Hats off to The Star for a fine Sunday paper. The front page consisted of three “enterprise” stories, that is, not breaking news but stories reported and written over a period of days or weeks and focus on a person or development that has been in the news.
Two sports-age stories — one on new Kansas City Chiefs’ offensive coordinator Brian Daboll and the other on Royals’ outfielder Alex Gordon — contributed to an overall excellent print edition.
A closer look at the front-page stories…
:: The Sunday “centerpiece,” by Rick Montgomery, was about the so-called Neo Luddites, those who eschew cellphones, iPads, computers and the like. Montgomery built the story around a man named Jeffrey Ruckman, a Kansas City composer who writes his scores by hand.
The only caveat on this story is that it trailed off at the end because it failed to return to Ruckman, whose personality Montgomery did a good job of developing in print, at the very end.
:: Another story, by Tony Rizzo, told the tale of Kansas Citian Odessa Brown, who got away with a murder in Muskogee, OK, but later confessed to it while serving time for a second murder. Her conscience got to her, and she seemingly has turned her life around in prison.
The only problem I had with this story is that it failed, as far as I can tell, to say how old Brown is. Because she graduated from high school in 1983, I figure she is about 47…But, as a wise editor once warned me, never make the reader do the math.
:: In the third story, Karen Dillon put the microscope on the dysfunctions of the Gardner, KS, city government. It involves the city’s loss of a huge intermodal freight hub (Edgerton stepped in and annexed the property), a mayor and interim city administrator who are openly defying the Kansas Open Meetings Law and a councilman whose goal is to drive the mayor crazy.
Dillon
Dillon is The Star’s environmental reporter, but she combines her knowledge of that field with a great talent for investigative reporting. It was good to see her on something besides asbestos and polluted water.
***
Finally, JimmyCsays sends out heartfelt congratulations to The Star’s Mike DeArmond, who retired Saturday after a 40-year career at the paper, almost all of it on the Sports Desk. He has covered University of Missouri athletics the last 20 years.
Mike DeArmond (right) and son Gabe, who also is a sports reporter
An opinionated and tenacious person, DeArmond once challenged former Royals’ outfielder Amos Otis to a fight after Otis got lippy with him for no good reason. After DeArmond made it clear he wasn’t going to let Otis mess with him, the two got along just fine.
DeArmond has certainly earned his sheet cake and pizza party. Good luck, Mike!
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
Yep, it’s early Monday and I still haven’t turned in. Still haven’t gotten around to reading much of the paper, although hours ago I did study the letters to the editor and the obits and glanced at the magazine to see if my Remember When submission made it. Not this week…
Jim, that would be the Kansas Open Meetings Law and not the Missouri one that the Gardner city fathers apparently violated. Shame on them!
Of course, methinks there’s been some hanky-panky in Topeka along those same lines recently, but the legislators are being told to sort of ignore the Shawnee County DA as he looks into the matter. Shame on the Speaker of the House! Anyway, as I think The Star is too sports heavy, I’ll pass on the sports stories. But Tony Rizzo is usually a good read, stories about Luddites always get my attention since I tend to be in their camp, and what I read of the Gardner article was well done.
Rick — Thanks for the catch (Kansas, not Missouri, open meetings law)…Fortunately I looked like a fool for just seven early-morning hours, when only a few diehards and insomniacs are scrutinizing the copy.
“…the microscope on the dysfunctions of the Gardner, KS, city government.”
“…and interim city administrator who are openly defying the Missouri Open Meetings Law.”
One of these things is not like the other.
; ‘ )
Your review made me read the daily rag. Not bad.
I didn’t buy it, though. On-line access works just fine.
So, is that a tentative and temporary “Say Yes”?
You know, I criticize The Star on occasion; it’s a nice, juicy target, and it’s really easy to second-guess the decision-making. But those editorial people have really difficult jobs. They have to focus on and scrutinize not only every story but every paragraph and every sentence. And with the newspaper industry implosion, there are fewer people to maintain the vigilance. I’m sure a lot of them want to throw up their hands from time to time and say, “Is this really worth the effort?” For the thousands of loyal, remaining readers, the answer is always yes.
A very temporary yes to The Star.
News reporting has become a challenge. Most people are plugged in 24/7 and the Internet has shortened the news cycle tremendously. Dailies are facing tough competition. On top of that, you have bloggers. Bloggers bring speculation and hearsay into the picture. The facts are important but the speculation behind the facts makes the news more interesting.
I used to read the star primarily for editorials and opinions. I got tired of Yael, and I got really tired of Lewis.
The only reason to buy The Star is for the coupons and most of the time you can get those for free.
There is a nice piece by Brian Burnes in the Star today. I enjoy these human interest stories when they’re local and, as occasionally is the case, they have a happy ending. I don’t need the AP stories about well-to-do teenagers sailing around the globe solo or pieces that could conceivably be categorized as “weird news.” It sounds like Mike DeArmond could’ve made it as a boxer if he hadn’t caught on at the Star. I’m afraid those 40-year stints are pretty much a thing of the past, however. I sent him an e-mail two or three years ago when I objected to something he had written, but he didn’t get back to me. I hardly look at the sports section anymore. I did compliment him on his second-hand account of the Joplin tornado (published October 30, 2011) since it detailed the experience his mother had that fateful day. Mike also had, it is said, a front page byline for one of the early Hyatt tragedy stories. At any rate, so long, Mike, and best wishes for the future. And good-bye, Mizzou, but don’t let the door hit you on the way out. And don’t expect to find any “southern hospitality” in SEC country.
I think the Star sports desk will gain much more credibility now that DeArmond is gone. Full disclosure: Colorado Buffaloes fan here, so no real dog in this fight.
But DeArmond more often than not served as a proxy sports information director for Missouri’s athletics department, but stayed on the Star’s payroll. DeArmond personifies a disturbing trend in sports coverage where homerism is not only tolerated, but it appears to enhance the profile of a writer. I think readers are poorly served, even the Missouri fans, who view his role in covering the sports team as advancing its goals.
You’ve got a point there, Percent; Mike made no secret that he loved his Tigers. But my impression is that he never shrank from criticizing the teams and coaches, especially on the weekly grading of the football team’s performance.
Full disclosure: I did not attend a Big 8 or Big 12 school and I’ve never been a participant in the tiresome K.U./M.U. pissing contests. I have been a reader of The Star and its sports section for 40 years. I also found DeArmond’s coverage of the Tigers to be rather soft on the school. Not quite as bad as Jack Harry’s passionate love for all things Norm Stewart, but pretty close.
Norm Stewart ran off Joe Castiglione, who might be the best athletic director in the country. What a fool.
“Say No” — Lewis would be preaching from the pulpit, except he has no personality.
…Blogging? Say Yes! I’ve never had so much fun — reporting and analyzing at the same time. After 37 years of straining to be objective, it’s great to be able to point to something and say, “Now that sucks!” or “That’s right on the mark.”
I like your blog, Jim. It’s the way all news bloggers should do blogging. Some facts, some opinion, your own words, and no censure from anyone other than yourself. Keep it up.
Fitz, if you’re going to cheerlead for the Star then let me provide the refrains for a majority of former but current non-subscribers.
Nuts and bolts, nuts and bolts we got screwed!
Elevator, elevator we got the shaft!
Until Brisbane’s Utopia is abandoned as dogma the Star isn’t worthy of my Sulphur Crested Cockatoo’s excrement.
It may indeed take a village to raise a child but if those villagers don’t have any money they can’t buy newspapers or the stuff advertised in them.
Not sure I understand “Brisbane’s Utopia,” Smartman. He wasn’t much different than any of the other publishers we had after Jim Hale — the only one who was truly memorable and made an impact on the community, in my opinion.
I’ve had three former Star reporters tell me that Art felt it was the duty of the newspaper not to report the news but to shape and influence it. The Star’s Bagdhad Bob-ish support of the Sprint Center and Power and Light projects being the most recent examples.
The Star is fully out of lockstep with the conventional wisdom and thinking of the average hard working, tax paying citizens of the metropolitan area. That, more than anything has led to the decline in subscribers.
We’ve all seen children growing up, bouncing off walls, climbing, jumping, going a hundred miles an hour at everything. So we put them into sport as an outlet for their energies and they begin to learn the basic skills of the chosen game. What they don’t learn is how to run correctly so they learn incorrect techniques from an early age and unless corrected these stay with the children for the rest of their sporting career.
In that perfect, Utopian world we know doesn’t exist, all attempts to shape and influence matters would be confined to the editorial page, leaving the rest of the paper for hungry reporters to fill up with stories free of any bias or opinion and preferably well written so as to compel readers to read them. But of course different publishers look at things differently, which is way some papers are fairly aggressive in their coverage while others are somewhat laid back. And why some have an agenda to push while others are simply content to watch the world go by with hardly a passing glance. In my opinion the Star has much in common with the average hard-working, tax-paying citizen in this area – the 99%, if you will – as both are engaged in a fierce struggle for their very survival. Yes, there are philosophical differences here and there, but 30,000 (or whatever the number was) of “the best sort of people” won’t keep the Star in business any more. So this “paper for the people” needs to be constantly monitoring the pulse of the people in an effort to be fully in tune with their needs, concerns, interests, etc., etc. The Chicago Tribune used to make its upper management types (and maybe still does) get out of their offices at least once a year and go down to the street corners to sell subscriptions, thus affording them the opportunity to see “how the other half” lives. Not a bad strategy.
Self-editing: That would have made a little more sense above had it read “simply content to let the world go by with hardly a passing glance,” but I think everyone probably knew what I meant. Anyway, for every reporter laid off somewhere in America, that’s one less person to cover a beat, produce an “enterprise” piece, handle a breaking story, etc., etc. And that’s just that much more stuff that theoretically gets dumped in the laps of other people who are already stretched too thin in all likelihood. Bottom line, the finished product suffers. But by golly there always seems to be enough money in someone’s pot to give the head football coach a five-year extension or pay the lifetime .240 hitter $5 million a year. Go figure.