I was glad to see this afternoon that The Star has hired a new editorial board vice president.
Colleen McCain Nelson looks like a good catch. Along with two colleagues, Nelson won a Pulitzer Prize in 2010 for a series of editorials comparing an affluent part of Dallas with a low-income area. She’s been a reporter at the Wall Street Journal since 2012 and currently is covering Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
She probably won’t start at The Star until late this year at the earliest.
Here’s another wrinkle: The Star also hired her husband, Eric Nelson, to lead its digital news operations. Nelson currently is head of digital content for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington.
(As an aside, I’d like to suggest that anyone who is looking for a high-profile job at The Star be sure to first tie the marital knot with a relatively strong journalistic partner. Three years ago, as you might recall, The Star hired Vahe Gregorian as a sports columnist and also hired his wife Cynthia Billhartz Gregorian as a reporter for the Sunday House & Home section. The Gregorians came from St. Louis, where they both worked for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. I’m sure there have been other conjugal hires at The Star, but I can’t think of any offhand; maybe you commenters will help me out there.)
Colleen McCain Nelson, after learning she and two colleagues had won a Pulitzer Prize six years ago for editorial writing.
Eric Nelson
The Nelsons are coming from Washington, D.C., but they’ve got roots in the area — always a good sign for the prospect of long-term employment in Kansas City. Both graduated from the University of Kansas and have family in the area. Eric Nelson grew up in Omaha and Colleen (pronounced co-leen) in Salina. She also worked as a summer intern at The Star in 1995. (I don’t remember her. Guess I should have taken notice.)
A few other interesting elements to this move:
:: It reflects a continuation of a youth movement in leadership at The Star. Early this year, McClatchy, The Star’s owner, named 38-year-old Tony Berg as publisher. Now, The Star will have a 42-year-old editorial page editor and a 46-year-old digital editor (Eric Nelson).
:: The editorial page editor’s job was not advertised, to the best of my knowledge. All indications are that Berg scouted the landscape and interviewed candidates. The Star’s story on the hires, written by Mark Davis, says in part, “Then came a call from Kansas City and a chance to move back to their roots.”
:: A few months ago, The Star advertised two editorial-writing positions on the website http://www.journalismjobs.com. From the way they were written, it sounded like the paper was looking for two relatively young and inexperienced people willing to work for a relatively modest salary. Those jobs are no longer being advertised. (The only job being advertised now, as far as I can tell, is digital editor/social editor, and I don’t know how that squares with Eric Nelson’s job.) It is not unusual, however, for job descriptions and goals to change along the way, especially when it comes to editorial-page posts, where the publisher has wide discretion…My guess is that somewhere along the line Berg decided to go for a big gun and bagged the person he wanted. Now, with Colleen Nelson coming in at what I would expect to be a very handsome salary, Berg might forgo one or both of the previously advertised, lower-level hires.
:: Even with Colleen Nelson and the indefatigable Yael Abouhalkah on the editorial page, it still has deadwood. I really don’t like to be critical of a former colleague, but the only-other current editorial board member, Lewis Diuguid, needs to go. He is an insipid writer and a lackluster manager of the Letters to the Editor. All KC Star readers know the letters “page” has gone down in quality as well as quantity in recent years. Maybe Colleen Nelson can help bring it back, but first she’s got to maneuver out the highest-ranking and most visible African-American employee at The Star.
Good luck on all fronts, Mrs. Nelson — and spouse.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
Oh my. I really have to hand it to you, JimmyC. Louie Not Very Good was so not good for so long, it was embarrassing, and in my view, a big part of the problem with the Star’s dwindling readership. So you said it. You’re right, and now, maybe Berg can put together a team to resurrect this falling star.
I’m not sure you lay “a big part of the problem” on Louis, Rick, but thank you for acknowledging my assessment.
I thought of this after posting…Maybe Berg will take care of the “Diuguid problem,” relieving his new star of that responsibility. That’s what he should do, anyway.
Yeah Jim, you’re probably right, mea culpa, but that stable of horses left behind in what was once a fine corral, is marginally talented at best and Lewis certainly is not a show pony.
Insightful, Jim, especially the penultimate graf. You said what needed to be said.
Thanks, Les…And just for those who might not know the meaning of penultimate (I didn’t until a year or so ago), you’re talking about the second to last paragraph, the one about Diuguid. (Red line me, slot man, if I’m wrong.)
“Colleen Nelson coming in at what I would expect to be a very handsome salary.” Just curious: what is a “very handsome salary” at the Star these days?
A “very handsome salary” for the vice president of the editorial board will be a lot different than “a very handsome salary” for a reporter.
I’d guess Colleen Nelson will come in at $150,000 or more, plus some perks, like an enviable vacation package, a club membership, etc. (She’s probably making that much at the WSJ.)
Now, a “very handsome salary” for a top reporter these days would probably be about $80,000 to $90,000, and I’m talking about veterans like Scott Canon, Judy Thomas and Eric Adler. (My apologies if I low-balled any of them.)
The Star began contracting non-upper-management, editorial-side salaries (those of reporters, line editors, copy editors, photographers) after a newsroom reorganization in 2004. That year, when I was offered a promotion from overseeing two or three reporters in the KCK bureau to overseeing more than a dozen reporters and two line editors in Johnson County, I asked how much of a raise I would be getting.
“Uh, there won’t be a raise,” said Randy Smith, then Metro editor. “You’ve got to consider the prestige of this new position.” (Or something like that.)
I objected and pushed for a raise. Randy took it to Mark Zieman, who I think was managing editor at the time, and they came back with a measly 1 percent.
If I’d had guts and a clearer vision, I would have resigned right then. But I hadn’t thought it through and made any preparations for moving on, so I swallowed my pride and took the one percent. (And, I have to admit, the opportunity to oversee the largest bureau was tempting.)
The job turned out to be a disaster for me. I was a terrible fit for the suburbs and, frankly, soon began losing interest in the whole enterprise. I submitted my resignation two years later, the same month McClatchy closed on its purchase of Knight Ridder…Happy sailing ever since, for me.
If she’s making $150,000, and Abouhalkah and Diuguid are making $80,000-$90,000, that might make for some tense editorial board meetings. (I”m assuming Berg never shows up.)
Mark — Abouhalkah and Diuguid are not reporters; they are the only two members, currently, on the editorial board. They have to be making more than almost any reporters. Also, there’s often a big gap between the top person and the next tier. At this point, Abouhalkah and Diuguid are happy with whatever they’re getting; they’re thrilled to have jobs…Keep in mind, too, the numbers I threw out are sheer estimates.
No human being needs to vacate their job as urgently as Yael Abouhalkah. He’s hateful, predictable, and ignores KC’s myriad problems while always picking fights with the western side of the state line. You would think KCMO was the most efficiently run government in the world and the KC schools were flawless as blithely as he ignores them both. I can’t in good conscience subscribe to The Star as it is currently comprised. But this hiring sounds like a first step in the right direction. And Lee Judge can’t draw, he’s not funny and he knows zero about baseball.
Your wailing and gnashing of teeth is very entertaining, Ken, but I really think you’ve got a bad read on Yael. Hateful? Where? When? Sure, he loathes Brownback, but doesn’t everybody with any sense? Worst governor ever, anywhere, including Mexican states.
Regarding KC government, Yael scrupulously presents both sides, praising when it’s warranted but always pointing out the problems and shortcomings.
To the best of my observation, he doesn’t write about KC schools very often, and I’m sure you realize — upon reasonable reflection — that no one thinks the Kansas City School District is “flawless.”
For a sample of his thoughtful approach, check out today’s editorial about the long-running debate over reducing tax breaks for developers.
http://www.kansascity.com/opinion/editorials/article97450807.html
…Now, about Lee Judge. I don’t have an opinion about his baseball musings, but I agree wholeheartedly on one point: He can’t draw.
Yael’s concern about excessive tax breaks for developers rings a little hollow with me. He would have earned a lot of credibility (and a medal for bravery) if he had expressed some concerns over the tax break given the Star. http://www.kansascity.com/news/business/article27438127.html
One percent raises were generous by Star standards. Their stinginess toward editorial rank-and-file staff was enough to make Jack Benny blush.
I love the allusion, Mike.
A waste of money. The Star needs reporters not another pompous ass pontificating on the issues of the day from predictably biased positions. What are we for if not for that, who needs them?
What we can’t compete with is original reporting. For $150K+++ (I think the editorial page editor gets into the Kansas Club, if it still exists) you can get at least four solid young reporters to cover the kind of stuff that’s important, but not conducive to television journalism.
As for Lee Judge, I have to respect Lee given that he has always been willing to take as much as he was dishing out.
Lewis is simply stupid. I remember trying to explain to him how sociology departments restricted the number of minority students and disadvantaged them in the job market. You could look in his eyes and see the back of his skull. My favorite Lewis quote was “Negative diversity yields negative productivity.” The only way you could possibly operationalize those concepts would be to use Lewis as an excuse for the former and an example of the latter.
Yael used to be an excellent columnist back when he could restrict his writing to the areas of his expertise, basically city hall politics. I don’t think anyone had a better grasp of the importance of some of the tedium others missed than Yael. But then he tried to be a generalist and his writing did become hateful, bigoted and at times ethically challenged. He attacked Sarah Palin’s children and his daily Twitter feed reads like something you’d hear in a bar at 3:00 AM from someone falling off a stool. Recently, Yael, like many others in the press corps who practice press release “journalism” got punked by Melissa Rooker who falsely claimed to have an impact on the final school budget deal in Kansas. Instead of backing down, Yael actually doubled down on the lie and promoted it on both twitter and the editorial page even after Bryan Lowery at The Eagle publicly told him he was wrong. (Incidentally, Lowery’s summary of the process was probably the best available on that and his best work to date.)
Bottom line is that Yael has no credibility on the Kansas side and picking on a cripple like Sam with daily hate o rams on Twitter only serves to emphasize both his hatefulness and lack of depth. He could easily be replaced by some of the least talented responders to Tony’s blog and replacing him with Tony would be a vast improvement.
And while we’re discussing useless appendages that need to go, let’s not forget the Star’s thin-skinned, mentally unstable who-knows-what-his-title-is-now buffoon, Derek Donovan. He’s either throwing a hissy fit at readers, blocking them from commenting, or writing some drivel about a missing comma somewhere, or something even less interesting. No one considers him to be a reader’s rep and I can show you stuff he’s done that violates the ethical standards of any journalistic organization going.
In essence. this is Berg’s first major blunder. they needed to fire Lewis, yael and Derek and hire more reporters. not waste money on yet another BS artist.
http://www.dallasnews.com/news/community-news/dallas/headlines/20100413-Dallas-Morning-News-wins-Pulitzer-for-5971.ece
OK, about the Readers Rep. And ethical standards as suggested in the post above, not to mention hissy-fit.
I am so burned I cannot be objective about the RR’s writing. My expertise is world religions. I did my doctorate at the University of Chicago Divinity School and the affiliated UU Seminary.
Well into writing an 18-year every-Wednesday “Faith and Beliefs” column for The Star as a “repeat freelance,” I noted an obvious error (obvious to anybody who knows anything about world religions) in a local news report about one faith, and that faith’s group here in the Metro. As a reader wanting to be helpful (and also concerned that the local group might somehow hold me responsible for the stupid error and thus undercut my credibility), I first politely contacted the RR about what was a clear factual error — an historical date — and after several exchanges, he went on a rampage against me, threatened me, said I must never talk to anyone about his response. By then I had contacted the local group (they independently had written The Star about the error and we were rebuffed by the RR and the editor who oversaw the original error. Instead of seeking the truth, clearly documented in every basic world religions text as well standard reference material, and the material of the local group, the RR was insistent on no correction and no apology, and a threat based on what he perceived as my insubordination.
It was sweet when in 2012, The Star published a story with the correct understanding of that faith’s history. I don’t know if the RR noticed.
Away from The Star now four years, I am recounting this for the first time. But I have retained those abusive emails from the RR.
Obviously, I’ve got to get John and Vern hooked up with WordPress so they can start a blog about what’s wrong with The Star and, specifically, how they would torture the Reader’s Rep if they could just get their hands on him.
With that, let’s call it a day (or slightly less than a day) and move on.