Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘journalism’ Category

Who goes — Dillon or Bormann? My vote? Fannin first, Parrish later

Posted in journalism, tagged , , , on December 13, 2012| 23 Comments »

The most interesting part of this fiasco going on at The Star — management asking veteran reporters Dawn Bormann and Karen Dillon to decide which of them should be let go in a down sizing — is that The Star apparently has done this at least once before. And got away with it.

Back in January 2011, five months before Mi-Ai Parrish was named publisher at The Star, my friend Hearne Christopher reported on his kcconfidential blog that a longtime copy editor name Don Munday (who also has a humorous verse in The Star every Monday) had been let go in a down sizing.

Hearne came back a day or two later, however, saying that might not be right, and it turned out that Munday was staying. It struck me as very odd that a guy would be cast off one day (I trusted that Hearne simply didn’t misidentify the target) and then be pulled back aboard the next.

But, as I recall (I could be wrong), nothing ever came out about the possibility that Munday and another employee might have been presented with the “you two make the call” option. Now, though, Hearne is reporting that the flip of the coin, so to speak, was between Munday and another longtime copy editor, Mike Garbus. Garbus lost the toss, or whatever, and Munday continued penning his verses.

And so the episode passed quietly.

Hearne sniffed out the latest game of “you-or-him” or “you-or-her,” and it has grabbed headlines in blogs and mainstream media partly because two women are involved. In addition, each has family caretaking duties: Bormann has a young child, and Dillon apparently helps care for two grandchildren.

What I make of this situation is that editor Mike Fannin in all likelihood engineered both rounds of this foolish game. Fannin would have brought the proposal to Parrish, who probably thought to herself something like, “Well, it worked out OK the first time, when I wasn’t here, so we might as well give it another run.”

If that is the correct scenario, this 41- or 42-year-old publisher has now found out that delegating significant personnel decisions to underlings is a huge mistake.

In addition, Parrish has not impressed me in the least. She has not built a civic profile for herself and her paper, and she is not a good salesperson, which a publisher has to be these days to be successful. Remember Jim Hale, publisher back in the late 1970s and into the 80s? He presented as an easy-going, aw-shucks Texan, but he wielded tremendous power of personality and built an imposing profile on the civic front. As a result, The Star’s profile rose to its highest point in decades and made money hand over fist.   

After Parrish was named publisher in 2011, I wrote that “putting a 40-year-old person with five years of publishing experience — especially small-market experience — looks like a rather big roll of the dice.”

I pointed out that she came from a paper, the Idaho Statesman, that was four times smaller than The Star in terms of circulation. Plus she had jumped to publisher in Idaho from the mid-level management job of deputy managing editor at the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

In that same blog I also wrote this: “On the digital side, her youth should work to her advantage because that appears to be where the future lies for newspapers. But her youth could work against her on the personnel side, unless she gets some very good advisers.”

Well, her youth and relative inexperience at the highest level of journalism has worked against her.

But the Dillon-Bormann situation isn’t the first time she has dropped the ball. Just before she was announced as publisher, Hearne reported (with the reportorial help of a much less prominent blogger…ahem) that Fannin had not one — as previously thought –but two D.U.I. convictions. We also uncovered a misdemeanor assault conviction in Texas, where he worked before he came to Kansas City.

That would have been the perfect time for Parrish to unload Fannin and bring in her own editor. But, as I told Hearne at the time, that’s not the way The Star operates. When its managers come under fire, they circle the wagons and hunker down.

Now, Parrish has no one but herself to blame. If she fires Fannin, it won’t change the fact that the buck stopped with her.

I think it very likely that, as a result of this debacle, Parrish is in her first and last publishing job at a major metropolitan daily.

Read Full Post »

Same event; two vastly divergent accounts

Posted in journalism, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 29, 2012| 16 Comments »

It’s always been interesting to me to see how two reporters covering the same event can come up with such different accounts — how one reporter can completely miss the mark while another takes deadly aim.

Such was the case with two newspapers’ coverage of Southeastern Conference Commissioner Mike Slive’s appearance Tuesday at the Kansas City Tiger Club meeting at the Westport Flea Market.

Fortuitously, I am in a position to compare The Star’s account against that of the Columbia (Mo.) Daily Tribune. I say fortuitously because, while driving around on Tuesday, I happened to hear, on the radio, either a lengthy excerpt of the event or a portion of live coverage.

When I tuned into the event, already in progress, I thought I was listening to a news conference, but the crowd was so boisterous and there was so much laughing and joking that I was thrown off balance. Only later, when I heard or read news coverage online, did I realize that it was an appearance before a large group of Missouri fans.

It was apparent from what I was hearing that Slive, who has been the SEC commissioner for almost 10 years, had the crowd in the palm of his hand.

Slive

He was answering questions confidently, and he was often droll and funny. It seemed like every other answer he gave drew a big, embracing laugh. It was clear that the crowd was enthralled.

So, when I saw a story about the event in The Star on Wednesday, I was eager to see if the reporter, Terez A. Paylor, would be able to re-create the energetic and enthusiastic atmosphere that permeated the Flea Market’s back room a day earlier.

I have to say, I was terribly disappointed.  Here’s how Paylor, who recently succeeded Mike DeArmond as Missouri athletics reporter, started his story:

It didn’t take Southeastern Conference commissioner Mike Slive long to realize the passion of Missouri Tigers supporters in Kansas City.

Slive was greeted warmly by a crowd of a couple of hundred fans Tuesday, as he served as the guest speaker at the Kansas City Tiger Club’s weekly meeting at the Westport Flea Market.

“If this is the energy from the University of Missouri that’s going to come to every one of our events, I’m gonna have to go home and warn our guys to be careful,”  said Slive, shortly after he was greeted with a standing ovation. “The energy in this room is phenomenal.”

And it remained that way over the course of an hour, as Slive, who came to Kansas City from the SEC’s offices in Birmingham, Ala., took questions and spoke about a number of pertinent issues, including the possibility of Kansas City playing host to the SEC men’s basketball tournament, the status of his conference’s television deals and the status of cross-division rivalries in football.

Paylor

It was a lame start, and Paylor went on to report, blandly, what Slive had to say about some of those issues that arose in the wake of Missouri’s decision to switch from the Big XII to the SEC.

Exactly where and how did the reporter fall on his face?

:: He talked about the passion of the fan club and the energy in the room, but other than noting the standing ovation, Taylor failed to show the reader how the interaction between the fans and the commissioner established the energy in the room.

:: He did not relate a single question that the fans posed to Slive, and he made no attempt to establish the humorous and convivial tone, which is what distinguished the event and spawned a strong bond between crowd and speaker.

Now, let’s set The Star aside and pick up the Columbia Daily Tribune.

Matter

Covering the event for the Tribune was a sportswriter named Dave Matter. I don’t know him, hadn’t read a thing he had written until I saw his story online this morning.

Here’s how Matter began his story:

Southeastern Conference Commissioner Mike Slive couldn’t have expected his biggest applause line yesterday to be a one-word answer.

A Missouri booster in the middle of a jam-packed crowd at the Westport Flea Market Bar & Grill asked Slive a perfectly reasonable question at the Tiger Club of Kansas City luncheon that sounded like this: Could you explain how the decisions were made to put Texas A&M in the SEC West and Missouri in the SEC East?

Slive’s reply came without hesitation.

“No,” he said.

The crowd, and Slive, erupted in laughter.

The 71-year-old Slive had the boosters rolling, but do not mistake the man for a court jester. Yesterday, he was feted like a king.

With several university and civic dignitaries in attendance, the SEC commissioner made his first public appearance in Missouri since November’s announcement that MU was joining Texas A&M as a 2012 addition to the SEC. For the 250-plus fans crammed into the booster club’s weekly watering hole, the buzz was still raging.

Look at some of the words and phrases that Matter uses to show, tangibly, how the bond developed and the energy burst forth.

— “…a jam-packed crowd”

— “The crowd, and Slive, erupted in laughter.” Note, it was a shared laughter.

— “…had the boosters rolling.”

— “…feted like a king.”

— “…the buzz was still raging.”

Raging.

And about that standing ovation…Paylor simply had it happening spontaneously, without explanation. But Matter…well, he framed the greeting by reporting that Missouri athletic director Mike Alden introduced Slive, calling him “the finest commissioner in all of college athletics and one of the most respected folks in all of sport.”

Now the reader can understand how a biased crowd could be catapulted into a near frenzy, can’t he?

Slive, as Paylor reported, later returned the favor to Alden, saying in answer to a question about the SEC’s $3 billion TV contract, “I am optimistic that we can make Mike Alden very happy.”

Another burst of laughter.

Everybody left happy…except those who weren’t there and had to rely on Terez Paylor’s reporting.

Read Full Post »

Lights! Cameras! Lots of screw-ups!

Posted in journalism, Uncategorized, tagged , on March 12, 2012| 9 Comments »

My sharp-eyed, 23-year-old daughter Brooks, who has the makings of a good editor, called my attention to a Sunday New York Times story that had an unusual number of glitches, mostly related to missing and misused words.

It was a 17-paragraph story, inside the front section, about how a 340-ton, 21-foot-tall boulder was transported 60 miles from a quarry to the downtown Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Borne on a 196-wheel-transport truck, the boulder arrived at its destination at 4:35 a.m. Saturday and was greeted by a boisterous crowd of more than 1,000.

Within the next month, the boulder will be placed over a cut trench and opened to the public as an exhibit.

The story was fascinating and carried a catchy headline:

“Lights! Cameras! (And Cheers) For a rock Weighing 340 Tons.”

The writer was Adam Nagourney, a very well-known Times reporter. Nagourney, 57, was chief national political correspondent for The Times from 2002 to 2010, when he was appointed Los Angeles Bureau Chief.

The first 10 paragraphs of the story were free and clear of problems, as far as I could tell, but the last seven paragraphs were marred by six glitches.

Take a look:

***

Paragraph 11: “Los Angeles is not a particularly late-night city, and people who made it there at 4:30 in the morning either found a new use for the disco naps of their use or stayed up all night.”

Huh? Try this…”either found a new use for disco naps or stayed up all night.”

Sound better?

***

Paragraph 12: “Jeff Miller, 32, (blank) to a Guns N Roses show at the Hollywood Palladium that lasted, he reported, until close to 3 a.m.”

The missing word? “Went.”

***

Paragraph 12 (continued): “At that point, he figured he would just make a night of it and headed over to (blank) museum.

Yes…”the museum.”

***

Paragraph 13: “By the end, the convey traveled 100 miles of road to cover 60 miles of distance…”

“Convey?” No comprende. How about “convoy?”

***

Paragraph 14: “And in any event, this did not appear to (blank blank) routines of people who are accustomed to late nights.”

If you guessed “disrupt the routines,” you get a gold star.

***

Against that backdrop of screw-ups, the last paragraph of the story began like this:

“Mr. Miller, who stayed up all night, said he had rarely witnessed events like this here.”

Now, had the story been otherwise glitch-free, I would have construed the italicized words to mean that Miller had rarely witnessed events such as this taking place in Los Angeles.

But in light of the mind-boggling word jumble that had gone before, I tended to interpret them this way: “Mr. Miller who stayed up all night, said he had rarely witnessed events like this here event.”

When a writer and a newspaper throw junk at the reader, what they get in return is disgust and even contempt from readers. That’s when you start hearing people say, “That paper contains so many grammatical errors that you can hardly read it!”

And that is exactly the kind of attitude that newspapers can no longer afford. Readers now have 340 tons of options for where they can go to get their news without having their intelligence insulted.

Editor’s Note: The errors were corrected in the online version of the story — the version that is linked above…”This here” stayed as is…or was, or whatever.

Editor’s Note, No. 2: I’ve got an e-mail in to Art Brisbane, The Times’ “public editor,” asking him essentially, “What the hell happened with this here story?”

Read Full Post »

Journalism 201…Class is now in session and JimmyC has the pointer in hand

Posted in journalism, Uncategorized on March 6, 2012| 12 Comments »

Welcome to Journalism 201, students. I’m instructor Fitzpatrick — you can call me Mr. Fitz — and I’ll be taking you through this single-session course, worth five credit hours toward your journalism degree.

I know that all of you got A’s in Journalism 101, otherwise you wouldn’t be here today.

Before we get started, you can see that I’ve written my expectations on the dry-erase board. Let’s review:

One…Pay attention. If I can’t see your eyes, you’re not listening.

Two…Turn off all electronic devices and store them away. Otherwise I throw them out the window.

Three…No gum chewing. NO GUM! If I see your jaw moving with your mouth closed, you’re going to the dean’s office.

OK, now down to business. Today, we’re going to talk about the “nut graph.”

…Hey, hey! You with the tattoos on your neck and ring through your nose…Stop laughing!

I’m not talking about almonds, cashews, salted nuts or genitalia. There’s nothing funny about the nut graph. This may be the most important, single lesson you learn about journalism, so hark back to Rule No. 1. What does it say? That’s right…pay attention!

OK, as you were, then…So, what do you students think the “nut graph” might be? Anybody…

Yes, you with the tortoise-rimmed glasses and plaid, pooling pants…

That’s precisely right! It’s the key paragraph, found within the first few paragraphs of a lengthy story, that summarizes what the story is all about and why it’s important. It’s the story “in a nutshell.” It’s the one paragraph that is responsible, in many cases, for either keeping the reader reading or losing his interest right off the bat.

…What’s that, young lady right up front here with the mid-thigh skirt and gray-green eyes? Do I have examples? Of course, I do!

Let’s take a look at the front page of Sunday’s Kansas City Star. Feature writer Eric Adler wrote this story about young people who already have fallen into alcoholism and have turned to Alcoholics Anonymous.

Adler starts with an anecdotal lead, describing the young people arriving for a typical AA meeting, this one in a storefront room. Those who introduce themselves include a 20-year-old woman, a 23-year-old woman, a 25-year-old man and a 17-year-old girl.

After seven short, introductory paragraphs — still on the front page before the story “jumps” to the inside — Adler hits us with the nut graph. It reads:

“At a time when binge drinking remains at epidemic levels, and as tens of thousands of high school and college students begin packing for spring break destinations where alcohol flows freely, thousands of other young people nationwide will flow into meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous, having concluded that what they once thought was a rite of youth is an addiction.”

What does Adler do in that graph, students? …He tells us something we know — that binge drinking is a big problem — but then he layers it with information that a lot of us probably don’t know — that “thousands of young people” have given up the illusion of partying and have acknowledged that they suffer from a serious illness and want to get better.

Also, putting the icing on the cake, so to speak, Adler reminds us that this story is topical: It’s time for hundreds of thousands of students to descend on warm-weather destinations for a week of drinking and all-out partying.

That graph probably propelled tens of thousands of readers to the “jump,” where he examines the problem in the equivalent of a full page of text. A job well done by a seasoned journalist.

…Hey, hey! You with the black trench coat on…What the hell was that that you just let fall out of your coat sleeve into your hand? Was that a cell phone I saw?…It was your watch, you say? Well, whatever it was, I don’t want to see it again, you understand? You don’t need to know what time it is, anyway…You’re on JimmyC time now.

OK…Here we go with example No 2…

Let’s take a look at this Saturday story in The New York Times about the New Jersey trial of the guy who had his Web cam trained on his roommate, Tyler Clementi, while Tyler was making out with a boyfriend in his dorm room at Rutgers. As you know, Clementi committed suicide a few days later, and his roommate, Dharun Ravi, is being tried on three felony charges, including invasion of privacy and bias intimidation.

The reporter, Kate Zernike, starts out the story by recapitulating some key testimony from Friday’s court session…Then, in paragraph eight, shortly after the jump, Zernike delivers this impressive nut graph:

“Mr. Ravi is not charged with Mr. Clementi’s death, but the suicide hangs over the case. It prompted a worldwide debate about the bullying of gay teenagers, particularly in a cyber age, when taunting and harassment come not always face-to-face but on an array of technological devices and forums. Several gay teenagers had committed suicide in the months before Mr. Clementi jumped off the bridge, and his death became a symbol of their collective pain.”

“A symbol of their collective pain…” Isn’t that a nice turn of phrase, students? It not only describes the breadth of the issue but directs your empathy toward the result of the psychological cruelty.

OK, so that’s it, students. Now, what I want you to do after you leave here is, when you read significant stories in the coming days — either online on in print — look for nut graphs. When you find them, think about them…Do they adequately summarize the stories? Are they well crafted? Also, look for stories where you would expect nut graphs but can’t find them. It happens a lot. Not all papers and other publications make them as high a priority as they should.

Class dismissed, then. Thanks for your attention…

Hey, wait a minute…you with the trench coat…Can I borrow your cell phone? I left mine at home and need to call my wife to see what she wants me to pick up at the store.

Thanks, buddy, I hope you enjoyed the class…

Read Full Post »

Politicians seek to extend their reach in Philadelphia; bidding to buy the city’s major dailies

Posted in journalism, Uncategorized, tagged , , on February 28, 2012| 7 Comments »

The residents of the City of Brotherly Love should be worried:

A couple of politicians lead a group trying to buy the city’s major newspapers — The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Philadelphia Daily News.

And almost as worrisome, the papers’ publisher, Gregory J. Osberg, has been censoring articles about the pending sale of the company, apparently in an effort to quash other offers.

In recent weeks, according to a Feb. 16 article in The New York Times, Osberg:

:: Told top editors in a three-hour meeting that if any articles about the sale were run without his approval, the editors would be fired.

:: Apparently has held up — or ordered top editors to hold up — publication of an investigative story about conflicts of interest among board members of a hospital in nearby Camden, NJ. The hospital’s chairman is a member of the group seeking to buy the newspapers from the Philadelphia Media Network.

:: Apparently ordered editors to kill a paragraph in an article on Philly.com that said the newspapers had a value of about $40 million. It had been reported elsewhere that the current owner, Philadelphia Media Network was seeking $100 million.

Regarding the three-hour meeting, Osberg at first told a Times reporter that no such meeting had taken place. Then, the night before The Times’ story ran, he acknowledged that the meeting had occurred but denied interfering in editorial decisions.

“I have not been managing coverage of the sale and I am not doing that going forward,” The Times quoted Osberg as saying.

Rendell

The prospective owners include Edward G. Rendell, a powerful Democrat who is a former Philadelphia mayor and Pennsylvania governor, and George E. Norcross III, whom The Times described as “a Democratic power-broker in South New Jersey.

In an op-ed piece that was also published Feb. 16 in The Times, Buzz Bissinger, a former Pulitzer-Prize-winning reporter at the Inquirer, wrote: “If the sale goes through, Philadelphia will become the first major city in the country to actually cease to have a real daily newspaper. There will still be print and online products, sure, but those products will be owned by a group of power-hungry politicians and politically connected businessmen, who, far from respecting independent journalism, despise it.”

Paul Davies, former deputy editorial page editor at the Inquirer was quoted on The Washington Times web site as saying: “The prospect of Rendell’s group owning the newspapers is like the foxes watching the hen house and all of the sacred cows. Essentially, the Inquirer will cease to exist as a legitimate newspaper. It will become the insiders’ house organ.”

In The Times’ news story, Rendell said his only intention was to save the newspapers and keep them under local control. “Any ownership group may have some interest in controlling the content of the newspaper, but ours is no more or less than that,” he was quoted as saying.

At one time, the Inquirer and the Daily News were among a group of newspapers, along with The Kansas City Star, that were part of the Knight Ridder chain.

When Knight Ridder decided to go out of business in 2006, it sold The Star, the Philadelphia papers and 30 other papers to The McClatchy Co. for $4.5 billion.

The Inquirer and the Daily News were among a dozen less-profitable Knight Ridder newspapers that McClatchy immediately put up for sale. In June 2006, the Philadelphia papers were sold to a group of Philadelphia area business people, who filed for bankruptcy protection in 2009. Hedge fund owners, operating under the name Philadelphia Media Network, bought the papers out of bankruptcy in 2010.

The once-proud Philadelphia papers have had a tougher go of it the last 10 years or so than many of the other metropolitan dailies. That includes The Star, which is the source of constant griping from Kansas Citians about the paper’s ever-shrinking news hole.

Next time you hear someone complain about The Star, however, tell them it could be worse. Tell them we’re lucky that our paper is still owned by a reputable, if failing, chain. Tell them about Philadelphia.

Read Full Post »

Calling Fox Sports: Anybody home? Did you notice that Jason Whitlock is a misogynist, as well as a racist?

Posted in journalism, politics, sports, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on February 20, 2012| 26 Comments »

Every day for the last week I’ve expected to read or hear that Fox Sports has fired or suspended Jason Whitlock for the outrageous Twitter comment he made about women and New York Knicks’ sensation Jeremy Lin.

I don’t know how he did it, but with one little tweet he managed to paint women as sexual trophies to be used and abused, and he managed to stereotype Asian men as having…well, as former U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner might have put it, inadequate “packages.”

Here’s what Whitlock tweeted the night of Feb. 10, after Lin scored a career-high 38 points as the Knicks beat the Los Angeles Lakers 92-85.

“Some lucky lady in NYC is gonna feel a couple inches of pain tonight.”

That brought this reaction from the Asian American Journalists Association:

“Outrage doesn’t begin to describe the reaction…to your unnecessary and demeaning tweet…Let’s not pretend we don’t know to what you were referring. The attempt at humor – and we hope that is all it was – fell flat. It also exposed how some media companies fail to adequately monitor the antics of their high-profile representatives. Standards need to be applied – by you and by Fox Sports.”

Whitlock/Lin

Whitlock, who flamed out at The Star in August 2010, later apologized, saying in part:

“I…gave in to another part of my personality—my immature, sophomoric, comedic nature. It’s been with me since birth, a gift from my mother and honed as a child listening to my godmother’s Richard Pryor albums. I still want to be a standup comedian.”

So, it was the fault of his mother and godmother? I guess his godmother should be flogged for leaving those Richard Pryor albums lying around like loaded handguns.

Meanwhile, an ESPN editor got fired for using an ethnic slur  in a headline on ESPN.com’s mobile Web site, and an ESPN anchor was suspended for 30 days for using the same phrase during an interview about Lin with a former NBA player.

The headline posted by Anthony Federico of ESPN said, “Chink in the Armor: Jeremy Lin’s 9 Turnovers Cost Knicks in Streak-stopping Loss to Hornets.”

Federico, who deserved to be fired, apologized and in an interview with the New York Daily News said: “This had nothing to do with me being cute or funny. I’m so sorry that I offended people. I’m so sorry if I offended Jeremy.”

The suspended anchor man, Max Bretos, also apologized unequivocally, saying in a tweet, “My wife is Asian, would never intentionally say anything to disrespect her and that community.”

There you have the story, so far, of how two networks handled the same type of problem. ESPN fired one person and suspended another, while Fox Sports has remained largely silent on the matter of Whitlock’s double slur and his subsequent lame attempt to dismiss the ethnic element of it as a bad joke.

A week before Whitlock fired off his tweet, CNN suspended political analyst Roland Martin for tweets he posted during the Super Bowl.

Martin caused an uproar, particularly among gay rights groups, by tweeting that people should “smack the ish” out of any male fans of an underwear ad starring David Beckham.

He also made fun of a New England Patriots player who arrived wearing a pink jumpsuit. “He needs a visit from #teamwhipdatass,” Martin wrote.

As the Asian American Journalists Association said, “Standards need to be applied.”

I’m waiting for Fox to join ESPN and CNN in applying high standards to a sports writer who seems destined to be immature and sophomoric for life.

Read Full Post »

Red-light-camera “scoop”: A story that wasn’t ready for prime time

Posted in journalism, Uncategorized on January 31, 2012| 11 Comments »

A week after The Star ran its badly flawed red-light-camera story, aspects of the debacle are still coming to light.

Steve Glorioso, a public relations consultant for American Traffic Solutions (ATS), a private company that helps runs the red-light program for the city, contends that reporter Christine Vendel and her editors rushed the story into print prematurely last Tuesday because they badly wanted to scoop the other local news outlets.

STOP THAT STORY!

The Star should have sat on the story, Glorioso says, until all the facts were assembled and until his client had a chance to respond fully to police department-generated data that indicated the camera program has not been the boon to public safety that it was supposed to be.

Vendel, who has covered KCPD for more than 15 years, reported and wrote two stories based on a police department report about the red-light program.

She got the report a few days before it was to be released Tuesday at a Board of Police Commissioners meeting.

By Monday, Vendel was doing her final work on the story, and the editors were planning to make it the Tuesday, A1 “centerpiece” story. If it all came together as planned, Vendel would have a nice A1 byline, and The Star would have its scoop.

Being the main story of the day, the centerpiece usually takes a lot of planning because it usually involves photos and graphics and requires a big chunk of space. In addition, a lot of people are typically involved in the production of a centerpiece, and once the editors have committed to a centerpiece for the next day’s paper, every effort is exerted to make it happen.

It was clear from Vendel’s second-day story that the facts were in flux all day Monday and into the evening. In Wednesday’s story, she said, “Police officials fixed many of the math errors Monday night.”

That is very disturbing to me as a former story editor at The Star. When the facts are changing the night before a story is to run — and when the story doesn’t have to run the next day — it’s best to hold off until all elements are pinned down to the best extent they can be.

Also disturbing is the fact that, in developing its study, the police department didn’t bother to consult ATS, the people who set up the program and help run it. That should have raised flags with Vendel and her editors.

At any rate, the story hit the streets Tuesday morning and, indeed, made a big splash. The gist of it, which ran under the headline “Red-light cameras don’t add to safety,” was that the total number of wrecks at the 17 intersections where cameras were installed two years ago had actually increased since the cameras went up.

Unfortunately, the story contained at least one major error (picked up from the study) and had a major omission.

Neither the study nor the story contained this pivotal, all-important fact: Wrecks caused by people who ran red lights at the 17 intersections dropped from 52 wrecks before the cameras’ arrival to 24 wrecks in the second year after their arrival.

Consider this: Getting people to stop running red lights — not reducing fender benders — was the main reason for erecting the cameras in 2009. Anything else is secondary.

Then, there was this error: The initial version of the police study said that officers had written about 200,000 camera-related tickets since January 2009.

“At $100 a ticket,” The Star’s Tuesday story said, “these fines could bring in $20 million.”

But an ATS official told the Board of Police Commissioners on Tuesday that police had issued about 150,000 tickets, which, at an average fine of $100, would have generated about $15 million.

The cops, then, didn’t even know how many tickets they had issued.

In Wednesday’s follow-up story, which ran on Page A4, Vendel cleaned up the error about the number of tickets and added the statistic about the sharp reduction in wrecks resulting from red-light running.

Nevertheless, I think Glorioso is absolutely right: With some key facts up in the air as late as Monday night and the police department making last-minute changes, The Star should have pulled back, forgone its scoop and waited to publish until its report was rock solid.

I hate to hammer Vendel because she is an outstanding reporter who has written many significant and important stories, but there was another huge problem with this story: She and her editors failed to put the story in any context. When I was reading the story on Tuesday morning, my first reaction was: Why in the world would the police be putting out a report that is harshly critical of a program that they enforce and that has appeared to have reduced red-light running? It has been beneficial from a public safety standpoint, right?

The answer came to me as I thought about it and read Wednesday’s story carefully. In almost throwaway fashion, Vendel said in a subsidiary clause that ATS “has an annual $1.6 million contract with the city to run the camera program.”

Bingo. There was the answer: ATS’ contract is with the city, not the police department.

The city and the police department have been at odds for years, essentially because the city would like more control over the police department, but the department is overseen by the Board of Police Commissioners, all but one of whose members — the mayor — are appointed by the governor. State control of the department dates back to the post-Pendergast era.

It seems clear to me that the police department was seeking to undermine a City-Hall-initiated program that it considers bothersome.

Buttressing my assertion that the police consider the program a bother, a former City Hall operative sent me an e-mail last Friday saying, “You are right on the red lights. The police have always resented that they have to sort through the pictures and video for ATS,” while the proceeds benefit the city.

Of course, a majority of readers would not get the significance of the situation simply from Vendel’s reference to the ATS contract being “with the city.” The story cried out for explanation and motive. But Vendel and her editors, who must have been sound asleep, did not deliver.

To the average reader, it had to appear that the police department — for some unknown, unspoken reason — had decided to try to take down the red-light-camera program.

I said in Thursday’s post that we should summon Sherlock Holmes to try to figure out the police department’s motive…Today, I’m changing the call: We don’t need Sherlock; we need the JPD, the Journalism Police Department.

***

Post script: I want to add that while it’s great to be able to sit back and critique a story several days after it has run, it is a totally different situation when you’re in the newsroom, developing a story and working frantically to get it on the front page the next day. The adrenaline is flowing, and you and your editors badly want to “go with it.” It’s very hard to pull the plug; I realize that. I probably would have done exactly what Vendel did…But, hey, somebody’s gotta call it as he (or she) sees it, and, by the power vested in me by the Bloggers Association of America (which I just created and named myself president of), I’m that guy.

Read Full Post »

Passing thoughts on people making news or writing it

Posted in journalism, Uncategorized, tagged , , , on January 23, 2012| 19 Comments »

No. 1: Joe Paterno

Why didn’t he quit, or why wasn’t he shown the door, several years ago? As it is, he remained the face of Penn State during the worst big-time-college-football, sex-abuse scandal in history, as far as I can tell.

If he had quit several years ago, the backlash from the scandal (including his failure to alert authorities to an assistant coach sexually assaulting a young boy in the showers) would not have caught him full blast. He might well have slipped to second-rung culprit and undoubtedly would have been remembered in more glowing terms by the general public.

So, why did he stay on? You know why — EGO! Now he’s dead and gone and not many people outside of State College, PA, care.

No. 2: Kansas City Manager Troy Schulte.

In his 2012-2013 budget proposal last week, Schulte recommended reducing the Fire Department by 105 positions. The justification? Fire calls have dropped dramatically in the past decade. How would the estimated $7.6 million in savings be used? To give other city employees raises.

Only Schulte, who doesn’t have to stand for election, would dare propose something that dramatic. And, trust me, even he doesn’t believe it will happen. He might be hoping that the council — most of whose members won with backing from the fire fighters’ union — will approve a cut of somewhere between 10 and 20 firefighters. That’s about the best he can hope for, at least until there’s a real budget crisis, which probably is coming within five years. At that point, we’ll probably see a “hatchet council,” which will have no choice but to fire a lot of employees or see the city go broke.

No. 3: David Brooks

One of my favorite op-ed columnists veered off track last week, when he wrote about Mitt Romney having made a fortune because he was “a worker and a grinder.” Brooks proceeded to trace the family background of Romney, a Mormon.

A central figure in the family history is Romney’s great-grandfather, Miles Romney. Brooks recounts the journeys and travails of Miles Romney and “his three wives and their many children” like he’s talking about an everyday, conventional, American family. Mitt might come be a hard worker who comes from sturdy stock, but when someone starts talking casually about a candidate’s great-grandfather’s “three wives and many children,” my attention naturally shifts from the up-from-the-bootstraps story to, “Did you say three wives?”

No. 4: Newt Gingrich

It’s unnerving that a fat guy with a phony, adultery-abetting wife can catapult to victory in a state — even a mostly irrelevant, backasswards state like South Carolina — by attacking the “elite news media”; the “elites in New York and Washington”; and “the most effective food-stamp president in history.”

It’s promoting class warfare, with the goal of rallying hourly wage-earners and unemployed people to take up arms against the so-called “elites?” But who would really benefit under Newt’s scenario? The true “elites,” the one percenters.

No. 5: Thomas L. Friedman

I want to end on a hopeful note…

Perhaps the most incisive op-ed person in the opinion business, wrote in Sunday’s New York Times about what kind of candidate he would like to vote for.

It would be a candidate who:

“…advocates an immediate investment in infrastructure that will create jobs and upgrade American for the 21st century…and combines that with a long-term plan to fix our fiscal imbalances at the real scale of the problem, a plan that could be phased in as the economy recovers.”

A candidate who…

“…is committed to reforming taxes, and cutting spending, in a fair way. The rich must pay more, but everyone has to pay something. We are all in this together.”

A candidate who…

“…has an inspirational vision, not just a plan to balance the budget.”

And, finally, a candidate who…

“…supports a minimum floor of public financing of presidential, Senate and House campaigns. Money is politics is out of control today. Our Congress has become a forum for legalized bribery.”

Friedman concluded: “I hope it is Obama, because I agree with him on so many other issues. But if it’s Romney, he’d deserve to win. And, if by some miracle, both run that campaign, and the 2012 contest is about two such competing visions, then put every dollar you own in the U.S. stock market. It will go up a gazillion points.”

Happy days could be here again, if only Abe Lincoln was reincarnated.

Read Full Post »

Hope for a turnaround at The Kansas City Star? It’s in the hands of new publisher Mi-Ai Parrish

Posted in journalism, Uncategorized, tagged , on January 17, 2012| 40 Comments »

On Monday, I met Mi-Ai Parrish and heard her speak for the first time since she arrived in Kansas City last August to succeed Mark Zieman as Kansas City Star publisher.

Parrish spoke to the 40 Years Ago Column Club at the Plaza III restaurant. A crowd of about 35 was on hand, including longtime society writer Laura Rollins Hockaday and Guy Townsend, president and publisher of  Townsend Communications. (Townsend will be the featured speaker at the club’s February meeting.)

It was an interesting and informative session, and Parrish demonstrated that her leadership style is much different than Zieman’s.

The last Star publisher, in my experience, who had a strong personal appeal was the late James H. Hale, who brought a Texas-sized personality from the Lone Star State after Capital Cities Inc. bought the employee-owned paper in 1977. (That was the first in a series of transactions that ended up six years ago with The Star in the hands of The McClatchy Company.)

It appears to me that with some aggressive profile building, the 40- or 41-year-old Parrish also has a  chance  to establish a strong personal appeal and, in so doing, push the paper toward renewed stability and greater profitability…Just because the newspaper industry is in the tank doesn’t mean that every paper has to fare poorly.

Financially, The Star reached its apex under Hale; for years, it was a virtual money-disgorging machine. Of course, the environment for newspapers was much, much stronger back then, but I think it was not just favorable economic conditions that enabled The Star to flourish under Hale. He was a reporters’ and editors’ publisher — a colorful guy who was accessible, funny and didn’t hesitate to take on the established powers, even though he drank and ate barbecue with them.

Hale was succeeded by a series of arched-back publishers, including Robert Woodworth, Mac Tully and Zieman, all of whom thought The Star was a cut above the other major businesses in town and that they, personally, didn’t need to sell the community on the value of the paper.

They knew they needed to sell papers; they just didn’t understand that, like selling cars, a key ingredient is a good salesman or saleswoman.

They ran it like it was on autopilot, and then, almost overnight, the motor stopped, thanks to the rise of the Internet and the Great Recession.

So, against the backdrop of an insipid entity (The Kansas City Star Co.) and in the worst newspaper environment we have ever seen, along comes Parrish.

She can do one of two things:

Present the same cool, presumptive demeanor that her immediate predecessors did and watch the paper’s fortunes continue to decline, or…

Let down her beautiful hair (figuratively, because it’s already down literally) and push “my Star,” as she calls it, with demonic persistence throughout the community.

After lunch yesterday, when Parrish stood up and began to speak, I was worried.

She proceeded to read a prepared speech, in which she traced the tired history of The Star. (Sorry, that doesn’t even excite many members of the 40 Years Ago Club.) She also talked about how, in the future, we’d be reading the paper on all sorts of electronic gadgets. We’re already doing that, of course, but I guess she meant there’d be even more, fancier gadgets down the road.

Not only did she read the speech, she read it fast, like she wanted to get through it as quickly as possible. In the process, she made no connection whatsoever with the audience.

The only line that really caught my ear was this:

“When people ask me, ‘Why should I care about the newspaper?’ I say, ‘If you value democracy, you damn well better.’ “

After the prepared speech, however — when she began taking questions — she showed another, more open side of herself.

Among other things, she said that:

:: The Star remains profitable. (Reassuring, for sure.)

:: We were seeing the “infancy” of the new Star model develop before our eyes. (Put that way, it sounded a lot more interesting than what gadgets we might be using to access the paper.)

:: Printed newspapers would be around “for many, many, many, many years.” (Encouraging to me and, I’m sure, many other dead-tree devotees.)

:: The Star generates about 85 percent of its revenue from advertising and 15 percent from circulation. Before the precipitous decline of the newspaper industry, starting in 2005, ad revenue accounted for about 90 percent of revenue, she said. (As surely as Obama is going to kick Romney to the curb, the percentage of revenue from circulation must continue to rise.)

:: Even at $1 a copy on newsstands, the daily Star remains a bargain. (Probably true.)

:: The Star is among the top three properties in the McClatchy chain. “We’re a big dog,” she said. (See next graph.)

Like the prepared speech, the “big dog” comment bothered me because that dog, while it’s still pretty big, doesn’t have nearly the bite that it used to. And it’s by no means safe to assume that most or all of its teeth will stay around “many, many, many, many years.”

All in all, I saw more positives than negatives in Parrish. For one thing, she talked about a specific story and mentioned a specific reporter, demonstrating that she’s closely in tune with the product and that, like Hale, she might be a reporters’ and editors’ publisher. (Which, in my opinion, translates into a readers’ publisher.)

The reporter she mentioned was Steve Kraske:  “Steve Kraske?, she said, illustrating her assertion that the paper was still a bargain. “He’s totally worth a dollar a day.”

The story she mentioned was Kent Babb’s fabulous but disturbing Sunday take-out on the brainwashing and intimidation that Kansas City Chiefs’ employees are being subjected to under Chiefs’ owner Clark Hunt, president Mark Donovan and general manager Scott Pioli.

Other general, positive indications were that Parrish answered questions directly, for the most part, and made it clear that she is taking personal responsibility for The Star’s future.

In addition to referring to it as “my Star,” she said, in explaining why the paper remained a good deal for customers: “I put the whole darn thing together for you, and I deliver it to you.”

She wasn’t looking for a pat on the back there; it seemed to me that she was simply accepting responsibility for keeping the presses running and making sure the paper got to people’s front yards.

And since she is willing to put that responsibility squarely on her shoulders, I say this:

Mi-Ai — Get out there every chance you get; attend every luncheon you possibly can; do every TV and radio interview you’re asked to do; attend every major civic function you can weasel your way into; don’t miss an opportunity to mingle with members of the public and tell them who you are and what your vision is for the hometown paper.

In short, make your presence felt; let the Kansas City area know who you are and why “your Star” is important to us…True, The Star isn’t what it used to be, but you’re right about it still being important and a good deal.

Sell it, lady!

Read Full Post »

Seamus — the Irish (car) setter

Posted in journalism, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on January 16, 2012| 9 Comments »

I want to preface this piece by saying I’m no fan of Mitt Romney. In fact, I think he’s the most opportunistic and malleable of the candidates for the Republican nomination for President.

He will say just about anything to get elected, which, fortunately, probably isn’t going to happen. President Obama is the only candidate on either side who is consistently logical and reasonable when he opens his mouth. Plus, Romney probably won’t get the vote of a single black person.

Like most people, I enjoy humor at the expense of some of the gaffes that politicians make, but I don’t like cheap shots. Especially cheap shots that are fashioned into a running joke.

And that’s exactly what liberal columnist Gail Collins of The New York Times is guilty of. Collins is often funny, and I look forward to her columns, but she has gone way overboard on the subject of Romney and a nearly 30-year-old incident involving his family’s Irish setter, now deceased.

Every time she writes about Romney — and I mean every time — Collins works in a line about the time that Romney “drove to Canada with the family dog strapped to the roof of the station wagon.”

When I first read it, sometime last year, I was horrified. With subsequent references, however, I started wanting more details. A few months ago, I sent an e-mail to Collins, asking her if the dog was strapped bodily to the car or if he was in a crate. If he was in a crate, I asked, was he protected from the wind?

A few weeks later, Collins wrote back, saying that the dog was in a crate and protected from the wind, but she noted that the dog must have been in distress because he got diarrhea during the trip.

A week or so after my e-mail, Collins included the first and only reference I have seen her make to the dog having been in a crate. Thereafter, it was back to the dog being strapped to the roof.

Take these recent references in Collins columns, for example:

Jan. 12: There is nothing Gingrich won’t do to get Mitt. At the end of the video, there’s a clip of Romney speaking French! And now Newt’s Web site has a video that basically asks whether America will elect a president who once drove to Canada with the family dog strapped to the roof of the car. Which is, of course, an excellent question.

Jan. 5: Did I ever mention that Romney once drove to Canada with the family Irish setter strapped to the roof of the car? The dog’s name was Seamus. New Hampshire Republicans, if you can’t think of anybody to vote for on Tuesday, consider writing in the name Seamus when you go to the polls. Maybe we can start a boomlet.

Dec. 15: …the odds are very good that no one has ever called Mitt zany in his entire life. Unless it was when he drove to Canada with the family dog strapped to the roof of the station wagon.

Dec. 1: And maybe we could get over his driving to Canada with the family dog strapped to the roof of the car if he’d just admit it was because he was too cheap to hire a dog-sitter. Maybe.

That’s at least four mentions in the last six weeks. In my opinion that’s beating a dead horse.

And the horse doesn’t deserve to be beaten. Here’s why…

Los Angeles Times columnist Meghan Daum did some reporting on the Seamus situation recently and, in a Dec. 29, column set the record straight, doing so deftly and humorously, without taking a sledgehammer to Collins.

Daum’s column begins:

“In 1983, a 36-year-old Romney and his wife and five young boys piled into the family station wagon for a 12-hour drive from Boston to Lake Huron in Canada. As was the custom, Seamus, their Irish setter, rode in a crate strapped to the top of the car.

“Somewhere along the way, the dog began to experience, shall we say, digestive trouble that made its presence known via, uh, streaks on the back windshield. Ever the efficiency enforcer, Romney pulled into a gas station, hosed the dog off, put him back on the roof and continued the trip.

“The anecdote was first relayed in a Boston Globe article in 2007, the last time Romney ran for the Republican presidential nomination. Since then, it’s endured a long telephone game of exaggerations and misconstruels. (Gail Collins likes to write about it in her New York Times column.)

“Many versions of the story imply that the dog was not in a crate but rather tethered to the luggage rack in the manner of a silent movie damsel tied to railroad tracks. Others seem to conflate it with the scene in National Lampoon’s Vacation…in which Chevy Chase inadvertently (and supposedly hilariously) drags a dog to its death after forgetting to untie it from the car after a picnic.”

Daum goes on to say that “the truth is considerably less cartoonish than the myth.” Not only was Seamus in a crate, she said, but Romney had fashioned a windscreen that protected the crate.

“Look,” Daum continued, “I’m not suggesting that Seamus’ rides on the roof were ecstatic journeys akin to Snoopy piloting his doghouse in the spirit of the Red Baron. But let’s try to think objectively. Assuming his car sickness was an isolated event, would Seamus really have been better off crammed into a station wagon with seven humans than up top in a secure, enclosed crate with a windscreen? Moreover, if Seamus had been, say, a Texas dog in the back of a pickup, as opposed to a Massachusetts dog on top of a car, would anyone have batted an eye?”

Excellent observations, especially about the Texas dog in the back of a truck. For example, if George W. Bush drove across Texas with his dog (if he still has one) in the bed of the pickup, would anyone other than a card-carrying SPCA member voice concern?

In conclusion, Daum suggests it’s time to give Romney a break on his idea of proper pet transportation.

“Sure, his judgment may have been lacking when it came to canine transportation,” she said, “but if this is the extent of his personal baggage, he’s been traveling light.”

That’s for sure.

Seamus -- RIP

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »