In a story that very few Kansas City Star readers probably saw, the paper’s owner, McClatchy Co., announced two significant changes at the corporate level last month.
One of those changes recognized Colleen McCain Nelson’s terrific work in slightly more than a year as KC Star editorial page editor: She is now charged with raising the level of McClatchy’s opinion work nationwide…at all 30 of its daily papers. (Fortunately for Star readers, she will handle the added duties out of Kansas City.)
That’s quite an honor, and well deserved. More about that in a minute.
The other change does not immediately affect The Star but could have a significant impact down the road: McClatchy is phasing in a new “regional editor” system under which one person will be ultimately responsible for editorial content at several papers.
I don’t know how the regional system will play out over time, but it would not surprise me to see KC Star editor Mike Fannin either lose his job, at one end of the spectrum, or get assigned to oversee several other papers in addition to The Star.
As a starting point, McClatchy announced that a regional editor working out of Sacramento, where McClatchy is based, will oversee the chain’s five California papers and one in Idaho. An editor working out of Raleigh, NC, will be in charge of editorial content at McClatchy’s seven papers in North Carolina and South Carolina.
Naturally, McClatchy didn’t label the new system as a cost-saving measure, but virtually everything the chain does revolves around saving money.
My bet is they will eventually name five or six regional editors and pay them salaries comparable to what editors at individual papers are now being paid. Then they will elevate lower-ranking (and lower paid) people to the top editorial posts at the individual properties, saving a significant amount of money in the process.
As I’ve said time and time again, almost every McClatchy move is dictated by trying to slash its way out of the huge hole it dug for itself when it paid an exorbitant $4.5 billion for the Knight Ridder chain in 2006.
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Maddeningly, The Star bungled the way it reported Nelson’s promotion and the change to a regional editing system.
The Star didn’t see fit to run the story in the print edition, just online. And even there it wasn’t featured prominently. (If it had been, I would have seen it; I’m on that site about 10 times a day.)
Instead of leading with the news about Nelson — which would have been of keen interest to thousands of readers — the story curiously focused on the regional editing system. The story ran a total of 11 paragraphs, and Nelson’s promotion wasn’t mentioned until paragraph 10, which read as follows…
“McClatchy also announced that Kansas City Star’s editorial editor Colleen McCain Nelson will take on a broader role as McClatchy Opinion Editor.”
Journalists have a great term for stories that totally miss the mark — “burying the lead,” meaning the most important news is not at the top of the story, where it should be, but buried way down low.
That’s what happened here, and it’s kind of astounding. Whoever edited the McClatchy story in Kansas City should have immediately recognized it needed to be rewritten to highlight Nelson’s promotion and play down the regional-editor changes. The editor should have assigned a reporter to interview Nelson, get quotes from her and flesh out the scope of her new duties. But nope, the editor just hit the send button and ran the story just as it came across the news wire, with The Star’s very deserving editorial page editor being relegated to the second-to-last graph.
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For her part, Nelson handled the dismissive treatment with aplomb and humility.
“I don’t think I’m particularly newsworthy,” she said in an email to me yesterday. “…But I am really excited about working with other editorial boards. It’s a great gig.”
It is a great gig, and The Star should have played it like it was. And more important, we readers need to appreciate Nelson every day we have her. It wouldn’t surprise me if we wake up one day and read that she’s taken a big editorial-page job at The Washington Post or The New York Times.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
inside baseball. I agree with colleen–not particularly newsworthy. maybe of note to former star folks, but I’m not sure the general pop really needs to know the ins and outs of mcclatchey maneuvering
For more scintillating reading, Mike, I would refer you to the Russian “bot” Twitter explosion on the Parkland school shootings.
One reason for not displaying the promotion more prominently is that the rubes who subscribe are getting even less for their money since she (and presumably the new regional editor) will be even less able and less prepared to focus on the local task at hand. It’s like finding out that the waitress at your table in the restaurant is now serving 8 more tables. Good luck getting your coffee refilled.
As for Fannin, that could be a bright spot if Fannin was fired (but given McClatchy’s horrendous decision making, he’ll probably be promoted) given his unethical conduct in his current duties and the fact that he does not appear to be on the same page with the publisher.
You callin’ me a rube, buddy? Hrrumph.
…If Fannin wasn’t on the same page as Tony Berg, he would have been gone by now. They’ve been the A-team two years now.
I’m taking Berg at his word in wanting a more ideologically balanced paper. Every reporter Fannin has hired has come from the far left end of the spectrum. In some cases that has not been a bad thing. Vockrodt and Marso seem to be doing good work, but neither Lowry nor Woodall is doing quality work at the Kansas Legislature and Woodall is a horrible writer. That’s why I read Shorman and Lefler at The Eagle supplement with John Hanna and Tim Carpenter instead.