Let me say something nice about The Star before I start whaling away at the pathetic job the paper has done on three major stories in recent days.
We can be thankful for one thing, at least — that the paper’s editorial page is functioning at near full strength and very admirably.
(I say nearly full strength because when the new editorial board was introduced to readers months ago, readers were told one more editorial writer would be added. But that has not happened, and I fear funding for the job might have evaporated in the haze of owner McClatchy Co.’s wobbly financial situation.)
The editorial board’s performance has been particularly impressive on its analysis of the airport issue and its sound advice to the city through the various setbacks that have cropped up during the contractor-selection process.
From the beginning, right after Burns & McDonnell’s no-bid gambit emerged in public, the editorial board began hammering on the importance of allowing other firms to submit proposals. It held firmly to that position through all the head-spinning twists and turns the process took and through Burns and Mac’s chest-thumping, self-promotional campaign.
And then this week, when Burns and Mac cried foul and the whole dang process was on the verge of imploding, The Star continued to hold steady. Some people, including me, panicked and said it was time to trash the process and cancel the planned November airport election.
To its credit, The Star kept a steady hold on the rudder. Its pivotal editorial, which appeared on Wednesday, bore this headline: “Now Burns & McDonnell wants fairness?”
The editorial not only chided one of the city’s biggest companies for whining in the face of adversity, it also hammered Mayor Sly James for his leading role in trying to steer the contract to Burns and Mac. The editorial said, in part:
“He’s given every appearance of believing that…Burns & McDonnell’s interests and the city’s interests were one and the same. And however this goes now, he has a lot to answer for.”
And then, after the airport selection committee knocked the socks off nearly everyone by selecting the firm that had presented probably the lowest profile (Edgemoor Infrastructure and Real Estate), a Wednesday editorial correctly reminded us, “Competition has given us a better airport proposal, and a real chance for a better airport.”
…This airport drama still has several more chapters, but the book is still being written partly because The Star’s editorial board has been doing exactly what a good editorial board should be doing: Weighing in on important public issues in a calm, steady and strong voice.
**
While the editorial page has been on the upswing, the overall decline on the news side has continued. In fact, I’m afraid we readers can no longer count on The Star to regularly break big, emerging stories. And that’s completely a function of the gradual erosion of the editorial staff and the diminished staff’s necessarily reduced reach.
I’ve seen three examples in recent days of significant stories not being sniffed out in advance or being missed entirely.
In the case of stories not being sniffed out in advance (which I will address in the first two examples below), I’m talking about stories that could have been, should have been, scoops. Until several years ago, The Star routinely scooped the electronic media. But no more. Most of the time, it seems, Star reporters show up for news conferences as clueless as the other media about what’s going to be announced. That’s embarrassing.
Those examples:
:: A week ago Tuesday, reporters were summoned to a press conference called by Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker. When the reporters got there, they heard from her and KC Police Chief Rick Smith the shocking news that a suspect had been arrested in the Indian Creek Trail murders and had been charged in connection with two murders and was suspected in three others. Peters Baker and Smith were flanked by more than a dozen prosecutorial and law enforcement officials. It was almost unimaginable to me that no KC Star reporter was able to cull out that story in advance and post at least an online story suggesting what was about to unfold. Nobody got a tip? Nobody heard anything? Or, worse, did somebody hear something and not bother to exercise their “little gray cells”? Whatever the reason for the breakdown, it was horribly telling.
The serial-killer news conference that took the Kansas City media, including The Star, by surprise
:: On Tuesday of this week, Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback came to Tonganoxie to announce plans for a $320 million Tyson Foods poultry complex in Leavenworth County. Hundreds of residents showed up — many to protest the complex — and once again The Star was caught with its pants down around its ankles. Oh, The Star had a reporter at the announcement — a features reporter, curiously — but no advance tipoff to readers. It was, and is, a huge story because the plant could negatively impact the quality of life and schools in Leavenworth County. But The Star doesn’t have enough reporters to cover Leavenworth County. The Wyandotte-Leavenworth bureau, which I proudly headed from 1995 to 2004, has long been closed, as have all the other suburban bureaus. If The Star got a scoop out of Leavenworth County these days, it would be the journalistic equivalent of a miracle.
:: While reading a KC Star online editorial about the Tonganoxie situation, I learned tonight that the Kansas City regional office of the federal Environmental Protection Agency has a new acting administrator. The interim leader was not appointed yesterday. Nor the day before. No, Cathy Stepp — who, among other things, appears to be a climate change skeptic — was appointed by the Trump administration last week. Puzzled, I went to The Star’s online search box to see if I had missed a news story about Stepp’s appointment. The closest thing I found was an Aug. 29 Associated Press story about Stepp resigning as secretary of Wisconsin’s Department of Natural Resources. The story noted in the third paragraph — that’s what we in the news business call “burying the lead” — that Stepp would be assuming the top EPA job in Kansas City. What we have, then, is a situation where The Star did not bother to produce a local story about the assignment of a new top federal official in Kansas City…No big deal, I guess. Shrug, shrug.
All of this is very galling and upsetting. McClatchy has really done a number on The Kansas City Star’s reporting capabilities. Working as a reporter at 18th and Grand these days has to be a frustrating and dispiriting proposition for anyone who understands what a good metropolitan daily paper is supposed to do.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
On the plus side, the Star was able to spare a staffer to write about a kid in Puerto Rico who died trying to surf waves during Hurricane Irma. And let’s not forget the Stargazing drivel, which wastes a local reporter. But, clicks!
I don’t think The Star’s news side will thrive until Berg cans Fannin. His selections for increasing the staff run counter to what appears to be Berg’s stated goal of making The Star a less ideologically driven paper.
For instance, he hired Andy Marso from a left-wing advocacy group, Brian Lowry, also a hard left type, from The Eagle and who knows where he dug Hunter Woodall up. Ironically, The Eagle replaced Lowry with Jonathon Shorman from the Cap-Journal. Shorman is vastly superior to both Lowry and Woodall as either a writer or a journalist.
As for the editorial board, while it seems to still be predictably and boringly tilted to the left (as are most major urban newspapers), it seems to have dumped the obeisance for the metro area’s sleazy establishment that was a hallmark for the Abouhalkah and Shelly regime.
Having a family member involved in the health care field, I read everything with Andy Marso’s byline. He’s done some very informative pieces on health care. Maybe he also does some pieces without his byline, no way to know that.
He has been an excellent addition.
In Marso’s case, my point was simply that, coming from a known advocacy group he would very likely not appeal to the broader audience that Berg claims to seek, not that he was a bad writer. The same could be said about Steve Vockrodt, coming from the Pitch, also a strong producer since being at The Star.
I’ve been reading Andy Marso’s articles, and I think he is kicking ass and doing a great job on the health care beat.
I think it’s unlikely the news side will ever “thrive” again, regardless of who is editor and who is publisher. Despite the new hires and the shufflings in and buyings out, payroll contraction continues to be the order of the day. And that tells the whole story.
Look at how the Sunday paper shrunk again yesterday. The Arts & Culture, Home and Spirit sections were previously all 8 page sections for a total of 24 pages. Combined yesterday, they were 16 pages. Even the Sports section did not have the depth it used to have on Sunday morning regarding the local college teams and was missing the Saturday evening college game scores and wrap ups (except for the Missouri game). It’s all very disappointing especially for an edition they charge a premium for.
The value of institutional memory cannot be underestimated. If all you have around are newbies trying to find the bathroom, no matter how good they are, they will be inefficient and miss things that they shouldn’t.
Very perspicacious, Bill…Every change now is intended to do one thing: save money. I didn’t count the pages, like you did, but I got the gist…And, yes, you’re absolutely right about the sports section. It took a while for that section to get the knife that the other sections have gotten, but it’s been in deep-cut mode for about a year now.
The Star still does some very good work but it’s now on strictly a spot basis rather than panoramic.
I think The Star well may have a bright future breaking news stories…but it’s going to need to make major changes at the top. And the good old days, when Fitz and I were there and the newspaper had more than 2,000 employees, are never coming back.
The body count back then was overkill and there were in the words of Art Brisbane a lot of “low burning fires.”
Then Star can get its mojo back but only with all hands on deck getting down in a three point stance and working their tails off. Hardly ever saw that when I was there, but it can and should be done.
Think how hard those poor dogs at Cerner work…On a scale of 10 they probably operate at level 9 and above where former Star employees barely made it to level 6.
They’re probably operating at maybe a 7 now, but until they get new leadership…
Good to hear from my old buddy, who helped me get into the blogging biz and whose heart I broke when I stopped writing for him and hung out my own little shingle.
…I think you’re being hard on the people, in general, who worked at The Star when the head count was over 2,000. (We could never have imagined it being down to a few hundred!) A lot of those people really worked hard, but, at the same time, there was significant deadwood. Unfortunately, when they started in on the layoffs and buyouts, they not only cut into decaying flesh but very healthy flesh, too. And that situation is not going to change, regardless of who’s at the top.
Still, we’ve seen overall significant improvement under Publisher Tony Berg, particularly on the editorial page and in circulation (which was a flat-out disaster under Mi-Ai Parrish), and sometimes I’m surprised at the quality of the work, considering the drastic reduction in payroll.
I don’t think a change at the editor’s level — Mike Fannin, many people’s favorite whipping boy — would make much difference. His arsenal is very limited, thanks to McClatchy and its $900 million debt.