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

The Star had three outstanding “enterprise” stories on its front page Sunday.

By enterprise, I mean stories that, while news based, are not in the category of “breaking-news” stories that must be written and published as soon as possible.

Each was a “must read,” if you are interested in keeping up with what’s going on in an around KC and Missouri government.

One story was the most comprehensive assessment in decades regarding the Country Club Plaza. It was reported and written by Joyce Smith, who has been covering retail for many years.

The story was accompanied by an excellent, color-coded map that differentiated between national and local retailers.

Under new ownership as of 2016 (from Highwoods Properties to Taubmann Centers and the Macerich Co.), the Plaza is undergoing its biggest change in years.

One thing we can expect to see is even more restaurants than are currently there. A restaurant many people are looking forward to — including me — is the Shake Shack, which is under construction on south side of 47th Street, west of J.C. Nichols Parkway. Shake Shack, founded in New York City, bills itself as “a modern day ‘roadside’ burger stand serving a classic American menu of premium burgers, hot dogs, crinkle-cut fries, shakes, frozen custard, beer and wine.”

(I’ve never known a roadside burger stand to sell wine, but I guess that’s the “modern-day” element.)

Another story was about Toby Dorr, formerly Toby Young, who, in 2006, helped murderer John Manard escape from the Kansas state prison at Lansing by hiding him in a dog crate and driving out the gate. They were captured several days later after being discovered in a love-nest cabin in Tennessee.

Toby Young, before she helped murdered John Manard escape from the Kansas state penitentiary in 2006

Frankly, I never thought we’d hear from Toby Young ever again. But damned if she hasn’t redeemed and transformed herself in the 10 years she’s been out of prison. She’s remarried (her first marriage was broken before she helped Manard escape), and she and her new husband visited Manard in prison two years ago.

That story was reported and written by Lauren Fox, a relatively new staff member. Fox did a very good job on it, starting out with some previously unreported details about the escape and then segueing to the lead-up to the escape and Young’s personal transition during the 10 years since she got out of prison after serving a little more than two years.

The third story was the closest of the three to breaking news. Reported and written by Jason Hancock, The Star’s Jefferson City correspondent, the story is about the state’s rushed awarding of four consulting contracts worth a total of about $4 million. One of the elements that raises red flags about these contracts is that officials who were appointed by the disgraced former governor, Eric Greitens, orchestrated them.

The biggest contract was one for $2.7 million that went to a company that Drew Erdmann, a top state official, formerly worked for. The amount of the contract, the goal of which is to identify fraud and abuse of Missouri’s Medicaid program, was more than the combined total of three other bids.

Hancock quoted a Democratic state representative from St. Louis as saying the contracts gave “an appearance of corruption.”

Hancock, who has many years experience covering state government, was smart to use that quote high in the story, high enough that it was on the front-page part of the story, before it “jumped” to an inside page.

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So those were the highlights, in my view, of Sunday’s paper.

On the flip side of the coin, I was disappointed that the editorial page did not carry a complete list of The Star’s recommendations on voting in tomorrow’s primary election.

In the past, The Star has usually listed its recommendations in the Sunday paper preceding elections. It makes a lot of sense because Sunday’s paper is, by far, the biggest-selling paper of the week, and people spend more time reading the Sunday paper than any other day’s edition. Also, on the weekend before any election, people are talking about the issues and candidates and exchanging viewpoints and looking for guidance in many cases.

As a side note, I have hewed to The Star’s endorsements almost issue by issue and candidate by candidate since I arrived in KC in 1969 because I know that, with rare exceptions, The Star is motivated by what’s best for the citizens, not how to make more money, win over more readers or curry favor with one group or another.

…Today, however, I realized why the Sunday editorial page didn’t list the endorsements: They were not complete. In today’s paper, The Star recommended a “no” vote on Proposition A — the “right to work” issue — and endorsed Josh Hawley for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate.

That’s not a good excuse, however. The Star has had plenty of time to make its endorsements and shouldn’t be weighing in on something as important as Prop A two days before the election. The full list of endorsements should have been in yesterday’s paper.

…Come on, Colleen, you gotta plan better next time…And make sure you’ve got those endorsements prominently placed on the website tomorrow!