One of the biggest casualties of the contraction and diminution of major metropolitan daily newspapers has been coverage of local and state governments.
Where The Kansas City Star, for example, used to provide government coverage of most area municipalities and most county governments, only Kansas City’s City Hall gets regular coverage now. Even Jackson County government, the biggest of the area’s county governments, seldom makes The Star’s print or online pages.
In addition, coverage of the Kansas and Missouri state houses is way down. I pointed out recently, for example, that The Star failed to report the final, approved ballot title of Constitutional Amendment 3, which, if approved by voters Nov. 3, would negate the reforms that came with passage of the Clean Missouri Amendment two year ago.
Fortunately for residents in many states, a new, nonprofit network of state-based publications is taking root, including in Kansas and Missouri, and it will help offset some of the attrition that has taken place at newspapers.
The quickly growing nonprofit network is called States Newsroom, which officially launched last November and is financed with individual contributions and institutional grants. There is no “paywall” for readers, meaning all content is provided free of charge.
States Newsroom’s mission is to provide “relentless capitol reporting” and to “connect people to state leaders and government policies that affect their lives.”
States Newsroom has offices in Washington and Chapel Hill, NC, and it has established newsrooms in about 20 states. Kansas opened its States Newsroom operation — called Kansas Reflector — in July. One of its four staff members is C.J. Janovy, formerly of KCUR and before that editor of The Pitch.
Jason Hancock
A States Newsroom operation is getting ready to start up under the leadership of Jason Hancock, longtime statehouse reporter for The Star in Jefferson City. Hancock announced on Twitter Aug. 21 that he was leaving to be editor of “an as-of-yet unnamed nonprofit news site focused on Missouri politics and government.”
Hancock’s operation, to be called The Missouri Independent, will launch Oct. 20.
Here’s more about the Kansas Reflector and The Missouri Independent.
Kansas Reflector
Besides Janovy, the three other Kansas Reflector staff members are Tim Carpenter, Noah Taborda and Editor-in-Chief Sherman Smith.
Smith spent 16 years at the Topeka Capital-Journal, where he held various jobs, ranging from copy editor to managing editor and including covering the state Capitol.
The staff of Kansas Reflector: from left, Noah Taborda,, Tim Carpenter, C.J. Janovy and Editor-in-Chief Sherman Smith
Carpenter is also a veteran of the Capital-Journal. He previously worked for the Lawrence Journal-World.
Taborda has worked in public radio in Columbia, MO, and also at KCUR, where he spent part of his time reporting news and features.
The Reflector’s lead story today is about Kansas district courts having fallen far behind on the resolution of criminal cases. More than 1,700 cases have been delayed by Covid-19 and need to be rescheduled.
The Missouri Independent
Hancock headed The Star’s Jefferson City bureau for eight years and was on top of many ground-breaking stories, including the ill-fated administration of former Gov. Eric Greitens. Before coming to The Star, he was statehouse reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for nine months.
Rudi Keller
Deputy Editor Rudi Keller is a 30-year journalism veteran, having spent 22 years covering Missouri government, most recently as the news editor of The Columbia Daily Tribune.
Rebecca Rivas
Reporter Rebecca Rivas has been reporting in Missouri since 2001, most recently as senior reporter and video producer at the St. Louis American, the nation’s leading African-American newspaper. As a Fulbright scholar, she investigated Peru’s high maternal-death rate among Andean women and produced a 45-minute documentary that has been used as an educational tool in college campuses nationwide.
Tessa Weinberg
Reporter Tessa Weinberg previously covered the Missouri General Assembly for The Star and The Columbia Missourian. She most recently covered state government in Texas for The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, which, like The Star, is a McClatchy paper.
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These are positive and hopeful developments for people who want to stay abreast of developments in Topeka and Jefferson City. These niche operations will help fill the ever-enlarging hole in metropolitan papers’ coverage of state governments. I urge everyone to give these new websites a lot of “clicks” — and maybe even contribute.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
Good news and good reporting. Wonder if they’ll ever consider a print edition?
No way. Too expensive and too limiting; online they can post stories immediately.
Positive and hopeful, indeed. If your schedule permits, I’d love to see another story about the business model.
I see four reporters for Kansas and four for Missouri — but who is in charge of running the business, and, perhaps most important, in charge of raising the money to pay the reporters? I spent some time poking in the States Newsroom site and find no explanation there about who raises its funding and from whom. I wonder whether any states have started up as part of this network and then had to shut down because funding dried up.
We’ve seen enough withering, and I sure hope this new venture is self-sustaining and can thrive for a long time.
I don’t think I’m going to delve into the business model, Tom…I just hope they make it.
Like you, though, I was a bit frustrated by the paucity of information on the website. For one thing, I couldn’t find any link to or information about how to contribute. I sent an email earlier today to the woman who seems to be handling p.r., but she hasn’t responded. Also, I saw just a few foundation names on the list of contributors of at least $500, but I didn’t really recognize any of them. It does make me wonder who the main financiers are and if the organization will have staying power.
Apologies for the slow response. I meant to jump on earlier but it’s been a day.
So, the quick answer is that States Newsroom is funded by individual contributions and institutional grants. We don’t accept corporate donations or underwriting, nor do we accept donations from foreign governments or anonymous sources.
Learn more here: https://statesnewsroom.com/support/
As was previously noted, we disclose the identity of the individuals and organizations that give more than $500. And after each site is live there is a page for targeted donations to individual sites (https://kansasreflector.com/donate/). Reader support is vital, of course.
As for the question of whether this is sustainable in the long term, we are confident that it is. I wouldn’t have made the jump if I wasn’t. Obviously, time will tell.
States Newsroom’s 990s will be posted when they are filed, so that may answer some of your questions. I know I was told when that would be but it escapes me at the moment.
I hope I was able to answer your questions. Sorry if something doesn’t make sense… again, been a long day.
Thanks for the information.
Rebecca is really talented. She interviewed me a few times. Jim, you’re right, since the Star gave up on state coverage, I’ve lost interest. Not a fan of the Royals or Chiefs and can get scores elsewhere. I plan to subscribe and give them a shot.
Jim, thanks for the news of the two papers!
I’ve been looking at a lot of the content from the Reflector and I’m very familiar with both Smith and Carpenter. Both are solid reporters and could, and I stress the word could, provide quality reporting.
What this country desperately needs are journalists who are honest brokers, reporters who will heal some of the polarization and not add to it. Unfortunately, and sadly, that is not what the Reflector does thanks in large part to Janovy.
Well, I guess we’ll just have to see how much of the content they produce eventually finds its way into the print columns of daily papers in Kansas and Missouri because I’m not going to go looking for it on the Internet. I work for a paper called The Independent so I like that name, but The Reflector doesn’t do too much for me in the way of a name. How about The Observer? Politicians generally hate to be observed by people whose writing they can’t control.
The total lack of humble, self awareness among today’s mega ego driven “journalists” is laughable. The masses have moved on. No one wants this content, in this format, with this bias. Ed’s Lunch, The Pub, LaBrusso’s, and Speeds are gone. And they ain’t coming back. Neither is newspapering. The model is done busted.
I don’t think I ever went to Ed’s Lunch; it was on its way out when I was on my way in in ’69. Hit all the others many times, though. Speed’s was my favorite. Lloyd Mahan was his real name. Old guy, with thin, white hair and a stately demeanor. Looked a little like Alfred Hitchcock. He lived out in Martin City and after he closed up at about 1:30 a.m., he’d get in his old car and drive through the deserted streets of town, out Gillham and then Holmes, all the way to 135th Street, or wherever — so far out I thought Martin City it was the edge of the earth…He served up a great hamburger with garnishes, which always included a few radishes. One time when I was holding back on the radishes, he leaned over the bar toward me and said, “Eat the radishes; they make you come.”
TMI.
…great history. I think you got it! But just to clarify my POV. A newspaper was a complex, living, symbiotic, endeavor. From the mailroom, the carriers, the composing room, the business side, the credit union, the wire services, the copyboys, the pressmen, the photo/art, section desks, the library, to the short guy who was the graveyard shift night watchman…and so on.
In some ways, and in some eras, the least important and the most replaceable cog at the paper were the “journalists.”
Somewhere in the newspaper’s fall from respect, our “journalism class” lost this perspective. In making themselves the center of their reporting, they’ve lost the public audience.
Pogo said it. You don’t need me to repeat it.