• Home
  • About me: Jim Fitzpatrick
  • Contact

JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC

Feeds:
Posts
Comments
« Term limits for county elected officials? You bet, but current legislators aren’t going to approve a ballot measure that cuts them out of new terms
Hire ’em young and get ’em right down to the dirty work »

Sui generis; showing off; and other journalistic highs and lows

April 26, 2018 by jimmycsays

As I read The Star, I can’t help but keep a mental scorecard, noting both where it does well and where it falls short.

Here are some of my pluses and minuses from recent days (and in one case weeks).

+ The Star gets a gold star for today’s lead story about Jackson County suspending implementation of a policy change that would have greatly limited the hours that people who were arrested would be able to bond out. Instead of 24-hours a day, every day, the new policy, which seems to have been rolled out of somebody’s back pocket (look what I’ve got!), people would have been able to bond out only from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, meaning many people arrested on minor charges would have to stay in jail overnight or over a weekend before having even a chance to bond out…If The Star hadn’t picked up on this, the policy would have quietly gone into effect next Tuesday. But reporter Mike Hendricks, who has broken several big county stories the last year or so, saw it on the county website and asked County Executive Frank White about it. White then his the brakes. And the brakes should definitely stay on; that is a ridiculous change, even though two St. Louis jail have similar bond-out restrictions.

= (That’s a minus sign.) Tuesday’s sports section contained three stories about today’s NFL college draft. One story, by Blair Kerkhoff, led the section; the other two, inside the section, were by Chiefs’ beat writer Terez Paylor…None of the three stories said when the draft was being held. Now, most NFL fans knew when it was taking place, but I didn’t, and I’m sure thousands of other readers didn’t, either.

Bill Turque

+ City Hall reporter Bill Turque gets a kudo (here) and a kick (next bullet). On Monday, he had an excellent enterprise story (one he had to dig for instead of coming from breaking news) about troubles with the ATA’s on-demand, ride-sharing system for disabled persons. Seems it’s much more popular than expected, resulting in sometimes long delays for riders.

= Last week, Turque wrote a story about a south Kansas City pastor endorsing Kansas City businessman Phil Glynn in the 2019 mayor’s race. This was surely one of the strangest stories I’ve seen in the paper in a long time. That’s because more than a decade ago, The Star stopped writing about endorsements in local political races. They have virtually ignored endorsements from major groups like the Citizens Association, the Committee for County Progress and Freedom Inc., not to mention endorsements by individuals. Turque, of course, is relatively new to The Star (although this is his second stint), so maybe he’s been given the latitude to cover the mayor’s race however he wants. The problem is this story sets a precedent. The field of mayoral candidates is going to be large, and with that endorsement story, every candidate will be able to go to Turque and demand equal coverage for their endorsements. If he writes about every endorsement, I’m fine with it because I love politics and want to know about the endorsements. But I doubt that was Turque’s intent, and I have no idea how he’s going to get out of this mess, other than to disappoint people.

+ You don’t see The Star covering very many evening and night meetings. That’s become a thing of the past. But hats off to Max Londberg for covering the MLK Advisory Group’s first public meeting Tuesday at the Linwood YMCA. It started at 6 p.m. and must have run at least 90 minutes, meaning Londberg didn’t get back to the office and start writing before about 8 p.m. The Star recognized this was an important meeting and a delicate subject — how to appropriately honor Martin Luther King Jr. in Kansas City.

Melinda Henneberger

= I’m not a big fan of editorial page writer and columnist Melinda Henneberger (who is married to Turque). She hits the long ball occasionally, but I generally find her writing stilted and opaque…I read with interest, though a recent piece in which she drew parallels between Gov. Greitens and President Trump. I was going along nicely until I hit the “kicker,” the last sentence. It reads like this: “Just as Trump himself would never willingly leave office, he won’t push Greitens to do that. But because the president really is sui generis, Greitens is a lot less likely to have a choice.”

I took three, maybe four years of Latin in high school (can’t remember exactly), but I don’t think I ever came across that term, and it stopped me short when I read it in Melinda’s column. At coffee yesterday with a friend — a learned lawyer with tons of political experience — if he knew what it meant, and he said, essentially, unique or one of a kind.

I think if I went out on the street, though, and asked the first 10 people I came across what it meant, I’d be lucky to find one.

The JimmyCsays rules of journalism (and probably The New York Times style book) says reporters should not use foreign-language phrases unless 1) it is abundantly clear what they mean (i.e., carpe diem) or 2) you say in parentheses what they mean.

…There’s a King’s English term for what Melinda did: SHOWING OFF.

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook

Like this:

Like Loading...

Related

Posted in Uncategorized |

  • Pages

    • About me: Jim Fitzpatrick
    • Contact
  • Archives

    • February 2023
    • January 2023
    • December 2022
    • November 2022
    • October 2022
    • September 2022
    • August 2022
    • July 2022
    • June 2022
    • May 2022
    • April 2022
    • March 2022
    • February 2022
    • January 2022
    • December 2021
    • November 2021
    • October 2021
    • September 2021
    • August 2021
    • July 2021
    • June 2021
    • May 2021
    • April 2021
    • March 2021
    • February 2021
    • January 2021
    • December 2020
    • November 2020
    • October 2020
    • September 2020
    • August 2020
    • July 2020
    • June 2020
    • May 2020
    • April 2020
    • March 2020
    • February 2020
    • January 2020
    • December 2019
    • November 2019
    • October 2019
    • September 2019
    • August 2019
    • July 2019
    • June 2019
    • May 2019
    • April 2019
    • March 2019
    • February 2019
    • January 2019
    • December 2018
    • November 2018
    • October 2018
    • September 2018
    • August 2018
    • July 2018
    • June 2018
    • May 2018
    • April 2018
    • March 2018
    • February 2018
    • January 2018
    • December 2017
    • November 2017
    • October 2017
    • September 2017
    • August 2017
    • July 2017
    • June 2017
    • May 2017
    • April 2017
    • March 2017
    • February 2017
    • January 2017
    • December 2016
    • November 2016
    • October 2016
    • September 2016
    • August 2016
    • July 2016
    • June 2016
    • May 2016
    • April 2016
    • March 2016
    • February 2016
    • January 2016
    • December 2015
    • November 2015
    • October 2015
    • September 2015
    • August 2015
    • July 2015
    • June 2015
    • May 2015
    • April 2015
    • March 2015
    • February 2015
    • January 2015
    • December 2014
    • November 2014
    • October 2014
    • September 2014
    • August 2014
    • July 2014
    • June 2014
    • May 2014
    • April 2014
    • March 2014
    • February 2014
    • January 2014
    • December 2013
    • November 2013
    • October 2013
    • September 2013
    • August 2013
    • July 2013
    • June 2013
    • May 2013
    • April 2013
    • March 2013
    • February 2013
    • January 2013
    • December 2012
    • November 2012
    • May 2012
    • April 2012
    • March 2012
    • February 2012
    • January 2012
    • December 2011
    • November 2011
    • October 2011
    • September 2011
    • August 2011
    • July 2011
    • June 2011
    • May 2011
    • April 2011
    • March 2011
    • February 2011
    • January 2011
    • December 2010
    • November 2010
    • October 2010
    • September 2010
    • August 2010
    • July 2010
    • June 2010
    • May 2010
    • April 2010
    • March 2010
  • Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

    Join 563 other subscribers

Blog at WordPress.com.

WPThemes.


  • Follow Following
    • JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC
    • Join 563 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Copy shortlink
    • Report this content
    • View post in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...
 

    %d bloggers like this: