JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC

It’s a beautiful thing, isn’t it? This editorial splashed all across the top of the Sunday KC Star editorial page?

How could we opponents of Jackson County Question 1 ask for more? Can’t. Won’t. We’re very happy.

I called Clinton Adams of Freedom Inc. at 10 o’clock last night, after reading the editorial online. He was at his girlfriend’s house.

“Clinton,” I shouted into the phone, “Great news…”

He was equally excited.

Despite the precipitous decline of daily newspaper fortunes around the country, the big-city dailies remain the most credible molders of public opinion within their coverage areas.

Many, many people tend to follow the lead of their local paper, mainly because most people don’t pay a lot of attention to political and governmental developments, day in and day out. Instead, they rely on their newspaper to sort it out and point them in the direction of the best public interests.

Ohhhh, I can already hear the scoffing and howling at that idealistic assertion:

“Hardly anybody reads anything printed any more.”

“The paper is so damned one-sided (liberal, for sure) I don’t pay any attention to it.”

“It’s a bunch of elitists down there, sending out ultra-low-frequency waves and trying to control our minds.”

I’ve heard it all. (Maybe not that last one, but it’s coming.)

But I worked at The Star for 36 years, and I know that the newspaper’s editorial voice has always spoken in the best interests of the city and the region.

In fact, there’s only been one instance that I’m aware of when a publisher overruled an editorial-board majority. I think it was when Bill Waris was running for re-election as Jackson County executive in 1987. Then-Publisher Jim Hale wanted to endorse him, for one reason or another, while the editorial board was decidedly against it.

With gritted teeth, somebody had to write the endorsement editorial, not believing a word of what he or she wrote.

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Besides the newspaper’s credibility, there’s at least on other reason that Sunday’s editorial was so important.

People who read the paper tend to vote…especially in special elections. The proposed half-cent sales tax for “translational medical research” is the only thing on the county ballot, everywhere except Blue Springs, which also has a half-cent-sales-tax proposal for city parks. (How do you think Blue Springs residents are going to feel about the medical-research tax?)

More than anything else — more than TV and radio ads, billboards, mailers, public hearings — that Sunday editorial will influence votes on Nov 5.

In the past week or so, I’ve written about what a terrible job The Star is doing of reporting developments on the sales-tax campaign. It didn’t report, in print, the decisions of Freedom Inc. and the Citizens Association to recommend that voters reject the tax. It mentioned the developments online, but you had to be Inspector Clousseau to find those mentions.

But on the editorial page, Yael Abouhalkah is watching…watching out for the public interest, as he has for about 25 years or so, “covering” City Hall and Jackson County, to a lesser extent.

A lot of people don’t like Yael’s commentaries; they regard him as a guy with a funny name who’s trying to dictate public policy.

You know what? He’s more right and more credible than the politicians…

He doesn’t take campaign contributions or money under the table; he doesn’t go out drinking with the pols;  and when he writes the lead editorial on a Sunday paper that goes to more than 300,000 households, people pay attention.

Papers across the nation have editorial page writers like Yael — although probably not nearly as good, in most cases — evaluating elected officials, tax proposals and government trends, and trying to point the best way forward for their cities.

In the short term, right here in Jackson County, the best way forward is to turn back the civic elite’s goofball proposal that county residents pay for their extravagant pet project. You know it’s a phony-baloney deal — The Kansas City Star says so.

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For much more on the sales tax, check out stopabadcure.org