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

Once again The Star flexed its journalistic muscle — as only it can, locally — on a big, breaking story, throwing most of its metro reporting staff at the duck boat sinking at Table Rock Lake.

Today’s print edition contained four lengthy stories, each with multiple bylines and exploring different dimensions of the story. One story revolved around the storm warning that had been issued before the boat went out on the lake; another was devoted to the 17 victims who died; a third explored the sketchy history of duck boats; and the fourth featured interviews with people aboard the Showboat Branson Belle, which was docked near the scene of the sinking Thursday night.

On its website today, The Star has two new stories containing surprising information: First, no one on the boat was wearing a “safety device” (presumably a life jacket), and, second, the captain of the duck boat released the canopy from the boat as it was sinking, probably preventing more people from dying.

(I had no idea the canopies could be released.)

Of course, this was a national story, and several newspapers, including The New York Times and The Washington Post, sent reporters to the scene.

The Times’ decision to have a reporter, John Eligon, based in Kansas City, paid big dividends. He, with the assistance of several other reporters, had the single most descriptive story of any I read. (More about that in a bit.)

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch sent reporters to the scene and focused part of its coverage on a St. Louis County couple — the only victims from either the St. Louis or Kansas City areas — on the boat.

The closest relatively large city to the disaster, of course, was Springfield. The Springfield News-Leader, which is part of the Gannett chain — the largest newspaper chain in the country — sent reporters, but its coverage seemed choppy and disorganized, like a lot of Gannett news coverage.

For example, the lead headline on the News-Leader’s website this afternoon said, “List: Everyone on Branson duck boat that sank,” as if the story contains the identities of everyone on board. But the story only gives the genders, ages and states of residence for the 14 survivors.

One of the oddest things I noticed about the various newspapers’ coverage was that a staff reporter for the Tulsa World — Reece Ristau — wrote the Washington Post story that led that paper’s coverage earlier today. A tag line at the end of that story identified Ristau as a freelance journalist. Compounding that curiosity, Tulsa is only about three and a half hours away from Branson, but the Tulsa World did not do any firsthand coverage, relying primarily on the Associated Press for coverage.

Ristau

All I can deduce from the Reece Ristau shuffle — from Tulsa World to WaPo — is that his workday had concluded at the World and he then rushed over to Branson after being contacted by The Post…He’s doing more work for The Post on the story today, but The Post is no longer identifying him as a freelancer. In fact, they’re not identifying him at all.

**

Adler

The Star’s story about the Branson Belle passengers’ accounts was the most descriptive of The Star’s four stories in today’s printed edition. Veteran reporters Eric Adler and Laura Bauer spoke with people who gave graphic accounts of the disaster.

A 20-year-old man who witnessed the sinking told The Star, “People were swimming. You could see life vests floating around.” A 15-year-old girl was quoted as saying, “There was a lot of screaming.”

The only thing that was missing in that story was how far the Branson Belle was from the duck boat when it went down. It couldn’t have been very far because one witness told the reporters that the high wind “pushed bodies against the hull of the Belle.”

Leave it to The New York Times, however, to give the most dramatic account.

Eligon’s print-edition, which ran on the front page today, began like this:

“The image from Table Rock Lake that onlookers say they will never forget is the heads, one after another, bobbing in the wild, darkened water.

“One would pop up on the surface and then disappear. There were so many of them amid the pounding waves — there one moment, and then gone.”

The story concluded by centering on the pivotal issue of the life jackets — which were available on an overhead shelf but apparently ignored for the most part.

Eligon interviewed a 20-year-old man who helped pull people out of the water in the immediate aftermath. The man told Eligon not one of the victims he came in contact with was wearing a life jacket.

Eligon’s last sentence began with a quote from the rescuer and ended with a telling description of his demeanor.

“I don’t want to say 100 percent, but it’s really hard to drown with a life jacket” he said, pausing as he stared silently at the ground.