I think most of you know one of the things that really galls me is lazy reporting.
Regardless of how few editorial staff members The Star gets down to and how thin they are stretched, it is never acceptable, on a story that cries out for explanation, to regurgitate a few paragraphs from a press release and slap the story on the website.
But that’s what happened Friday with a story about a conviction in a 2017 Jackson County murder case.
The story caught my eye partly because the defendant looked creepy in his mugshot and partly because of the headline — “Raytown man sentenced to 22 years for murder, robbery in Blue Springs.”
The headline piqued my interest because 1) you see very few murders out of Blue Springs and 2) you don’t see a lot of murderers coming out of Raytown.
When I clicked on the story, by a reporter named Katie Moore, I saw that it was only four paragraphs. Here’s how it read…
A man was sentenced Friday to 22 years in prison for a shooting outside a Blue Springs restaurant that left one person dead in November 2017.
John D. Jeffries, 26, of Raytown, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and robbery. A judge sentenced him to 22 years in prison, Jackson County prosecutor Jean Peters Baker said.
Police responded to the incident outside Bethlehem Cafe in the 1500 block of N.W. Woods Chapel Road. Witnesses gave a description of the shooter and officers spotted a man in the area who matched the description. Jeffries was taken into custody and charged.
Clinton Peckman, of Paola, was killed.
What bothered me about this story from the get-go was the lack of clarity and detail, particularly relating to what connection there was, if any, between Jeffries and Peckman.
Jeffries
Wouldn’t you agree that from the context, it appears this was a case of a man approaching a stranger outside a restaurant, robbing or trying to rob him, and then killing him?
It’s hard to read it any other way.
Now, there are few things that alarm the public more than random robbery-murders because they happen too often and we can all envision it happening to us. So, it is very important in reporting cases of violent crime to let the readers know, to the best of your ability, if violent crimes are random or if the principals knew each other and the crime was the culmination of some previous interaction.
As it turns out, this was not a random robbery-murder.
Moore, the reporter, had simply grabbed a press release from the Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office website and dashed off a story without bothering to go to a link called “charging documents” that offered much more detail about the case.
The charging document is a police “probable cause” statement that explains the murder evolved from events that took place earlier the day of Nov. 9. It started shortly after 7 a.m. with a report of shots being fired in Independence, apparently by Jeffries. About three hours later, a woman whose car Jeffries had damaged called police to say Jeffries was at an apartment complex called Autumn Place in Blue Springs.
The statement does not say what Jeffries was doing at Autumn Place but it says Peckman worked there, and at some point that morning Peckman’s and Jeffries’ paths crossed. They apparently did not know each other before that day.
Shortly after 11 a.m. the two men arrived in the Bethlehem Cafe parking lot in a mini van. Jeffries then shot Peckman, who was in the driver’s seat, jumped out of the car and carjacked a nearby couple at gunpoint. He quickly wrecked the car, however, and took off on foot but was soon caught by police after a brief chase.
Jeffries was charged with second-degree murder for killing Peckman, and he was charged with robbery for taking the couple’s car at gunpoint. Peckman was the victim of murder but not of a robbery.
**
The press release was deceiving. It raised obvious questions. The reporter needed to go beyond it to find out what happened and clear up the mystery. The information was at her fingertips. All she had to do was click on the link and she would have known what happened and could have explained it to her readers in a couple of additional sentences.
Too bad for Kansas City Star readers she took the lazy approach. Her story left the readers in a fog.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
Jim, if the article had been more descriptive the restaurant would not get the bad press as an unsafe place to eat (I have eaten there and it is safe and has wonderful food) and the newspaper would have been a little larger. I still miss the Kansas City Times. FYI. I still get the print edition and have since 1976.
I started at The Kansas City Times — described parenthetically as the Morning Edition of The Kansas City Star — in 1969 and was on its staff until it ceased publication in 1990. It was a difficult day for us Times staff members when we were told The Star would be the prevailing paper. Of course, it made sense because The Star name was known far and wide. But The Times had become the dominant paper because we had all day to produce it and it came out in the morning.
I try to limit criticism of The Star because I know it is fighting an uphill battle and its owner, McClatchy, has to keep costs down. But since I’m already at it in this post, there’s a headline in Saturday morning’s paper that is just ridiculous. The lead story on the sports page (left top) is headlined, “Lordy, Lordy, Bowyer is turning 40.”
…First, the mere fact that NASCAR driver Clint Bowyer is turning 40 is not worth a stand-alone story or headline, and, second, we don’t need poetic headlines, unless they fit the tone of the story.
Unsolicited advice: Relative to the current state of reporting/commentary at the Star, you might consider posting something on the Star’s coverage of the Ty Hill situation. IMHO, the Star’s coverage has been highly mixed, ranging from very good to very poor.
Vahe and Mellinger have taken the lead on that story and, while I haven’t read everything (like yesterday’s front-page story), it seems to me they’ve done an excellent job.
When the audio came out about two weeks ago, Mellinger and Gregorian left absolutely no doubt what the Chiefs had to do. There was no nuance, equivocation, or qualifications.
Mellinger: “The truth is that Hill will almost certainly play again in the NFL. It can’t be here, with this franchise.”
Gregorian: “It’s that simple: If they care about honor and decency, Hill can’t be part of this team.”
Since then, they have been much less categorical, and have not made definitive statements as to whether they stand by their previous unequivocal statements.
It’s no sin to change one’s mind, but writers need to clearly communicate to readers if and why their previously strong opinions on a topic have changed. Otherwise, they lose credibility.
At first I confused this woman with Mara Williams, a very competent and thorough journalist.
However a search of previous communications yielded two communications with this woman when she worked at the Cap-Journal. The first involved a story in which 8, count them, 8, people protested in front of a Chamber office in Topeka about the Chamber’s endorsements. Except the office was closed and the endorsements hadn’t even been made yet.
Second one involved her promotion of a “study” that touted the long discredited tale of a large gap in wages between women and men. I pointed out to her that repeated multivariate status attainment models dating back to 1976 had indicated that, all other things being equal, women actually were paid more than men. Ms. Moore, apparently having difficulties with reading for comprehension, replied that she preferred using a study that was more “timely”. What apparently failed to register with her would be the conclusion one would have to reach by embracing her flawed “logic” that feminist activism must indeed be a complete failure had wage gaps increased between 1976 and the date of her article.
Hence, you may be a bit harsh Fitz by assuming that she was too lazy to click on the link for charging documents. Given her previous work in Topeka, that task may be substantially beyond her intellect.
With the help of my editing from afar, she’ll come along, John.