With two more recent hires, The Kansas City Star is forging ahead with its new — and encouraging — editorial expansion.
The latest hires are Andy Marso, a KCUR reporter, and Kelsey Ryan, a reporter with the Wichita Eagle the last four years.
Marso
Ryan
Marso will be covering the health care business, and Ryan will be a “data/investigative reporter.” (I’m not sure what that means, but I guess we’ll be finding out, based on what she produces.)
Marso previously covered state government for the Topeka Capital-Journal. He has a bachelor’s degree from KU and a master’s in journalism from the University of Maryland.
Ryan’s LinkedIn page indicates she got her degree from Emporia State University and previously worked for the Emporia State Bulletin and The Joplin Globe.
What is taking place at The Star is nothing short of amazing, as far as I’m concerned. Until January 2016, when Tony Berg became publisher, The Star had done nothing but shrink and oxidize since being acquired by the McClatchy Co. in 2006.
Now the paper is on a roll. Since Berg took over, The Star has added at least 10 editorial employees; it has completely overhauled its editorial board and editorial page; and it has significantly increased the size of the news hole. Those are all welcome developments for readers, and, with luck, they will ultimately result in upswings in circulation and advertising.
Berg deserves a lot of credit for these upgrades, but it is important to note that he could not be doing this without approval from McClatchy headquarters in Sacramento.
Forman
McClatchy itself is undergoing significant change. Last month, the company announced it was replacing Patrick Talamantes as CEO. Talamantes had been in the top job since 2012. The new CEO is Craig Forman, a 55-year-old private investor and entrepreneur and a McClatchy board member. Forman’s hiring marks a sharp digression from the old McClatchy model of promoting insiders. (A former Star publisher, Mark Zieman, remains a McClatchy vice president.)
To be sure, McClatchy, which operates media companies in 29 U.S. markets, is hardly thriving. Corporate debt stands at about $900 million, and the company reported a third-quarter, 2016 loss of nearly $10 million. Ad revenue was down about 11 percent from the same quarter in 2015.
Although a McClatchy turnaround is hard to envision, at least the situation is brightening in Kansas City.
Besides, Marso and Ryan, here are some of The Star’s hires within the last year…
:: Steve Vockrodt, a business reporter, who came from the Pitch.
:: Bryan Lowry, chief political reporter, who came from the Wichita Eagle.
:: Hunter Woodall, Topeka correspondent.
:: Katy Bergen, general assignment reporter.
:: Maria Torres, digital and social media.
:: Colleen McCain Nelson, vice president and editorial page editor.
:: Eric Nelson (Colleen’s husband), manager of the digital news operation.
:: Melinda Henneberger, editorial writer and Op-Ed columnist.
**
Every paper can benefit from fresh blood, and The Star sure needed some. It is — and will be — good to see these new names and faces in the paper. I hope the longtime editorial employees who survived the bloodletting that took place between 2006 and 2015 are more hopeful about the future. They have looked into the abyss for a long time. Now, perhaps, they can look up.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
Hmm; perhaps after losing buckets of money attempting to squeeze all the ink out of the dailies they own, McClatchy has decided to try running them as actual newspapers. Whoda thunk it?
That’s as good a theory as any, Will. What they were doing — cutting, cutting, cutting — sure wasn’t working.
The main thing the company is doing now to raise cash is selling their newspaper buildings.
Last month, McClatchy announced it had reached agreements to sell the Sacramento Bee building and the building occupied by The State newspaper in Columbia, SC.
It got about $50 million for the Bee building and $17 million for The State building. In both cases McClatchy will lease the buildings back from the new owners.
McClatchy also has The Star building up for sale and, presumably, would do the same thing here. In KC, however, The Star theoretically could sell and vacate the 18th and Grand building and move all operations to the printing plant across McGee Street. The printing plant, completed about the time I left in 2006, was built at a cost of $199 million.
I haven’t done the numbers, but I presume McClatchy would have to sell every building it owned to come close to retiring that $900 mil debt. In theory that’s possible, but who in hell would buy The Great Green Albatross, much less offer more that half price for it?
That might be the only building in the entire McClatchy system that’s turning a profit. That building is a success…If they do sell and vacate the 18th and Grand building, they ought to charge admission for people to watch the extraction of the old presses in the sub-basement. I think it would involve removal of part of a first-floor wall.
I believe that press is long gone, but haven’t been in the basement for some time
I believe that Marso actually works out of KHI, Jim McLean’s shop over in Topeka and then KCUR uses their reports**. While KHI is a special interest product, it has had some very good journalistic talent. Two well-respected former Lawrence Journal-World journalists, Dave Raney, a top notch reporter and Mike Shields, an editor worked there.
I respected most of Vockrodt’s work at The Pitch and Lowry reminds me of Dave Helling, capable of doing good work, but in dire need of adult supervision.
That said, I saw a report this morning that indicated that The Star had published 18 negative pieces about Trump in one 12 hour period. That may make many readers of this blog happy, but this is still the midwest and both Kansas and Missouri went solidly for Trump (although Hillary did win the 3rd District).
**Ah, from KHI’s website: “On Jan. 1, 2017, the KHI News Service became a part of KCUR’s Kansas News Service. – See more at: http://www.khi.org/about#about-staff“
One of the things that hit me as I looked around the room tonight at Rick’s memorial party was just how sleazy The Star is being to its former staff. For instance, why would you bring an investigative reporter up from Wichita when you could (and should) re-hire Karen Dillon? Karen has more local contacts, has a lengthy institutional memory and could hit the ground running (indeed, she’s currently working on a very significant ongoing investigative project that would be a feather in the cap of any paper).
But more to the point is the fact that unless Karen was fired for cause and not just laid off out of economic necessity if The Star is to practice the kind of ethics it preaches to others, it seems to me that the place you would morally be obligated to start if you were expanding your staff is with those you previously laid off.
You’re hiring Andy Marso for health care? Really? What was Julius Karash, chopped liver? Julius has the contacts and institutional memory to cover that area whereas Marso could take years to get to the point where Julius would start.
Given The Star’s calloused indifference to its former employees, I’m not sure how these new hires would give anyone any hope that their employer gave a tinker’s damn whether they lived, or died.
Time for the old horses to rest, John.
I could go for a bag of alfalfa, a Long Island iced tea and a nap on this fine Saturday afternoon. Wake me when the evening paper gets here.