This email from my friend Dan Margolies, formerly of The Star and now a standout reporter and editor at KCUR, said it all.”
“I’m sure you’ve heard the astonishing news by now: Yael was axed this morning.”
…I don’t know how this didn’t register on the Richter scale, but regular KC Star readers certainly are being been shaken to the core by news that Star publisher Tony Berg today”laid off” longtime lead editorial writer and columnist Yael Abouhalkah.
Yael Abouhalkah
Yael, along with perhaps columnist Steve Kraske, has been The Star’s highest-profile. For more than 30 years Yael has written hard-hitting editorials about City Hall, and in recent years, as The Star trimmed its editorial-page staff, he branched out into other areas. He was a strident critic, particularly, of Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback.
Neither The Star nor Tony Berg has announced Yael’s departure, and no reason has been given. Most of us may never know why Berg, who took over as publisher early this year, decided to “axe” Yael, as Margolies put it. My personal opinion is that Berg is effectively clearing the deck for the arrival of Colleen McCain Nelson, whom Berg recently hired to become the next vice-president of the editorial page.
Nelson is a former Pulitzer-Prize-winning editorial writer for the Dallas Morning News, and she is currently covering Hillary Clinton’s campaign for the Wall Street Journal. She will not start work at The Star, however, until at least late this year.
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:: Here’s what Yael posted on his Facebook page:
“Good Monday morning. I am on to a new adventure after The Star decided to lay me off this morning after almost 37 years there, including 32 years on the Editorial Board.
“Quick observations:
“1. Everything is OK! Great wife, two super kids, house paid for and even decent savings. And good severance pay (thanks, KC Star readers!) More time for gardening and running.
“2. Yes, will definitely miss writing about the local/state political worlds and miss the positive and negative reaction I got from readers.
“3. My wife already has plans for the future.
“4. Really appreciate all of the kind words – even from people who said they often disagree with me — that I’m hearing already.
“5. And FINALLY I get to say what I really think about Sam Brownback and Donald Trump.
“Cheers to all.”
…Gotta love the attitude, the quip about Brownback and the classy exit. This has got to be a gut shot for him, but it would appear he’s looking to the future and not the past.
(By the way, I put in a call to Yael today — he still had a voice mailbox at The Star as of this morning — but haven’t heard back as of this writing.)
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:: Here’s what former editorial page writer Barb Shelly posted on her Facebook page:
“This morning the Kansas City Star laid off Yael Abouhalkah, one of the nation’s smartest and boldest editorial writers. This comes after Star management has stalled for six months on replacing myself or Steve Paul after we took buyout offers. Yael and Lewis Diuguid have been working around the clock trying to keep the pages together. I can only surmise that Yael’s continuing advocacy for better web placement and visibility for opinion was too much for Star publisher Tony Berg to handle. Or maybe the complaints about Yael’s relentless scrutiny of Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback had their effect. Either way, this is a terrible day for the Kansas City Star and for local journalism.”
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:: And here’s some of the first-hand reaction I got from friends.
— “I feel like throwing a chair across the room.” Mike Rice, former KC Star reporter who’s now working as a para-legal at an Independence law firm.
— “The question is, are they going to have an editorial page? What are they going to run? Cartoons? Old Andy Rooney columns? The prayer of the day?” David Chartrand, longtime KC journalist and writer of humorous commentary.
— “I’m really sad about it. I think our city is not going to be well served without Yael at City Hall. I put a lot of stock in what he says.” Pat Russell, dedicated KC Star reader.
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The departures of Shelly and Steve Paul earlier this year left The Star with two editorial-page writers, Yael and Lewis Diuguid. For now, I suppose, it will be down to Diuguid…Good luck, Lewis!
And here’s my final thought, for now. Like Yael, I put in almost 37 years at The Star — came up three months short. The difference is I retired. That was in 2006, two years before The Star began laying off editorial employees. Had I hung around, I’m sure that I, too, would have been laid off. But I was lucky: I got my sheet cake and pizza party. I hope Yael gets one, but that’s not usually the way it works with layoffs: You collect your shit and clear out.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
Whiskey Straight up, please. Bring me a bottle and I’ll pour my own.
Y’all think this anything to do with the Midwest Voices?
Your first line is a killer, Les…Thanks for the laugh.
And I’m glad you brought up the Midwest Voices episode. First, let’s review…
Back in July, The Star published a locally written Op-Ed piece that caused a big stir. The writer, a woman named Laura Herrick, wrote about rape and offered her suggestions on some things women could do to help prevent rapes, including urging them not to drink to the point that they make themselves especially vulnerable to men’s insistent advances.
It caused a dust-up on social media, and on orders of Tony Berg, the column was pulled from the Website. Berg also wrote an apology in a printed edition, saying the column should not have run. He assured readers that “we are putting even more measures in place to ensure this doesn’t happen in the future.”
…I guess you have to wonder if “putting even more measures in place” included canning Yael, who may well have read and approved the column. But I seriously doubt that Berg would fire his only prolific editorial writer because of that miscalculation…if indeed it was Yael’s call. After all, he was virtually holding the page together singlehandedly, writing editorials, editing submitted editorials and probably screening the submitted Op-Ed pieces. It would be easy to have read Herrick’s column quickly and let it go through. And in fact pulling it was a controversial move in itself, because Herrick was doing what opinion writers do — expressing her opinion.
I’m convinced the move is designed to give Ms. Nelson a clean palette to work with. It will be easy enough to send Diuguid packing when she gets here, if she wants to do that, but it would have been difficult for her to make the call on Yael. So, Tony made the call and will take the heat…If my scenario is right, I give Tony credit for a gutsy move. That’s something a good publisher has to be willing to do. Doing whatever you can to help your own key hires to succeed is as important a job as a top manager has.
Yael was frankly a disgrace. It pained me to cancel my subscription to the Kansas City Star, but I couldn’t maintain it in good conscience so long as Yael had a job. While he was mailing it in and writing the same childish daily column about his pathological hatred of Sam Brownback, you’d think KCMO was run like a Utopia. He never criticized City Hall or the KCMO schools, both of which have corruption like Brownback can’t touch.
He was never one to leave his desk and go talk to the community. All he did was browse the Internet for a business closing in Kansas and whip it into a predictable diatribe about how horrible Kansas is. You’d think the Sunflower state was a nihilistic hell, a prison state with 20 percent unemployment. In truth, Kansas is what’s always been.
He had absolutely nothing to offer this community. The fact that he’s been doing a shoddy job for so long had nothing to do with it. This was frankly long overdue. Good riddance.
Yael obviously was a lightning rod and enjoyed that role. I haven’t met Tony Berg, but from what I’ve seen of him and heard from him (we’ve exchanged a couple of emails), he seems like a person of decorum and restraint. He might well have not wanted a lightning rod on the editorial page, especially with a new editorial page v.p. on the way…Goes back, in the end, I think, to Berg wanting a fresh start on the editorial page. What happens between now and whenever Ms. Nelson starts is anyone’s guess. Maybe Berg has one or more persons lined up to fill the gap temporarily.
“It will be easy enough to send Diuguid packing.” That remains to be seen. The powers-that-be temporarily took his column away after the “Socialist is Code for Black” fiasco, but they couldn’t bring themselves to fire him. Time will tell.
Murrow said ” A reporter is always concerned with tomorrow. There’s nothing tangible of yesterday. All I can say I’ve done is agitate the air ten or fifteen minutes and then boom – it’s gone.”
Yael’s departure from the “Paris on the Plains” leading Editorial section is a great loss, especially just before the statewide Kansas & Missouri elections and ballot issues; local ballots issues; and most importantly the election of the next POTUS! I hope Ms. Shelly’s observation not confirmed, that Yael’s forced retirement after 37 years wasn’t due in part to his pointed and very accurate “the emperor has no clothes” coverage of Gov Sam “Brokeback” Brownback. Wish Yael well on his increased free time and hope he continues to write and share his thoughts – somewhere.
I trusted Yael because he earned the trust and gratitude of the citizens. I am sorry that the management at The Star — perhaps since Brisbane — has acted as if it needs basic skills in human relations in treating members of its team. I don’t expect a “farewell” column from Yael, for example, which would have been a minimum courtesy to the readers..
Much more upsetting to me is Cindy Hoedel’s dismissal. I never missed a column.
Glad you mentioned that. Former Star reporter Karen Dillon is reporting Cindy Hoedel, features, and Tom Ibarra, a sports editor, were also pink slipped.
WHAT??? Cindy Hoedel???? Who next? Tony Rizzo? OMGosh–that’s a shock.
I predict Tony Rizzo will get his sheet-cake-and-pizza party at the end of his run. I never imagined The Star could get by with one or two editorial writers, but I know for sure they can’t function without one or two police reporters.
Very little left in The Star except for the obituaries!
As the Jewish man might say, “Meh.”
Yael couldn’t find the Johnson County courthouse or admin building without GPS. Yet was tasked with covering Johnson County opinions. He was strictly interested in Jackson County. He had rose colored glasses on about KCMO city government, the toy train including the bullshit election for funding it with only 400 voters; the water system fiasco, the KC Public Schools, etc.
The STAR is on life support. As the cop tells drivers rubbernecking at an accident, “Nothing to see here, folks.” I feel sorry for Colleen Nelson–there’s virtually no reporter pool about local news, either side of the state line, except for crime–so how is she to support her opinions? They best get Steve Vockrodt off the “edit business press release” beat to covering the news like he did so well at the Pitch. He can fill her in. He can be the utility outfielder that the great Dan Margolies was–for Jim Hale.
Mr. Ken Brown does not seem to have an awareness of Kansas history. Kansas today is NOT what it always has been.
For much of the 20th century Kansas was considered a progressive place, with newspaper great William Allen White working to advance the middle class. Kansas used to have a rational system of taxation that provided support for some of the best public schools in the U.S. A tax system that also provided for good roads and the repair of those roads. Now Kansas is financially unstable. It cannot repair its roads or maintain its public schools. It has insufficient income to meet its budget and its pension obligations.
All of this is the result of an administration that failed to understand that the economic theory of Arthur Laffer fails to be relevant once the marginal tax rate drops to a point at which a person feels the retained percentage of addition earnings is worth the effort. The Laffer theory had relevance for Ronald Regan because he recalled the 81% to 92% top marginal tax rate of 1941 to 1963. Our current top marginal tax rates make the Laffer Curve irrelevant. Mr. Brownback failed to understand this or he just ignored it.
In view of this, having pathological hated of Mr. Brownback for what he has done to Kansas is no vice or defect.
Richard, you make a very sophisticated argument. It was no Laffer! That said, real people don’t have a clue about their retained percentage or their marginal tax rate. Heck, they can’t even control their A1C diabetic index! Or their teenagers who text while driving. So let’s remember: Brownback didn’t act in a vacuum. The legislature had to approve every budget, and they did.
The NEA is a thug union that broke the budget originally. How is it we can’t educate a fifth grader when we taxpayers provide $14,000 a year to do it?
Look at the salaries of the admin at SM Schools and Blue Valley Schools.
True, the Ks. deficit has gotten out of control, robbing Peter and the highway fund to pay Paul. Ks. is at a standstill. Same as Congress. Neither side will budge. Something’s gotta change. We also have 4 judges on the Ks. Supreme Court who must go. SIX times in ten years, the US Supreme Court has overruled them. They’re making up the laws they want. If they want to do that, let them run for State Senate–worst job in the world. Second prize is two terms…
But–at least we are not KCMO!!!
A report just released indicated that Kansas roads rank #3 in the country and school funding is higher now than when Sam took office. Over 50% of the current budget goes for K-12 education, enough to give the SMSD Super around $250K, a $1000 pr month car allowance, a tax sheltered annuity and 40 days of vacation every year. But, I suspect the incorrect information is not your fault, the media, guys like Yael, (especially guys like Yael) has been pathetic in its coverage.
For instance KMBC allowed the KCK Super to (falsely) state, unchallenged, that school funding was lower than it was in 1998. When KMBC was contacted with the correct figures (slightly under $7k per student in 1998 and around $15K per student today) they were uninterested in sharing that info with their viewers.
Or one could point to their habit of regurgitating press releases from liberal legislators, a fact that came to light when one of them punked pretty much the entire press corps with false claims about the school funding settlement. The false information was exposed and about the only one who actually wrote about it accurately was Brian Lowry at the Eagle. For his part Yael doubled down on the lie even after Lowry point out his errors publicly on Twitter.
By the way, I’m no Brownback fan. I think he betrayed the populist core of the conservative movement and threw a lot of very good legislators under the bus with his intransigence.
As for Yael, I think it’s a shame that he will be known for his endless and hateful screeds against Brownback and his subservience to the KCMO establishment (pointed out by others above) rather than the thoughtful reporting and knowledgeable columns he wrote on KCMO that put him on the editorial board in the first place. It was clear to the folks in Topeka that he was pretty clueless about what was going on there and beyond protecting his ideological allies really wasn’t that interested in delving any deeper (and given the range of duties he was given it probably would have been impossible had he tried).
I should point out that the one real contact I had with him when I was writing for The Star he attempted to be helpful. I wish he and his family well.
That transportation report was done by the Reason Foundation, a libertarian think tank, and covered data through 2013.
A good run. No reason to ask why. Journalistic leadership today runs on a different model. Most of those who have climbed the newspaper ladder today are not good people. Yael did see many other “news dogs” dragged out the door screaming. I am sure now he wishes he had spoken up for them. I hope he follows the JF model of “crazy uncle” reporting and pulls back the curtain on what has become an unrecognizable institution. The times for protecting the sacred cows are past. Now, what do you really think? …and please, maintain some pride…no foundations or PBS/KCUR, Apple polishing, PR, bailouts…
In all modesty, I will clarify that when “Ned” Scott refers to “the JF model of crazy uncle,” he’s talking about ME!
I embrace the role…Thanks, Ned.
Even when the editorial board was thriving and had a dozen or so members, Abouhalkah stood out as one of the few who continued to get out of the office and do his own reporting, sometimes to the consternation of the Star’s own metro reporters he was beating on stories. Most of the rest of the editorial page staff were content to get fat and lazy with bland think pieces based on the clips of already published articles.
Because Abouhalkah was so hard-working and visible (and because of bigots who saw all the vowels in his name and made ignorant conclusions), he has become a lightning rod for readers who apparently were too delicate to deal with someone who had a strong (and well-researched) opinion. On the editorial board, you’re supposed to have a strong opinion. In recent years, as all his colleagues vanished, he was forced to cover areas where he had less expertise, but still did a serviceable job. Being the most strident Brownback critic may have cost him, but I think the record has shown and will continue to show that he is correct in his assessment of the Kansas governor.
Well, Mike–every time I phoned him to request an editorial he said, “If there is no story in the news section, I won’t write an editorial. The readers wouldn’t know what I was writing about.” Of course, all my suggested editorials revolved around JoCo tax issues–so he didn’t have the facts, and didn’t want to take the time to gather or review facts already in evidence, eg public records.
Insightful observations, Mike. Thank you…I can verify what you said about him beating reporters on some stories…He beat me many times during the 10 years I was covering City Hall.
Mike’s summary of Yael’s work and the nature and causes of it’s decline are pretty much what I had in mind in my second to last graph of my response to Mr. Stitt above. In the end he was clearly spread too thin. Sadly, much of his output on Twitter blended far too easily with the other garbage on that horrible platform (as everyone’s does). Had he remained focused on the areas he knew well and allowed to write about what was in front of him, I don’t think we’d be talking about him as a lightening rod, nor would he even be considered terribly controversial.
We were gobsmacked by this unfortunate news. My spouse is a diehard newspaper subscriber, but I would dump The Star in a heartbeat for this and for Barb Shelly’s departure. My thoughts. Sure, the new editorial page editor deserves a ‘clean slate,’but why not wait until after the election? Seems dumb. Deeper thoughts. Lots of people will cancel their subscriptions. How will the new person recoup those readers? Once done, done forever.
He typified the feminized liberal one-trick-pony that seems to dominate the newspaper business and had no problem alienating and marginalizing those with more conservative views. His political endorsements were entirely predictable as were his opinions on local and national issues. I’m sure he will be replaced by a similar left-leaning robot.
“…feminized liberal one-trick-pony”
As strange and inscrutable a phrase as I’ve ever heard…
What did Laura Herrick write? Something like “primarily, urging them not to drink to the point that they make themselves especially vulnerable to men’s insistent advances.”
I read Laura Herrick’s column when it first appeared, fortunately cut it out, because it disappeared from the ether. As a child I saw my father too many times drink himself to the point where he lost all common sense and dignity, even lost the ability to hold himself upright. Did it make him vulnerable? You betcha. If he’d ever gotten into a physical confrontation, he’d have been knocked out cold with the first blow.
Laura Herrick’s advice to women to not drink themselves to a condition of vulnerability made perfect sense to me. A woman who is passed-out-drunk not only is vulnerable to “men’s insistent advances,” she wouldn’t even be able to get herself out of a burning building. In my view, Tony Berg over-reacted.
You have plenty of company in that point of view, Peg.
Margaret, we’re in agreement.
The piece was not poorly written, much less inflammatory. Granted, there was one graph in particular where a good editor (or any editor, really) could have clarified and reinforced Herrick’s message – but that’s on the Star.
The errant reaction the piece generated has more to do with the current knee jerk zeitgeist than what Herrick actually wrote or, one hopes, the comprehension abilities of the Star’s remaining subscribers.
My thoughts on Yael, which I posted earlier tonight on Facebook:
Today, The Kansas City Star had yet another round of layoffs. I’ve lost count of the number of layoffs that have occurred there since 2008. But today’s was a sucker punch of significant proportions as Yael T. Abouhalkah, only one of two remaining editorial writers was let go after 37 years there.
Yael is a smart and fearless journalist who wrote about Kansas City City Hall for years and in recent years kept the area informed about Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback’s grossly incompetent leadership.
He also was very considerate to reporters like myself. In 1999, I covered an election story about a proposed swap of park property in the Northland that Kansas City voters approved. The proponents of this deal were a group of petulant liars who were quite offended that I was giving ink to residents near this park property. They had legitimate concerns. But these proponents wanted this thing to be quiet, no press whatsoever. After the swap was approved, I held their feet to the fire and spent more than three years asking them about the progress of the athletic complex that was supposedly going to be built through donations on the property that the private developer gave to the KC Parks Dept. It never materialized. I played it straight and narrow like all news reporters did. But Yael, who had the license to editorialize, exposed them for the liars and crybabies that they were. Eventually, KC taxpayers ended up paying for the athletic complex and the residents ended up with a Sonic and an ugly strip retail complex near their homes. But Yael made the bad guys squirm. And it was beautiful.
He loved to make the bad guys squirm. Tonight, lots of those people are hoping their future dealings are not as closely scrutinized as they have been at 18th and Grand.
Can’t say I’m surprised.
I expect the professional-right backlash against Yael has been fierce since he started pounding away at Comrade Brownback;
In addition a friend was at a weekend gathering a couple weeks back where Kraske, Paul and Pepper (among others) were also in attendance; the friend mentioned afterward he had overheard snippets of conversation that suggested Yael’s ousting. Nothing overt, mind, that would have let me post an item…but certainly more than rumor.
Your assertion that the paper is freeing up Yael’s salary (and then some; don’t forget hubby!) to go to Nelson is spot on as well. In addition, I imagine the thinking was that Yael might well have chafed a bit at under the 40ish Nelson.
Whatever the reasons, the timing is bad. I agree with Ken that the editorials leading up to the election will be even more insipid than normal in an election that cries out for newspapers to loose their most incisive writers.
Sorry: mistook Brown for Donovan…
Fitz,
Here’s my two cents’ worth: Berg is just filling the newsroom with his own KU posse. Farmer’s already there, he just added Eric Nelson as AME-digital and next is the editorial VP. Gotta get everyone marching to the same beat.
That’s a good point, Kevin…I never thought about that. Those school loyalties run very deep. So, you don’t think the Nelsons would have been hired had they gone to MU??!!
Hey, did you feel that? Another mini quake? Nope. Just Brownback and his horde of lackeys jumping up and down, screaming, hooting, hollering and praising the Lord for the best news their administration has EVER received.
Major, off the charts screw up by Tony Berg.
We’ll see how well KS competes with economic powerhouse states like CA, MN, MA and NY with defunded public schools and transportation.