KC Star publisher Mi-Ai Parrish, who never appeared to be a good fit for Kansas City or the Star during her four years here, is leaving the paper.
Parrish, 44, will become president and publisher of The Arizona Republic on Oct. 12.
Parrish has some history with The Republic. She served as a deputy managing editor there from 1999 to 2001.
In making this move, Parrish is going from one big corporate newspaper chain, McClatchy, to an even bigger one, Gannett.
I’ll tell you this much: Either company is a bad place to work. Both have been cutting staffs at their papers; their major newspapers have been losing circulation; and they have struggled with the transition from print to online.
Mi-Ai Parrish
One factor that might have lured Parrish is that Gannett’s newspaper division recently was spun off from the broadcast and digital businesses. The result was two new publicly traded companies — Gannett, the newspaper company, and TEGNA, the broadcast and digital company. In a break for Gannett, TEGNA retained the company’s $4.6 billion debt, so Gannett gets the benefit of a clean slate.
McClatchy, on the other hand, carries a debt of about $1 billion, which weights on all newspapers in the chain.
Time will tell if there’s an underlying story here — if Parrish was frustrated with McClatchy or, perhaps, vice versa. In any event, Parrish presided over several rounds of newsroom and company-wide layoffs; pulled the plug on The Star’s longstanding sponsorship of major arts organizations; and shunned public appearances and civic involvement.
One recent firing that shocked me was that vice president of advertising Julie Terry, who was extremely popular with nearly everyone who worked with her. The firing bore all the hallmarks of…“Advertising is down, and you’ve gotta go.” The fact is, print advertising — which had spun gold for The Star for decades — has been plummeting at most major metropolitan papers for a decade. It wasn’t Julie Terry’s fault that ad revenue kept falling. If anything, McClatchy should have fired Parrish. But that would mean McClatchy admitting failure.
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The Republic, as you would expect, put a very positive spin on Parrish’s move. the paper quoted John Zidich, Gannett president, as saying: “In her industry and in her publisher roles, she has provided great leadership and also great results.”
Great results? There aren’t any I can think of at The Star, and many people would raise their eyebrows at the “great leadership” assessment.
The story also said:
“At The Kansas City Star, Parrish found success in growing the traditional media company’s connections with a changing community that wanted news on its Smartphones, fresh experiences at festival and events, and quality journalism in all its products.”
Fresh experiences at festivals and events? People might have wanted fresh experiences at, say, the Renaissance Festival and the Lyric Opera, but I can’t imagine in what way The Star would play a role.
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For Parrish, this transition marks a clean getaway. Naturally, she told The Republic she was excited about the opportunities that lay before her in Arizona.
“Great people, great community, great tradition. We are going to do amazing things.”
Can’t wait to hear the reports about those amazing things.
…In the meantime, I wish the remaining employees at The Star the very best and hope they get a good, new publisher…Actually, my fondest wish is for McClatchy to sell The Star to Warren Buffett so the employees of this once-great great newspaper get a shot at a clean getaway. They deserve it.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
What a shining example of entitled management in an age of transitions aka minimal people skills so why extend yourself. I can see the tail on that cat slipping past the corner as we speak. Good riddance….just hope the door doesn’t hit her in the ass on the way out the door.
Trouble is it probably isn’t going to make much difference who’s in the publisher’s office. But I like the image of the cat slipping past the corner…
It doesn’t matter today who the publisher is of any newspaper. It matters only who owns the paper. Only an enlightened ownership–there are few remaining–can assure quality journalism.
There are a few exceptions where you have owners/publishers. The only two I can think of are Arthur Sulzberger Jr., publisher of The New York Times, whose family controls a majority of the company’s stock, and Walter E. Hussman Jr., owner/publisher of the privately held Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Years ago, Hussman beat back an attempt by Gannett, which owned the Arkansas Gazette, to rule the roost in Arkansas. When the Gazette would lower ad rates, Hussman would counter with even lower rates. Eventually, the Gazette threw in the towel, and Hussman bought the Gazette. Along the way, he said something like, “If I the publisher of the Gazette loses the battle, he goes on to another paper. If I lose, I’m out of a job.”
I just tweeted Warren Buffett and asked him if he would consider buying the Star. I’ll let you know what he says.
Maybe you should just look him up in the Omaha White Pages, Julius, and give him a buzz at home. You might be waiting a while on the return tweet. By the way, what’s with those ##### signs, and why aren’t there any numbers after them?
What # # # # # signs are you talking about, Fitz? I haven’t had my second cup of coffee yet.
Wow, Fitz, you’re just cranking this stuff out. Could it be that my dream that former Star reporters would create their own newspaper is getting closer?
Anyhow, you forgot the Simons family over in Lawrence. Aren’t they still family owned and operated?
I was thinking in terms of major metropolitan papers, John…I think you’re right about the Journal-World being family owned.
…About your dream — nice but most of us “in exile” are too old and too lazy now to muster the effort to do the job justice. We’re consigned to muddling along with our former paper.
Well done…you are a tree, standing up against the hurricane. I love it when someone questions obvious lies with simple fact. Now the real challenge is how to proceed. Old, recycle, or create? …and course, the pesky financials.
Thanks, Mr. Packet…I’m afraid the “proceeding” part will be much like the past — unsatisfactory. Can’t wait to see who the new boot-licker, uh, I mean, publisher, is.