It appears that The Star’s new editorial page editor is now on the job.
Since Monday, the name of Colleen McCain Nelson has appeared on The Star’s masthead (the box at the bottom of the editorial page), beneath the name of publisher Tony Berg. In addition, I understand she was at a company-wide meeting the other day.
So, maybe the long weeks of seeing an editorial page filled with letters to the editor, political cartoons and occasional “As I See It” columns (which, by all rights, should be on the Op-Ed page) are nearing an end.
There’s a lot more to this, however, than the fact that the new editorial page editor has unpacked her bags and is occupying a desk at 18th and Grand.
Since her hiring was announced in late August, The Star’s editorial page has lost massive credibility. So much that I doubt it will ever get back to where it was, in terms of the paper’s ability to help set the local agenda on by editorializing on regional development and issues, endorsing political candidates and recommending approval or disapproval of ballot measures.
Let’s review just how much dysfunction has set in since early this year.
:: In early March, the editorial page was relatively healthy, with four editorial writers — page editor Steve Paul, Barb Shell, Yael Abouhalkah and Lewis Diuguid. In mid-March, Paul and Shelly accepted buyouts, leaving Abouhalkah and Diuguid to produce the editorial page, handle the letters to the editor, review guest columns and manage the Op-Ed page.
:: In late September, six weeks before the November general election, Berg summoned Abouhalkah, who had 32 years of experience on the editorial page, to his office and laid him off. (He’s now a blogger.) A week or so later, Diuguid announced he was leaving. After they left, there was only one name under the words “editorial board” on the masthead: Tony Berg’s…And he doesn’t write editorials.
:: For the election run-up, Berg recruited former editorial page editor Rich Hood — who had been fired in 2001 — to write several political endorsement editorials. With Berg’s blessing, Hood wrote editorials endorsing several Republican candidates whom Abouhbalkah almost surely would have spurned. They included U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt over up-and-coming, home-grown politician Jason Kander; Josh Hawley for Missouri attorney general over home-grown Teresa Hensley; and U.S. Rep. Kevin Yoder over newcomer Jay Sidie. (I have to say, Hood picked winners there; all three — Blunt, Hawley and Yoder — prevailed.)
:: After the election, with no one writing editorials, Berg decided to fill the page with letters to the editor and political cartoons, some produced by Star cartoonist Lee Judge, others from syndicated services.
:: A few weeks ago, with that situation either becoming too embarrassing or the supply of letters running low, Berg began fleshing out the editorial page with syndicated opinion columns and “As I See It” submissions. Such columns should, under no circumstances, be on the editorial page (that is, the left-facing page), which is sacrosanct ground reserved for the newspaper to express its positions.
It is at this nadir that Colleen McCain Nelson enters the building this week. Problem is, thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of editorial page followers have probably left the building, too, figuratively speaking.
I have talked to people who have said they are canceling their subscriptions because of The Star’s Nov. 8 endorsement line-up and because of the veritable void of an editorial page. Also, maybe worse, I hear no one talking about the editorial page. There’s nothing, really, to talk about.
Compounding the problem is the sharp turn in philosophy that Berg ordered up, taking the editorial page from liberal to center right in a matter of days. That’s his prerogative, but readers do not like to be whiplashed. He had to know that’s the risk he was taking when he laid off Abouhalkah, and he’s paying a heavy price.
The challenge facing Berg and McCain Nelson now involves more than just hiring some new editorial writers and churning out local copy for the page. They’ve got to try to lure back some of the readers they’ve lost and attract a new group of readers.
But like I said, I don’t think the editorial page will come back to where it used to be, at least where it was a few years ago. The paper as a whole has been headed downhill for 10 years. About the time the McClatchy Co. bought The Star in 2006, newspaper advertising began falling off a cliff: Nationwide, ad revenue is now less than half what it was in 2006. That precipitated a downward spiral involving layoffs, thinner papers, distribution problems and reader disenchantment.
It takes a trusted newspaper a long time to lose readers’ goodwill, but The Star has been doing it for the last decade. I’d sure like to see Berg and Colleen McCain Nelson restore a good and substantial editorial page, but, given the overall direction, I’m not optimistic.
So, take a good look at the new editorial page editor…It’ll be interesting to see how long she hangs around.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
Why in the world did Colleen McCain Nelson leave the Wall Street Journal?
Regarding your summary of the dysfunction on the Star editorial board, I am amazed you omitted this particular fiasco: http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/kansas-city-star-pulls-column-criticized-as-victim-blaming-in/article_64d32e64-c577-5182-a3f4-bedf17cf3d51.html
A good editorial page will criticize indiscriminately: Give Sam Brownback heck when he deserves it (pretty often). But when Jay Nixon, Hillary Clinton or Sly James do something stupid, call them out, too. For whatever reason, that seems to be the hardest thing to find in modern journalism. Yael certainly couldn’t do it. Everything was the GOP’s fault.
The problem is conservative readers checked out from The Star decades ago, and they’re not coming back. At its heart, The Star is a progressive newspaper. Steve Kraske and Dave Helling write editorials and pass them off as news. Lee Judge cartoons never make fun of liberals.
McCain Nelson doesn’t fix the problem. She just repeats the mistake in the opposite direction (I’m assuming).
The only people still reading the editorial page are the elderly and hard-core liberals who want their views validated. And now they’re no doubt checking out with this hire.
I think they’ve now lost a lot of liberal readers in recent months…and getting back the conservative readers will be tough; they’ve moved on.
Jimmy: Concerning the dismantling of the Star’s editorial page this past year, I believe you doth protest too much.
Though I am less than enamored of Berg’s bent to the right that appears to be more populist pandering than insightful journalism or even good business strategy, the editorial page in early March wasn’t relatively healthy when you exclude head count. It was, and had been for some time, stale; rife with what Casey would have called “what I did on my summer vacation” journalism. It is a condition endemic in Baby Boomer reporters and editors.
One can imagine Berg channeling Lady Macbeth, his hands bloodied by the Fall, roaming the newsroom shouting “Out, damned spot! Out, I say!”
Out with the old. In with the new. Time, as it does so well, will tell.
As an attempt to answer Laura’s question concerning why Colleen McCain Nelson would leave the vaunted Wall Street Journal, I turn to a child’s game of musical chairs. It’s a game that journalism, especially newspaper journalism, has been playing for some time.
McCain Nelson, I assume, had a premonition — again channeling Lady Macbeth — that the music at the WSJ was about to stop. The whole rats leaving a sinking ship thing.
Last Saturday, at the WSJ’s Washington bureau Christmas party (the politically correct “Holiday Party” died with Trump’s election) at the Edgemoor Club in Bethesda, KU J-school grad and the newspaper’s D.C. bureau chief, Jerry Seib, bid adieu to a raft of editorial staffers who took buyouts. They included Gary Fields, Neil King, Sudeep Reddy, Mary Lu Carnevale, Melanie Trottman, Anna Sussman and Autumn Brewington. Also leaving are Laura Landro, Tracy Armstead, Jessica Yu and Iris Phelps, the D.C. bureau’s receptionist, who organized all of their potlucks. And that’s just Mr. Murdoch’s Washington bureau.
The sound of the bell that tolls is not for holiday cheer, but a death knell.
There will be, no doubt, more ringing and wringing at 18th and Grand in the New Year.
I think the fact Colleen is originally from Salina and her husband Eric Nelson (also a Star employee) is from Omaha had a significant bearing on their decision to move to KC…Although, like you say, musical chairs could well be the driving factor.
As a reader of the Kansas City Star since I learned to read (back then it was the Kansas City Times and the Kansas City Star), I have observed numerous changes. Frankly, until McClatchy purchased the paper and installed Tony Berg as publisher none of the changes were particularly worrisome. However, on the days my paper is actually delivered – which continues to decrease – I am dismayed by what I read. The layoff of a dozen or so editors appears to have resulted in a ridiculous number of typos, sometimes even in headings. The content has been greatly diminished by the loss of Yael Abouhalkah and Lewis Diuguid, among others. My comments don’t even address the fact the entire paper continues to shrink in number of pages – clearly lessening the content published on a daily basis.
I have no issue with the new “high-powered” editorial team that has been hired. I simply cannot imagine how two people can possibly replace the breadth and depth of what has been lost at the Kansas City Star. It simply isn’t humanly achievable.
What I do take issue with is Tony Berg’s arrogant attitude that seems to spill out from every pore. That is when he actually addresses something. Far more often he refuses to comment or address an issue. His initial “it’s not about me and will never be about me” statements were quickly shown to be pure garbage.
How incredibly disappointing. Kansas City has so many positive things happening and on the verge of happening right now. We need a high quality newspaper to both chronicle and challenge Kansas City along the way.
I’m sure she will be allowed to hire one or two editorial writers, but I don’t know if Berg will give her enough latitude to reconstruct a substantive page, with a lot of locally written editorials. Almost all major metropolitan dailies have been contracting their editorial pages, and I think most readers find that more disappointing than seeing their paper get thinner.
On Wednesday, I sent an email to McCain Nelson, seeking verification that she had, indeed, begun working. This afternoon she sent me a very nice response, thanking me for my interest in the editorial page and confirming that she is on the job.
“I have a long to-do list,” she continued, “but I am eager to get things up an running. Stay tuned.”
…I greatly appreciate Colleen’s response, and I like the can-do spirit that came through in the email. She deserves the opportunity to dig The Star out of this hole. It’s going to take time…
Given that everyone was saying exactly what I was thinking about Karen Dillon’s excellent work I really had nothing to add. Even when Fitz goaded me concerning Derek I couldn’t motivate myself to comment given that my only remaining angst concerning The Star’s psychotic “public editor” (if he indeed still is) is that given the loss of other notable women like Barb Shelly, et al there, that Derek will have an even more prominent spread in The Star’s annual Women of the Star swimsuit calendar. However, this column is so far afield that I can’t contain myself (even given the Christmas Season).
Even an article (I believe I sent it to you) about your beloved NYT pointed out that their editorial board was no longer influential even among their own reporters. Indeed, many felt is was a hurdle to be transcended in conducting their own work. Bottom line is that opinion abounds. We don’t need Lewis, or Yael to inform us, we have our friends on social media to provide us with all we need (just look at all of it we can find right here on your blog, not to mention that you have more credibility now than when you worked for The Star).
What we’re starving for is good honest journalism that simply lays out the facts about issues that are actually of interest to us – us, not you. If your definition of newsworthy doesn’t include stories that are of interest to me, or that aren’t covered just to cover your own, or a fellow traveler’s ass ala the Karen Dillon story you just wrote about, I don’t need you.
What I want is solid journalism, not bullshit. My critique of Berg’s reconfiguration isn’t that it’s changing orientation, but that he’s wasting scare resources on the one product few bloggers can provide, real live original journalism. Scondly, give me journalism I can’t label. If you can label The Star as a “progressive” (or conservative, or libertarian, or rastafarian) publication, you’ve already diminished its usefulness in my eyes.
I dunno. I might subscribe to a Rastafarian newspaper just to find out what the hell Rastafarian means.
The ads telling you where to find the best local ganj dealer are worth the price of admission.