dailies of their breadth during the past five to 10 years.
When I was an assistant metro editor at The Star, I constantly lobbied at news meetings for big, national stories to run on the front page. Sometimes it happened, but often it didn’t. The editors were convinced that to stop the downward spiral of circulation, they needed a hyper-local product.
With that mind-set, they were simply following the lead of other major metropolitan dailies…and they all went over the cliff together. (Not to say that was the only reason that newspapers have lost their impact with many people.)
That’s the way it was in the newspaper business way too long: When a few papers decided it was time for a “state-or-the-art redesign” or more feature stories on the front page — or whatever — everybody jumped in for fear of missing the boat.
I always thought we needed to give the readers a good balance of stories on the front page and, especially, to give serious consideration to whatever stories The New York Times planned to run on its front page the next day. Late every afternoon, after its own news meeting, The Times sends to papers that subscribe to its news service a list of the stories it intends to run “out front,” as we say.
In my opinion, if a news editor follows the Times’ lead, it’s hard to go too far off course. The Times has the best reporters, the best editors, the best photographers, the best columnists in the country, so why wouldn’t you want to take its recommendations.
While The Star continues to beat the local drum on the front page, it is watching The Times more closely, and, in so doing, giving the readers more of what they need (like far-reaching stories with significant implications) instead of what they say they want (like entertainment news and stories about animals).
For years, while the bottom lines of major dailies have plummeted, newspapers have been chasing the holy grail of “what the readers want.” Hasn’t worked, and the pursuit should have been given up long ago.
In each of the last three days, The Star has run on its front page a major story that The Times ran on its front page, too. (The Times also generated each story.)
On Tuesday, it was a story about the growing wealth gap between members of Congress and their constituents. (It ran at the bottom of The Star’s front page and at the top of The Times’ front page).
On Wednesday, it was the widespread failure of all-metal, artificial hips. (Again, it ran at the bottom of page in The Star and at the top of the page in The Times.)
Today, it was the increasing number of women leaving the workplace and continuing their educations. (The story ran at the top of the page in both The Star and The Times. Hooray!)
Now, you might be asking yourself, “What’s so magical about The New York Times’ front-page story selection?”
Well, in this day of an endless and continuous avalanche of news and information coming at us electronically, all of us can use a compass that helps point us toward what is really important.
Carr
In an interview yesterday with Terry Gross on NPR’s “Fresh Air,” David Carr, media writer for The Times (and a budding celebrity because he has risen to great heights after beating back the twin demons of alcohol and drugs), explained the importance of perspective.
Trying to assess each day’s torrent of information “whizzing past me,” he said, it’s difficult for him to determine what is important and what isn’t.
He used to think it was “silly,” he said, that editors at The Times spent so much time “organizing the hierarchy of the six or seven most important stories in Western civilization.”
“Meanwhile,” Carr said, “the Web is above them, pivoting and alighting, and all these stories are morphing and changing. And I thought: Well, how silly is this?
“But you know what? I came to want that resting place, where someone yelled stop and decided, look, this is stuff you need to know about going forward.”
Like Carr, I find great satisfaction in that resting place, where experts — having sifted through the day’s news — have done their best to let the rest of us know what we “need to know” in this increasingly complex and maddening world.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
Walter Cronkite: “What is news today is what affects you tomorrow.”
Leave the, “If it bleeds it leads” to TV. (I dont’ think radio is in the news business except NPR.)
Has any research been done on how many news consumers bother with other media except for a headline knowledge so as to be, supposedly, in the know?
I couldn’t agree more. For a long time I stopped taking The Star and avoided their website just because the amount of local news was overwhelming. I live in Lawrence and local news is what I expect from the Journal World, but The Star is a much bigger paper, and being the main paper in a large city, I hold it to a higher standard, perhaps unrealistically.
I look to the Star for what is most important in the world, in the nation and then locally. There are sections of the paper that are dedicated to relevant local news; the first page should be reflective of what is most important or has the biggest impact in the lives of the readers. Who wants to pay to be bothered sorting through regurgitation of local police blotters and school lunches to find what is germane to my life?
I don’t need any “experts,” particularly those from The New York Times telling me what I need to know. I’m a big boy. I can take an hour in the morning to find out what’s going on, not what some Upper East Side lefties want me to think is going on. If it was up to The Times we’d all be goose stepping to mass transit stations in our turbans to go build government subsidized solar panels and electric cars.
I’ve gone a few rounds with booze and drugs. They were my roommates in the 80s. I don’t think that qualifies me for any sort of celebrity status. Hell, if surviving substance abuse is a credential, then maybe Frenchy Sulzberger should hand the baton off to Keith Richards or Lemmy Kilmister.
At least that explains why Mike Fannin still has a job. I’m assuming The Star gets a handicapped subsidy for employing Mike Hendricks. I digress, but the recent story he wrote about gambling machines in KCK bars, I could have written that 20 years ago and added more juice about illegal sports betting.
The Star continues to disappoint on many fronts. If they were anymore about social engineering, Slobodan Milosevic could snag a seat on the editorial board. I realize he’s deceased but his corpse, even at this stage, has to be more insightful than the bunch of yahoos pining and opining now.
The Star has seen its better and best days. It will NEVER regain its stature and influence. And, as Daniel Tosh would say, for that we give thanks.
Smartman — You, of all people, misquoting me! I’m aghast. The line is “and a budding celebrity because he has risen to great heights after beating back the twin demons of alcohol and drugs.” I didn’t say he had reached celebrity status because he’d “gone a few rounds with booze and drugs.” It’s what he has done since then that qualifies him for the pantheon of journalism and the fringe of show biz.
My apologies Fitz! I’ll run a retraction just like the Times would on Z66.
I do sense some irony in your choice of the word “budding.”
Nice touch, not lost on me or the liquid and herbal “buds.”
Given the “abuse” of the news that Mr. Carr and the Times sometimes dish out in the name of “perspective” let’s not revoke my literary license. I’ll take a C on today’s test, buy you a nice cognac and cigar and we’ll call it even.
Budding? I stumble into more plays on words than I ever map out.
I have to say, I disagree, for what it’s worth. Unlike you, I haven’t worked at The Star, God knows, or any newspaper, but here’s my take from a “common schlub on the street”.
If the Star doesn’t run “more local stories,” then what good is it? What purpose does it serve? The Star, if it doesn’t cover this metropolitan area closer, is then irrelevant. In this day of instant computer information, if someone wants to know what’s in the NY Times today, they’ll get it on their smart phone. They don’t even have to go home to their desktop PC any longer. It’s in their hand.
The same is true for the Chicago Trib or the LA Times or wherever. That is, if they don’t cover their own geographic area well, no one else will. That’s what makes the personal and political, local stories of, again, the Trib, for instance, good reading–it’s a story you can only get there.
Sure, put yesterday’s NYT story at the bottom of the page but if the Star doesn’t cover our own mayor and City Hall, etc., as well as the kooky old batshit people in this town with great color stories, a) no one else can or will and b) there’s no reason for the local paper, in this case The Star, to exist.
I agree with your main point, Mo, but what I’m not getting with The Star is a good balance of international, national and local news. As a practical matter, they just don’t have enough news columns anymore to advance very far beyond local, so the readers who aren’t glued to their iphones, laptops or desktops are left in the dark regarding news outside, basically, Jackson, Clay, Platte and Johnson counties.
For example, if you were relying on The Star to get information about the euro crisis, about all you’d know is that there is a crisis.
That’s where most of the major dailies are robbing their readers, and it’s why The New York Times is thriving as a national paper. The best thing that ever happened to that paper was back in the 1990s, when Janet Robinson, who recently retired as c.e.o., said, essentially, “Hey, let’s go national; we can be the paper of record for the entire country.”
Wait a minute, young cub….I want you to walk through the time portal and hand in this essay of suggestion to Charlie Blood…then come back to 2011 and tell us his critique…
I think Charlie preceded me, “Lunch.” Heard the name but don’t recall what his exact job was. News side?
Wrong on every point. The Star is failing to cover local issues for two reasons. First, they no longer have the staff to do the job – anywhere, and second there are some issues that they refuse to cover even if they had the staff. The problem with papers who do cover local events is that often the issues they do cover are not of interest to their audience.
For instance, some whiz wrote an article the other day in the Cap-Journal pointing out that minorities do not hold political office in Kansas in proportion to their numbers in the population. Wow! There’s a stunner. I’ll bet that one got a lot of attention. Or take for instance The Star’s focus on mill levies in Wyandotte County tax coverage. That figure is virtually meaningless to any WYCO homeowner since the big issue for homeowners is the dramatic over appraisals of their properties. The Star not hasn’t covered that; they’ve fled from the issue and even gone so far as to pull a column on it written by one of their freelance columnists.
Adding the national component that you suggest would simply mirror the same problem. You read and enjoy the NYT because it reflects your view of the world. For many of the rest of us, it’s a joke, not because what they write is wrong, but because what they write is irrelevant to us.
Despite the controversy surrounding Fast and Furious we get virtually zero coverage from the establishment press. Obama spends four million dollars on a Hawaii vacation that, if taken by a Republican, would have generated tons of press coverage. Again, virtually nothing in the establishment press. I haven’t looked in the NYT, what have they written on either subject?
This is the failure of the establishment press, it’s not that people aren’t interested in what’s going on in their communities, it’s that their interests are not represented on the pages of their “local” newspapers. So, we don’t read them, and in ever greater numbers, we don’t buy them.
Good comment from my friend on The Right. You’re exactly right that my philosophy is in accord with The Times. You guys have Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, the inimitable Rush and Fox News. We’ve got the best and most respected national paper, by far. Long live the Sulzbergers! (In fact, the next one — A.G. — who probably will succeed his father at the helm one day, is honing his journalistic skills right here in KC. He’s been based in KC since late last summer and is doing a great job — in my opinion.)
Beck, Hannity, O’Reilly, Rush and Fox News are unabashed right wingers who frequently distort facts and events if they don’t like the facts, or the facts don’t provide enough far-right red meat. The NYT, on the other hand, tries its best to be factual, truthful, fair and balanced, and overwhelmingly succeeds. That’s why it is the most respected national paper by far, and Beck etc. are regarded by everyone except the far right as partisan clowns.
some homeowners in Wyandotte County think their homes are overappraised? Gee, let’s put out a special edition. Show me a county in America that doesn’t have disgruntled homeowners who think their homes are overappraised. There probably are some homeowners who think their homes are underappraised, and they are keeping that (and their tax savings) to themselves. Real estate appraisal is a crapshoot riddled with guesswork and politics wherever it occurs–Wyandotte County is not alone on this. So unless you have something more substantive than a blanket “appraisals are too high” bleat, if I’m an editor, I send my reporter elsewhere to find a real news story and I’ll bear the brunt of the inevitable outraged Altevogt call.
Mr Benjamin (Harwood?)
The data are there, and have been. The guy whose column got pulled worked in the appraisers office. I’m a Realtor who’s done over 8000 evaluations for banks, asset management companies and homeowners. Our analyses were done independently and are virtually identical. Using my data I managed to lower my assessment by over 30%. The Bonner Springs Chieftain did two stories on the over appraisals, The Star none. They know it and flee from it. Why, who knows, who cares?
It’s not just a few houses, it’s virtually the entire county and by dramatic percentages. For example one house in the inner city recently sold for $5,000,00 it’s appraised by the county at over $112,000.00. One of the comps was on a house on north 79th St over 7 miles away. The typical home in the NE section of town is over appraised at around 200% of actual sales value. Houses under $150,000.00 out west are over appraised on average at 171% of actual sales value. In general the over appraisals tend to be highly regressive and the cost to the taxpayers is in the millions of dollars.
So the problem isn’t an absence of substantive data. The problem is with arrogant no nothings who spend their time regurgitating official press releases verbatim because, like you, they’re more interested in pushing their own agenda rather than giving a damn about the community they pretend to serve. And so we get those “real” stories bemoaning the fact that the good folks of western Kansas haven’t elected slates of non-existent minorities to represent their communities instead. Thank you ever so much. Where is that renewal slip?
And so thank you for making my point in dramatic fashion. The people in WYCO are being screwed out of millions of dollars, but rather than take the time to understand that you’ve got your own little agenda that’s irrelevant to us, but don’t worry about getting that outraged call,it’s not coming. We’re finding ever more outlets to get the word out without you. So have a good time waiting for the next round of layoffs when another batch of Indians bites the dust so the Chiefs at the top can keep their gigs maybe long enough to get their pensions.
Kudos to Steve Everly of The Star for an excellent piece on Kansas City’s “boutique” gas. More articles like that and i’d buy the paper. Top notch, well-informed reporting. Read it and you actually learn something useful.
Happy New Year to all! Let’s get ready to rumble!
The Star avoids the KCK tax issue because it makes one of their patron saints, Carol Marinovich, look bad. It also opens up many other windows on the world of financial problems in KCK all stemming from the fiasco known as The Legends.
Despite the fair and balanced mantra at Fox all we get are two opposing idealogical perspectives, neither of which have anything to do with the truth.
Blind faith in any news outlet or organization is just not a reality I cannot accept.
Look at the circus in Iowa. The fact that any import is placed on this horse and buggy show is mind boggling. In the end it comes down to several hundred “preachers” influencing several thousand of their flock to vote for the person they believe has a better deal with God. Christ, no pun intended, we haven’t evolved much have we?
We are getting sodomized and instead of lube we get government cheese.
Smartman, your second paragraph is exactly correct. Correcting the over appraisals would indeed open a pandora’s box leading ultimately to a discussion of the economic viability of Wyandotte County as a political subdivision, something few want to see happen.
And yes, there is truth to the allegation that Marinovich received favored treatment at The Star. In order for reform to occur in Wyandotte County Marinovich had to oppose the old guard of the county’s leadership by aligning herself with a stronger regional power structure of which former Star publisher Art Brisbane was an active participant.
And yes, while both Marinovich and the Legends have their demons (see the legislative post audit report on the use of STAR bonds in WYCO for an insight into a few of those demons in the development of the Speedway vicinity), the overall impact of both on the county on balance has been highly positive and beneficial.
Let’s get something straight here: If it weren’t for Carol Marinovich, KCK would still be a backwater town along I-70 infamous for strip clubs, crooked cops and paid-off county politicians. As it is, KCK, overall, has risen to heights that seemed almost impossible to imagine just 17 years ago.
Of course The Star gave Carol favorable treatment. The Star also gave favorable treatment to H. Roe Bartle, Ilus W. Davis, Richard Berkley, Emanuel Cleaver and Kay Barnes on the Missouri side. Why? Because each has played a big role in moving the city forward, keeping us in the top tier of U.S. cities. It’s about vision, perspective and overall movement of a city; Marinovich ranks up there with the Missouri-side big hitters, as does Joe Reardon, who’s continuing the progressive push.
…For a decade now, I have saved I saved a quote that I scratched on a Post-It note after having lunch with Carol on Jan. 4, 2002. I asked her what her thinking was when she stepped forward to run for mayor in 1995, when KCK’s prospects looked pitiful. “It was my town, and it was going down the tubes,” she said.
On this New Year’s Day, then, I send out a big Thank You to Carol Marinovich for helping boost the entire Kansas City area by lifting her town out of the gutter and into the limelight.
There’s not one word of that I disagree with. Not one.
Now that is good to hear, John. Really good. I remember when that idiot Doug Spangler, a former state rep., told me that consolidating the city and county was going to wreak havoc on KCK. I wrote that quote down, too, but later threw it away because it was so stupid.
The problem with consolidation was that it didn’t go far enough. I agree with Sen Steineger that Wyandotte County and Johnson County should be merged creating a political/economic subdivision similar to KCMO. It would be for the better long term benefit of both counties, but it won’t happen, certainly in our lifetimes, if ever.
Did you take a look at the Everly piece? There’s a first rate story with relevance for both local and national policy written by someone who very clearly knows what he’s writing about and absent, as far as I can tell, of and bias. That’s the kind of stuff that’s worth its weight in gold. if I could read stuff like that consistently the paper would be in my driveway every morning. (That said, no one ever got rich pandering to my tastes, but I defy anyone to tell me that’s not good journalism.)
Carol Marinovich has more in common with Patti Blagojevich than Margaret Thatcher. Western Wyco is nothing but a pretty face on a body with Stage 4 cancer. When the chickens come home to roost and the emperor sheds his clothes we’ll see just how bad those “deals” were. No doubt the city has improved but it’s a cocaine high not an adrenaline rush.
Minimum wage retail jobs and that platypus of a speedway that functions fewer than six days a year at full throttle and now the added dirty, filthy, rotten, lucre of a casino are not the building blocks of a vibrant and viable community.
On a per capita basis KCK is not far behind KCMO when it comes to violent crime. Schools are a joke and the government has some serious pension problems on the horizon.
If GM ever pulls out, and that’s a real possibility, KCK will make Detroit look like Monte Carlo.
Bring back Joe McDowell, Charlie Sugar and the strip clubs!
Within a year or two of arriving in KC in 1969, I saw McDowell at one of the 3 a.m. bars in KCK. It struck me as a bit odd that the mayor was out carousing at 2 a.m. or whatever time it was, but, then, I knew I was walking on the wild side.
Steve Everly is a serious journalist who knows what he’s doing and whom the readers can trust when it comes to energy issues…He also wrote about consumers getting screwed on “hot fuel.” Hot fuel refers to selling gasoline above the industry standard of 60 degrees without adjusting the volume of a gallon of fuel. As Everly reported, the practice reduces the amount of energy the fuel contains and is costing consumers around the nation $2.3 billion annually.
I remember that, but didn’t make the connection. I’ve adjusted how I fill my tank because of that article.
Fitz, if it makes you feel any better Jack Reardon was known to spend some time with the late night political groups as well. It was part of keeping the machine well “oiled”. Pressing the flesh and buying a few drinks was all part and parcel of KCK politics up until the time that Chuck Thompson got murdered. That had a chilling effect across the board.