The newspaper is owned by a company based in a far-away city. The company is intent on cutting its way to profitability and places a higher value on corporate earnings than quality journalism. One of the company’s major goals is to reduce duplication and share content across the chain, which reduces the paper’s ability to develop and maintain a distinctive tone that reflects the community’s concerns and values.
The Kansas City Star?
No. I’m talking about The Los Angeles Times, which, like The Star, is suffering at the hands of corporate ownership more than 1,500 miles away.
The parallels between the LAT and the The Star are depressingly striking.
The LA Times, which at one time was family owned, is now owned by Tribune Publishing Co., which is based in Chicago. Tribune publishing owns eight major papers, including The Chicago Tribune, The Hartford Courant and The Orlando Sentinel.
The Star, which was once employee owned, has been a corporate paper since 1977. It has been owned since 2006 by the McClatchy Co., based in Sacramento,CA.
Tribune and McClatchy have subjected their papers to frequent management turnover, layoffs and cost-cutting that have reduced the LAT editorial staff from 1,200 to about 500. Staff reductions probably have been proportional at The Star, which used to have more than 2,000 total employees and now is probably down to 500 to 600.
The “news peg” for this comparison was an in-depth, front-page story about the LAT in today’s New York Times.
The specific development that spurred the NYT story was the recent firing of LAT publisher Austin Beutner, who, in the year he had been publisher, had tried vainly to break free of Tribune’s cookie-cutter approach by improving technology, introducing new sections and forging close relationships with Los Angeles civic and business leaders. Those leaders, the story said, “wanted a vibrant Los Angeles Times as part of the fabric of the city.”
All that is probably out the window now, with the appointment of Beutner’s successor, a longtime Tribune executive named Timothy Ryan, who has no ties to Los Angeles.
For the LAT, it will undoubtedly be back to the Tribune-style assembly line, with more layoffs likely.
The major difference between the Kansas City and LA situations is that in Kansas City McClatchy has had its assembly-line operative — publisher Mi-Ai Parrish — at the controls the last four years. As far as I can tell, she has shown no interest in developing a close relationship with civic and business leaders. She has eliminated the paper’s longstanding sponsorship of major arts organizations, and she has presided over several devastating rounds of staff reductions.
In short, she and McClatchy have reduced The Star to a shell of its former proud and substantive self.
The Star is essentially a prisoner of McClatchy because if Parrish got a wild hair and decided, like Beutner, that she wanted to stray from the cookie-cutter mold, she’d wind up like Beutner — without a job.
A ray of hope in Los Angeles is that a “potential savior,” a billionaire philanthropist named Eli Broad, is waiting in the wings, should Tribune entertain the notion of selling the paper. The NYT story said Broad “has long wanted to buy the paper but has been repeatedly rebuffed.”
Jack Griffin, Tribune’s chief executive, told the NYT did not want to sell the Los Angeles paper because it is part of his strategy to reduce duplication and share content and services with the other major Tribune papers.
So, like The Star, the LAT is in shackles.
…I sure wish a “potential savior” would emerge in Kansas City. And better yet, that McClatchy would consider selling The Star. But I don’t think it’s going to happen. The Star is probably the most profitable paper in the McClatchy chain, primarily because, over the years, Star management has conditioned advertisers to sky-high rates.
In Los Angeles, allies of the ousted Beutner and the would-be savior Broad believe the ideal route for their city’s paper is for it to be sold and then “run as a civic trust, not as one branch of a struggling company.”
The story is precisely the same not only in Kansas City but in places like Des Moines, Louisville, Nashville and St. Louis. Over the last 35 to 40 years, corporate journalism has stripped most metropolitan dailies of their distinctiveness, heft and local flavor and left local residents, for the most part, with bland and soul-less journalistic products.
What once was an important part of the fabric of those cities has been torn from top to bottom.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
Good analysis, Jim.
Thanks, Les…Good to hear from you again.
Good column, Fitz! One could argue that certain newspapers around the country were improved by corporate ownership, at least for a while. I believe many people would agree that the Star improved when it was owned by New York-based Capital Cities Communications from 1977-96. Today it is clear that U.S. newspapers and their readers have been hurt by corporate journalism.
That’s a good point, Julius. It’s not a story of wanton destruction and disintegration from the outset. Cap Cities was a strong and excellent company and brought in some excellent outside leadership, including editors Mike Davies and Mike Waller and publisher Jim Hale. It was so successful that it acquired the ABC TV network, which was much larger than Cap Cities. But it succumbed to consolidation at the highest and most damaging level when it was sold to the Walt Disney Co. and later Knight Ridder and now McClatchy. What started out as a merry-go-ride has become a donkey ride.
The incredible shrinking KC Star. There’s so little content — sad.
Sad is for funerals. Disappointment and chagrin are the best adjectives here.
Hmmm; I kept waiting for you to touch on the recent tax break the city giddily tossed the Star‘s way (“Taxes? We doan need no stinkin’ taxes…”), against their own in-house advice, and to what extent that largesse may determine coverage of subsequent issues.
‘course, it may not matter a whit: other cities where I’ve resided the local paper would have immediately gone after their Water Department hammer and tong had that organization not only declined an audit, but were then backed up in their stonewalling by the Mayor. The Star? They’re not even interested in the “progress” of the EPA mandated combined water/sewage project, much less informing the citizens.
One has to wonder – what’s the point of the Star these days?
I don’t begrudge the company the tax break, Will. A lot of companies get questionable tax breaks…And I don’t wonder “what’s the point of The Star these days.” It’s still the best news-gathering operation in the region, and I’ll neer stop taking the print edition or going to the website until I’m under the sheet, toes up.
I agree with you that the Star is still the best news-gathering operation in the region, Jim. But after five days in a row of no paper delivery and fruitless interactions with Star circulation people – both overseas and in-house – I dropped the print edition last week and now am an electronic-only subscriber.
I’m in total shock, Julius. Somebody call 9-1-1 and hook up the defibrillator.
Fitz, I recall that you and I were just as shocked when the Kansas City Journal-Post shut down, making KCMO a one-newspaper town. But as we said way back then: “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, Life Goes On.”
If they lost Julius, then the end is near! Fitz — Everything I’ve read about Beutner is he was ambitious and doing some interesting things to save the LA Times. But his sin was not always agreeing with his corporate bosses. I’d like to think better leadership would help newspapers. But time is running out…
Good analysis Jim. I’ve been arguing for years that chain/corporate ownership has done as much to undermine American journalism (TV included) as any other factor including the Internet.
Despite the fact papers for the most part remain very profitable, It’s all about quarterly increases. In McClatchy’s situation, it’s also about surviving one of the worst business decisions in recent newspaper history, taking out huge debt to buy the much larger Knight Ridder chain. And I’m sure those involved in that dumb deal got huge bonuses while hundreds, maybe thousands, have lost their jobs as a result!
And I do know there have been local inquiries to buy The Star, but McClatchy is demanding too much for it.
The Star cannot compete in the digital marketplace. There they compete with all of the TV news departments who gain their revenue off of their electronic component and use their digital product to enhance their on air presence.
Where The Star’s website is a minefield of annoying popup ads, the TV websites are relatively clean and easily traversed. In addition, they’re not burdened by a ludicrous editorial staff tearing down the credibility with each paragraph they write and alienating half (if not more) of their potential audience..
When last I checked The Star has 55,000 likes on Facebook and the station with the least likes (KSHB) had over 110,000. Worse yet, the top station (Fox 4) had over 260,000 with the other two scattered in between. Clearly, The Star is in a losing battle if they’re going to focus on digital while degrading their print edition.
I should also add, if you’re actually paying for your digital edition, I don’t know why. The ways around paying are many and effective.
Finally, the argument for going digital is so The Star can offer an up-to-date digital product that will compete with even cable news. But check Twitter to see who at The Star is making use of the most simultaneous news dispenser available and pretty much all you’ll see from the Star is Yael and Barb Shelly. When’s the last time you saw anyone rushing to find out what their latest column was about?
Of interest to me is that I found assembled here in this one thread many of the people I actually turned to The Star to read. Too bad you guys couldn’t assemble your own digital news service. It’s been done elsewhere, perhaps approach some of the investors who wanted to purchase The Star and make them a deal they can’t refuse.
You’re right, John…Four of the commenters are absolute pillars of Kansas City journalism: Weatherford, copy chief, and Karash, Collison and Everly, business standouts. I’m proud to have worked beside all four. And thank you for pointing them out; you understand the value of good journalists.
With your vast influence in the exile community, Fitz, you could turn it into an expansion of your blog to begin with. I’d personally like to see what some of these guys would write about without The Star telling them what not to write about. There is nothing quite so interesting as a quality journalist writing about what he/she sees in front of them without a filter.
Received my KC Star annual renewal notice in the mail today. Paper version is an astounding $471.39. With the lower level of content we’re just not getting appropriate value.
You could write the same article, and replace “newspapers” with any number of former “locally owned” institutions…public education, KCPT, hospitals, Katz, hamburger shacks, popular music, radio, etc…Will the pendulum swing back…yes….in our lifetime? How’s your cholesterol?
Here’s a bit of history for you, Kitty…From 1950 to 1963, the building that now houses the Westport Flea Market was the Kansas City factory for the Kitty Clover Potato Chip Company, which was based in Omaha…Can’t reveal my sources.
Gawd, I loved those chips as a kid….
I bet those Kitty Clover potato chips tasted even better when you washed ’em down with a bottle of Muehlebach beer.
My mother once told me that the first words I ever spoke were “Don’t Forget the Guys.” I was born in 1964 so I will assume those first words of mine were spoken a year or two later.