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

I was thinking about a 1971 criminal case the other day, and I Googled the principals to see if anything about the case was available online.

Happily, I found a couple of stories that ran in The Kansas City Times — the morning Kansas City Star –before the two papers merged in 1990.

Lou Piniella

It was an interesting case, partly because a Kansas City Royals’ outfielder named Lou Piniella, who later was traded to the Yankees and went on to manage the Yankees, got entangled in it.

Maybe some of you remember it. A former Kansas City, KS, police officer named Charles L. Forgey was charged with manslaughter for shooting and killing a man outside the old Jimmy’s Jigger tavern at 39th and State Line Road. (It’s now Jazz, A Louisiana Kitchen.)

Forgey, who was in his early 30s, had been at the Jigger with Piniella after a Royals’ game.

Anyway, after a bumping incident in the bar around closing time — then 1:30 a.m. — the tiff moved outside. Forgey and Piniella got in their respective cars, but at least two guys who had gone outside approached Forgey’s car. There was conflicting testimony at trial, which took place in Wyandotte County District Court, but one of the guys, Donald J. Haire, approached the driver’s window, perhaps in a menacing way, and Forgey shot him. (Haire was not armed.)

Forgey testified he then sped west on 39th until he overtook Piniella’s car, and the two cars stopped at an intersection.

“I said, Lou, I think I hit one of those fellows,” Forgey testified.

When asked why he shot Haire, he said, “I thought my life was in danger.”

The old Jimmy’s Jigger, on the southeast corner of 39th and State Line Road

Piniella testified that as he drove slowly away from the tavern, he could see Forgey’s car in his rear view mirror. He testified he didn’t see anyone go down, but he told Forgey if he thought he had shot someone, they should call the police.

With that, they drove to a private club — undoubtedly on the Kansas side — and called police.

The jury-verdict story was not available online, but I remember clearly that Forgey was acquitted.

…I was thinking about the case for two reasons: First, I patronized the Jigger for a while after moving to Kansas City and met one of my first KC girlfriends there, and, second, I later met Forgey at Westport’s New Stanley bar, which I frequented for many years and where I met Patty in 1983. I talked to Forgey two or three times at the New Stanley, mainly because I just wanted to get a sense of what he was like. During those meetings, I didn’t form much of an opinion about him, other than the fact that he seemed pretty self-centered. (From a whitepages search, I think he’s still alive, but I’m not sure.)

Besides giving me a fresh look at that case, those two KC Times stories, from April 11 and April 13, 1972, showed a lot about how much reporting has changed — not for the better — over the decades.

For one thing, few metro dailies cover criminal trials from gavel to gavel any more. When I was first assigned to cover the Jackson County Courthouse with The Times in 1971, we covered the hell out of criminal trials, and I think many readers enjoyed reading about them. (Covering one mob-related murder trial that had been moved to St. Louis County, I had bylines in 10 to 12 consecutive editions of The Times and Star over a week’s period.)

Covering a big case from day to day is a golden opportunity for newspapers to engage readers. Trials are unpredictable events that ebb and flow and often build to suspenseful conclusions. Writing about them only at the beginning and the end, as The Star and most other papers do, robs the readers of the inherent drama and also gives them one more reason not to subscribe.

Another way in which our former way of covering the news helped readers identify with the people we wrote about was that our reports included, whenever possible, not just the names of subjects but also their ages, addresses and cities of residence.

For example, in the April 11 story about the Forgey trial, the reporter (who didn’t get a byline) included the ages and addresses of two witnesses: Robert Louis Beard, 28, of 4624 Mercier, Kansas City, and Bruce Huffman, 35, of 4501 W. 78th Street, Prairie Village.

The reporter included the address of Haire, the victim — 7618 Falmouth, Prairie Village — and the addresses of two other witnesses: Dennis McDaniel, 605 E. 105th Terrace, Kansas City, and Stephen A. Strickland, 4410 Jarboe, Kansas City.

Now, I understand that as times have changed, it’s not appropriate to include exact addresses in most cases, but I think it would be helpful if papers would at least provide ages, when practical, and cities of residence. I mean, isn’t that how we relate to new acquaintances…asking them where they live and either asking or trying to deduce how old they are?

**

Hey, call me nostalgic for “the old days,” but drawing readers into stories is key to holding their attention. Tracking running stories with closely and helping readers relate to people being reported on are two major ways newspapers can establish connections with community residents.

But when people don’t get compelling coverage, and when they only get subjects’ names, absent any defining context, they cannot relate to them and they lose interest. The result — and this has happened with The Star — is that people no longer take a proprietary interest in their local newspaper; they no longer think of it as “my paper, covering my community.”

That sense of a proprietary connection, “left the building” at 1729 Grand, and now 16th and McGee — a long time ago.

As far as the newspaper industry has fallen, The Star and many other metropolitan dailies could easily take a few simple steps to try to remain relevant to readers. But management at many papers, including The Star, just don’t seem to care any more.