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

The pace of news is fast and furious these days…

Let’s take a look at one negative and one positive. We’ll start with the negative because, of course, that’s what sells blogs and newspapers.

KC Police Chief Rick Smith

I knew this guy was a terrible chief — pays little attention to the East Side and goes out of his way to protect rogue officers on the force — but I didn’t know until today he was an idiot.

Unbelievably, Smith had accepted an invitation to be a guest of honor at a partisan political event — the Jackson County Republican Committee’s April 17 Reagan-Lincoln Day dinner.

Even more unbelievably, he was going to share the stage with disgraced former Gov. Eric Greitens and the looney McCloskeys of St. Louis. You remember them — the paranoid couple who, on June 28, waved guns at a group of protesters who entered a private street while on their way to the St. Louis mayor’s home. Here they are, Patricia and Mark, the Bonnie and Clyde of Missouri.

Smith had every intention of joining these goofballs — Greitens and the McCloskeys — until Mayor Quinton Lucas called him out Friday morning.

“Never in Kansas City have I seen our apolitical appointees—be it a police chief, city manager, or fire chief—engage as featured guests/speakers in partisan political events or causes. The reasons not to do so are numerous and apparent. I would hope this does not change,” Lucas said on Twitter.

A short time later, Smith pulled out, saying, “It is becoming apparent that my attendance at the event would be a distraction.”

It should have been apparent to him the moment he got the invitation.

But now we know how really bad this chief is, and maybe this will prompt Lucas, a member of the Board of Police Commissioners, to accept a longstanding challenge from Gwen Grant, president of the Urban League of Kansas City. She has urged Lucas to simply make a motion at a meeting of the Board of Police Commissioners to fire Smith.

She knows — and Lucas knows — it won’t pass because at least three of the five commissioners — all Republicans, of course — are firmly behind Lucas.

But Grant, in an effort to get Lucas to show some guts, has told him privately: “Just make the motion and see what happens.”

Do it, Lucas, do it.

Homeless camps

Gotta give Lucas credit on this one.

For weeks, scores of homeless people have set up camps on the south lawn of City Hall and green space at the intersection of Southwest Trafficway and Westport Road.

These camps are an eyesore, and there was talk at City Hall of clearing them out. It’s a very knotty problem, however, because these are the lowest people on the economic scale and rousting them out would look terrible.

But today, the City Council came up with what appears to be a strategic and smart move: It unanimously passed a measure to provide temporary housing for up to 500 people in hotel rooms.

Right away, apparently, homeless people can start arranging temporary housing in hotels for 90 days.

Lucas, who was involved in several days of discussion with leaders of the homeless coalition, said the 90-day period will allow time to work on two other goals: a land bank for permanent housing and employment opportunities.

James Shelby, leader of the homeless coalition, called the hotel proposal a good first step. “The rest,” he said, “is contingent on the City Council continuing to work with us and to create systemic policies and different stuff that affect our lives for the better. That’s all we’re looking for. We’re tired of being on the bottom of the totem pole. It’s time to treat everybody with the same respect and dignity.”

Bravo for Lucas and the City Council. Looks like Kansas City is not going to make national news by tearing down tents and shooing people off public property.

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I said I was going to try to cover as much of the Kylr Yust trial as I could, but, unfortunately, I haven’t had time to cover it at all since it began Monday in Cass County Circuit Court.

There’s plenty of coverage, however, from The Star and some TV stations, and if you’re looking for blanket coverage, I recommend KMBC-TV’s website. The station is providing real-time coverage, from one witness to the next.

So far, testimony has centered around the disappearance of Kara Kopetsky, who had been dating Yust and went missing the morning of May 4, 2007, after leaving Belton High School, where she was a student.

Yust, 32, is also charged with murdering Jessica Runions, another woman he dated, in 2016. The remains of both women were found in a wooded area south of Belton in April 2017. Prosecutors have said the location was not far from a house where Yust used to spend time.

From what I’ve read, it sounds like the state’s evidence is coming in very well. So far, the defense has been nipping around the edges of incriminating testimony, trying to case doubt about the some witnesses’ credibility.

Here’s some of the most incriminating testimony so far, accompanied by my observations…

:: Yust apparently told at least four people he had killed Kopetsky, including one woman who was wearing a wire to record what he told her. The woman has not testified yet, but a defense attorney said in her opening statement Monday that Yust told the woman he had killed Kopetsky because she was acting titillated by the possibility of being in the company of a murderer, and Yust thought that by telling her he had killed someone she would agree to have sex with him…I doubt if the jury will buy that story. How many people are going to confess to a murder to get laid?

:: Yust was a member of a “death metal band.” He was the lead singer, although indications are there was a lot more yelling than singing…If you’re going to end up charged with murder, I can’t imagine a worse type of band to have been involved with than a band playing music defined by “death.”

:: Yust had a very bad temper. Jennifer Smith, a friend of Kopetsky’s, testified Yust would be “screaming at the top of his lungs” at gatherings of friends…I guess it’s possible he wasn’t out of control. Perhaps he was just exercising his vocal chords to prepare for death-metal performances.

:: At her mother’s urging, Kopetsky applied for and got a restraining order against Yust on April 30, 2007, after coming home with cigarette burns inflicted by Yust. In the application for the order, she (Kara) wrote, “The abuse has gotten worse over time.” Her mother, Rhonda Beckford, also read from a poem her daughter had written, in which Kara said, “After all the pain and suffering, I am through.” She may have been through, but, as is the case in many abusive relationships, she wasn’t able to get away in time to save her life.

:: Amy Clark, another friend of Kara’s and the person who reported her missing the day she disappeared, testified she had seen signs of abuse on Kara, including a “choke mark” and a “fat lip.” Kara and Jessica are believed to have been strangled to death. A choke mark certainly won’t win Yust any points with the jury.

:: A former Belton Police Department supervisor testified he brought Yust in for questioning on May 6, 2007, because he was aware of the restraining order. Steve Edson, the former supervisor, said that in the interview Yust insisted he would never hurt Kara but admitted to having grabbed her and shaken her. Oddly, Edson said, Yust spoke about Kara in the past tense…Who else besides the killer would have known she was permanently gone and not just missing?

:: Amy Clark testified that two weeks before Kara disappeared, Yust told her (Clark), “If I can’t have her, nobody can.” The prosecution is establishing a picture of a jealous hothead who was under a restraining order and who supposedly confessed to a murder in the hopes of getting laid…Even with no physical evidence linking him to the crime, it appears that Yust will be doing most of his future singing in a Fulsom-State-Prison-type setting.

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Hold on, now…The chances of snatching Tribune Publishing from the jaws of hedge fund/newspaper strangler Alden Global Capital have just increased significantly, with a big investor having stepped forward.

I wrote last week that Alden was “poised to take over Tribune Publishing,” with its $630 million offer for the Tribune chain, which includes such distinguished papers as the Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun, the Hartford Courant, the Orlando Sentinel and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

Alden already owns 32 percent of Tribune and controls three of seven spots on its board of directors.

The wrinkle in the deal began when a Maryland hotel magnate named Stewart W. Bainum Jr. offered to buy The Baltimore Sun and two other Maryland papers owned by Tribune for $65 million and turn them over to a nonprofit he would create. Bainum, chairman of Choice Hotels International, had a nonbinding agreement to buy the three papers, but negotiations over terms faltered, and on March 16, Bainum offered to buy the whole company at a slightly higher price — $650 million — than Alden had agreed to pay.

The problem was, he couldn’t swing the deal on his own, and it appeared the transaction with Alden would go forward. Last week, however, a possible white knight stepped forward in the person of Hansjorg Wyss, former chief executive of the medical device manufacturer Synthes. Wyss (pronounced Vees) has teamed up with Bainum, and together they appear to have the financial heft to swing the deal. (Ten years ago, Wyss led the sale of Synthes to Johnson & Johnson for $20 billion.)

Judging from what Wyss told The New York Times, it appears he, along with Bainum, could be the savior this once-great newspaper company needs to get back on track after nearly 15 years of being mishandled and abused by misguided and reckless owners.

“I have an opportunity to do 500 times more than what I’m doing now,” Wyss, who lives in Wyoming, was quoted as saying.

He added this about the Chicago Tribune: “Maybe I’m naive, but the combination of giving enough money to a professional staff to do the right things and putting quite a bit of money into digital will eventually make it a very profitable newspaper.”

The pivotal player in the drama now is a surgeon-turned-entrepreneur named Patrick Soon-Shiong, who, along with his wife Michele B. Chan, bought The Los Angeles Times and the San Diego Union-Tribune from Tribune a few years ago for $500 million.

All eyes are on Soon-Shiong and Chan because they own 24 percent of Tribune and could quash the Alden deal on their own. They could do so because sale of Tribune requires regulatory approval and “yes” votes from company shareholders representing two-thirds of the non-Alden stock.

Soon-Shiong has given no clue, however, where his intentions lie. A possible indicator of which direction he might turn cropped up last month, though, when the Wall Street Journal reported that Soon-Shiong was exploring the possibility of selling the LA Times and the San Diego paper.

The Journal article said options being considered included “an outright sale of the entire company, bringing in an additional investor…or transferring management of the San Diego publication to another company, possibly Alden Global Capital Inc.’s MediaNews Group.”

Speculation has been that Soon-Shiong might have become disillusioned after spending hundreds of millions of dollars over and above the purchase price to try to invigorate the papers and make them profitable, or more profitable, in the long run. Now that they are privately held, their financials are not a matter of public record.

Soon-Shiong quickly took to Twitter to deny the report, writing: “WSJ article inaccurate. We are committed to the @LATimes.”

At odds with his unequivocal denial, however, was the fact that the Wall Street Journal article had noted that Soon-Shiong did not respond to a request for a comment before it published the article.

A Los Angeles Times story about the WSJ article said it “unnerved journalists who work at Soon-Shiong’s properties.”

I can understand why.

And now, once again, the stakes are high not only for journalists and journalism at the LA and San Diego papers, but also for nearly 3,000 employees working at Tribune Publishing.

I hope, for once, the good guys prevail in this new, awful era of hedge-fund newspaper owneership.

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What to do while waiting for the giant cargo ship Ever Given to get unwedged from the Suez Canal?

I feel sure a pair of 6EE, New Balance athletic shoes I ordered a few weeks ago are on that ship, but there’s not a thing I can do about it, so I might as well quit stewing.

(News bulletin: Ten hours after posting this, the Ever Given has been freed and is moving again.)

In the meantime, how about some Oldies? One thing about the Oldies is they help clear the mind when you’re feeling beleaguered. Because I feel like I need a little boost, we’re starting off this set with a song by Gene McDaniels called “Tower of Strength.”

McDaniels was born in KCK and grew up in Omaha. His first big hit was “A Hundred Pounds of Clay,” which reached No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 in early 1961. “Tower of Strength” was his third single. It was co-written by Burt Bacharach and got to No. 5.

I love the way McDaniels periodically gasps for air in this song — and then there’s that willowy trumpet.

McDaniels lived to be 76 but died as a self-described hermit in Maine in 2011.

Here we go…”Tower of Strength.”

**

Next we turn to a truly great R&B song, “Can I Change My Mind,” by Tyrone Davis.

This song came out in 1968, and in 1969 it replaced Marvin Gaye’s “I Heard it through the Grapevine” at the top of Billboard’s Hot R&B Singles chart. On the Billboard Hot 100, “Can I Change My Mind” rose to No. 5.

Oddly, I do not remember this song from 1969. It wasn’t until years later — can’t remember when — that it exploded into my consciousness. I’ve had the vinyl LP for decades now. That opening guitar lick, repeated throughout the song, is hard to shake from the system. The only thing I don’t care for is the song’s ending; it just trickles away unsatisfactorily, with Davis emitting a mournful plea. But overall it’s a killer.

Another song that’s hard for me to sit still to is one by The Crests, called “The Angels Listened In.” The Crests’ biggest hit was their first, “16 Candles,” which went to No. 2 in 1958. “The Angels Listened In” came along the next year and made it only to No. 22, but, like “16 Candles,” it never gets old.

An interesting thing about The Crests is they were the first interracially mixed doo-wop group, consisting of three African American members (including a woman), a Puerto Rican and an Italian American. The white guy, Johnny Mastrangelo, who later just went by Johnny Maestro, was the lead singer.

Johnny lived in Islip, NY, until 2003. He died of cancer on March 24, 2010, at his home in Cape Coral, Fl. He was 70. The founder of the group, J.T. Carter, was still living as of 2018.

The song features lively back-up singing and novel lyrics…

The angels listened in, when they heard me crying
The angels listened in, there’s no denying
They sent one with lovely charms
One who really thrills my arms,
My darling, the angels sent you

To finish up this set, we slow things down a bit with “This Guy’s in Love with You,” by Herb Alpert. It was one of the few songs in which Alpert, a trumpeter, sang. Wikipedia says, “Although Alpert’s vocal skills and range were limited, the song’s technical demands suited him.”

The pace, the phrasing and the opening keyboard contribute to the song’s soulfulness, as do the words and music by the brilliant team of Burt Bacharach and Hal David didn’t hurt.

Here’s how the record came about. Alpert sang it to his first wife in a 1968 CBS Television special titled Beat of the Brass. Wikipedia says the song was not intended to be released, but after it was used in the television special, CBS was reportedly deluged with calls from people asking about it. So, Alpert released it as a single two days after the show aired. It went to No. 1 in June 1968 and stayed there four weeks.

1968 was a good year for Herb Alpert and a good year for me.

A month before the song hit No. 1, I graduated from college in my hometown of Louisville, KY. That summer I got my first job in journalism at The Kentucky Post and Times Star in Covington, KY. I was living across the Ohio River, renting a room in a house in Cincinnati. It was my first time living away from home, except for active duty in the Army Reserve. I felt like I had wings and there was no limit to the horizon. And I never imagined the songs that I was listening to would, in a couple of decades, be called “Oldies.”

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It’s time once again for a journalism news round-up — all the news that Fitz can print.

Let’s start with The Star and a couple of significant developments there.

** First, the big, white letters identifying The Star’s home on McGee Street came down last week.

A friend passed along this photo from Twitter.

Even though this was not a surprise, it still took the wind out of me. It was hard enough when the paper sold its longtime headquarters at 1729 Grand several years ago, but now it is losing its last significant downtown foothold.

The Star announced back in November that it would leave the green glass building its former owner, Knight Ridder, commissioned in the early 2000s, just before the internet started taking big bites out of the traditional newspaper business.

The Star is now being printed in Des Moines, and the editorial staff is being relocated to who knows where.

The Privitera family, which owns Mark One Electric, now owns the building, built at a cost of $200 million, but has not said what they plan to do with it.

I sure hope it doesn’t fall into disuse and become known, down the line, as “the green monster.”

** The Star last week lost another good journalist — City Hall Reporter Allison Kite, who joined up with the Missouri Independent and the Kansas Reflector, two free, nonprofit, online operations that have quickly found niches with people looking for substantive coverage of state government. She’ll be based in Kansas City and focusing on environmental coverage.

Kite, who had been with The Star three years, bowed out graciously, saying on Twitter…

“I loved every minute here, even the ones I hated. This industry can be rough, but The Star is a really special place with ambitious journalists. It constantly punches above its weight, and I’m proud to have worked with the wonderful staff here.”

It’s a hell of a thing to have to say The Star is punching above its weight when, a few decades ago, it was making a profit of 30 or 40 cents on the dollar and setting the civic and governmental agenda in Kansas City.

Kite’s departure marks the second loss of a key reporter in recent weeks, with The Star having promoted education reporter Mara Rose Williams to the editorial board.

I said then that I wondered what the paper would do about an education reporter, and now they’ve also got to find a City Hall reporter. My guess is they’ll promote one or more of the young people they hired not too long ago to cover gun violence.

The shuffle and the scramble goes on at 1601 McG….Check that. Wherever they call home now, or will call home.

** On the national level, Alden Global Capital, the hedge fund that is far and away the king of cost-cutting journalism, is poised to take over Tribune Publishing, which has been on a long slide since 2007, when former radio executive Sam Zell bought the chain for $8.2 billion and promptly ran it into the ground.

(A good friend, Ernie Torriero, a former colleague of mine at The Star, resigned from the Chicago Tribune several years ago, before things got really bad. He later touched down safely and securely at Voice of America in D.C. and now has a nice salary, regular hours and the prospect of a satisfying retirement.)

Some of Tribune’s other papers, besides the Tribune, are the Orlando Sentinel, the Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale and the Hartford Courant and Baltimore Sun, both of which were formerly run by former KC Star editor Mike Waller, who is now retired in Hilton Head, SC.

Alden has a deal to buy Tribune Publishing for about $630 million. The deal is supposed to close within the next three months, but Alden might be selling one of the papers, the Baltimore Sun, to a hotel magnate named Stewart Bainum Jr. for about $65 million.

Alden already owns 60 dailies through its MediaNews Group, which was founded by the original journalistic shyster, William Dean Singleton, who earned the nickname “Lean Dean” for his penurious operations.

Wikipedia says, “His tight-fisted methods were later adopted as the preferred model by Alden Global Capital and other hedge funds that took over near-bankrupt newspaper companies.”

**

It’s a tough time to be a journalist working for any company owned by a hedge fund, including The Star, which is owned by Chatham Asset Management, out of New Jersey.

I’d say Allison Kite made a damn good move.

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One of the Kansas City area’s two biggest criminal cases is set to go to trial soon, while the other continues to go nowhere.

Here’s an update on the murder cases of Kylr Yust in Cass County and David Jungerman in Jackson.

Kylr Yust

Yust, 32, has been in custody since October 2017, charged in the strangulation murders of Kara Kopetsky in 2007 and Jessica Runions in 2016. The women’s remains were found in a wooded area south of Belton in April 2017.

Now, though, Yust’s day in court is almost at hand. Jury selection is set to begin a week from tomorrow, March 29, in St. Charles County.

After a jury is chosen there (picking a jury in Cass County was ruled out because of pre-trial publicity), the jurors will come to Harrisonville, with trial scheduled to begin Monday, April 5.

Credit for moving this case along goes to Circuit Judge William B. Collins, who relentlessly plowed through motion after motion as the defense attorneys — a sharp team out of the St. Louis Public Defender’s Office — have jockeyed for delay, a guilty defendant’s best chance for acquittal.

One of the defense’s last-ditch motions was to disqualify Collins on the strength of an anonymous assertion that Kopetsky’s parents, Rhonda and Jim Beckford, had been in contact with Collins. Collins asked the Missouri Supreme Court to assign a senior judge to hear the motion, and the appointed judge overruled it after the Beckfords took the stand and denied ever speaking with Collins.

This promises to be a challenging trial logistically because of Covid-19. Public interest is very high, and I’m sure Collins’ Div. 1 courtroom will be full every day — at least as full as Covid-19 restrictions allow. I expect there to be one or two overflow rooms with video coverage provided.

For court appearances, the defense attorneys have had the heavily tattooed Yust looking like a calm, polite young man, belying what witnesses are expected to characterize as a violent man with an explosive temper. Even in gray and white jail garb, his tattoos have been covered by high-necked T-shirts. For the trial, he will be in civilian clothes, and I expect, again, there will be no trace of tattoos.

David Jungerman

This case seems to be mired in quicksand. Not only is there no trial date, but not a single motion has been filed since Feb. 1.

Jungerman has been in jail since March 8, 2018, when he was arrested for threatening at gunpoint a man whom Jungerman believed had stolen some piping from his business in northeast Kansas City.

He was soon charged with the Oct. 25, 2017, murder of Kansas City lawyer Thomas Pickert, who was gunned down in the front yard of his Brookside home while talking on his cellphone. Pickert had just returned home after walking his two sons to a nearby school.

Jungerman and his family have already lost a civil suit related to the killing. In August, a Jackson County judge approved a confidential settlement brought by Pickert’s wife and parents against the Jungerman Family Irrevocable Trust. Jungerman’s daughter, Angelia Buesing, signed off on the settlement as the trustee of Jungerman’s trust.

Whenever the trial begins, testimony will show Jungerman had it in for Pickert because Pickert had successfully represented a client who sued Jungerman for more than $5 million after Jungerman shot him for prowling on his northeast Kansas City business property.

The Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office has a strong circumstantial case, and if prosecutors can prove that Jungerman’s distinctive white van had been moved from Jungerman’s property in Raytown and was in the vicinity of Pickert’s home that fateful morning, Jungerman is probably toast. Jungerman, who thinks he’s the smartest guy in every room — and every cell — told police the van did not move that day.

…My contention all along has been that the prosecutors, like the defense attorneys, are in no rush to bring the case to trial. Jungerman is safely behind bars, and he turned 83 on March 3.

Lead defense attorney Dan Ross has probably been paid well over $200,000, and two or three other defense attorneys are also in on the action. Jungerman, who’s worth has been estimated at more than $30 million, most of it from land he owns in southwest Missouri, is obsessed with his money, and I’m sure the outflow of money bothers him just as much as being in jail.

I think we can assume he’s miserable behind bars, and it’s somewhat comforting to the public at large, and particularly Pickert’s family, to know that with each passing day Jungerman is moving ever closer to his ultimate mark on the horizon.

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It was a lively news day on the journalism front.

First, there’s The Star’ promotion of two high-profile journalists — Melinda Henneberger, who has been named editorial page editor, and Mara Rose Williams, longtime education reporter, who has been promoted an editorial writer and editorial board member.

Second, there was the strange case of the Des Moines Register reporter being acquitted of misdemeanor charges related to her coverage of a civil protest against racism and police violence.

Henneberger and Williams

These were two excellent moves, in my opinion. Henneberger was one of the top two internal candidates (along with Dave Helling) to succeed Colleen McCain Nelson, who left to become executive editor of The Sacramento Bee.

Henneberger has a fine resume and was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize each of the last two years. She is a couple of years younger than Helling, who also would have been a very worthy successor to Nelson, and age may have been a factor in her selection.

I have not been a big fan of Henneberger’s writing style — it’s a bit quirky and flip at times — but she has grown on me. She and Helling have done a good job of prodding Mayor Quinton Lucas (unsuccessfully so far) to stand up to Police Chief Rick Smith and the mostly Republican, mostly state-appointed police board. The fact that she has not given Lucas a pass indicates she will push for what is in the best interests of Kansas City residents.

Star president Mike Fannin’s decision to add Mara Williams to the editorial board is an inspired one. In addition to being a top-level staff writer the last two decades or more, Williams came up with the idea for The Star’s 2020 series investigating its flawed and inadequate coverage of race in Kansas City over the decades.

That Williams came to Kansas City in the first place was a bit of luck. Her late husband, Ceasar Williams, had been hired as an assistant metro editor in 1997, and for a while Mara and their young son remained in Atlanta, where she and Ceasar worked at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. I remember overhearing a phone conversation she and Ceasar had one day, when Ceasar was encouraging her to come to join her in Kansas City. “You need to get up here,” he said.

She did get here…to the benefit of The Star and its readers. I trust she will finish her career here.

…The only down side of this is that the paper is losing another experienced reporter. So many have been lost it’s hard to believe — replaced, for the most part, by young people who don’t know the town and may not stay around long enough to learn where Smithville and De Soto are.

McClatchy’s new owner, the hedge fund Chatham Asset Management, certainly will not provide funds to hire someone of Williams’ caliber to replace her. In fact, she might not be replaced at all. Someone who already has a heavy assignment load may be asked to pick up secondary and higher education, as well.

Des Moines Register reporter

The story of Andrea Sahouri, a 25-year-old police reporter for the Register, being acquitted of misdemeanor charges stemming from last spring’s protests made today’s New York Times, getting 24 column inches in the Business section.

She was also interviewed on NPR.

What are we to conclude? I guess that it’s an outrage that a journalist was arrested for allegedly “failing to disperse” and “interferring with official acts.”

I’m not outraged; I’m just scratching my head at certain aspects of this situation.

Consider:

:: Sahouri took her boyfriend to the protest.

She said he wanted to accompany her for her protection. Come on, now. What kind of reporter takes their boyfriend or girlfriend to work with them? We used to have “take-your-kid-to-work-day” at The Star, but taking your boyfriend to work is outlandish. If a reporter thinks he or she needs protection on an assignment, they should ask their editor to send someone with them, like a photographer.

:: She did not have an i.d. badge.

What?! Her excuse was she was a new employee and hadn’t bothered to get one. That’s insane — both on her part and her editors. She should have known she might be misidentified as being part of the protest, and her editors should have made sure she had i.d.

:: She was wearing a tank top and jeans.

That is beyond ridiculous. Put on a dress or some slacks and a blouse, girl, and act like a reporter!

…I don’t have any problem with the jury acquitting her. At the same time, the Register should have fired her for incompetence and terrible judgment. And then the Register should have taken stock of how it prepares reporters for duty, especially for challenging assignments.

 

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Let’s look at three big stories that have been in the headlines the last few days:

:: KU fires football Coach Les Miles but keeps, for now, the idiot athletic director, Jeff Long, who hired him.

(Update: At 2:46 p.m. today, The Star posted a story saying Jeff Long had resigned.) 

:: Roy Blunt decides to retire from the U.S. Senate, and spineless Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas says he is considering a bid for the Democratic nomination to try to succeed Blunt.

:: The (new) Clay County Commission drops an appeal of a Sunshine Law ruling in favor of The Kansas City Star, and county government promptly starts handing over newly requested documents.

Only the last of those stories constitutes good news, so let’s start there.

**

Clay County Commission

Back in 2019, when the three-member Clay County Commission was controlled by two dunderheads, The Star filed suit after a private lawyer representing the county said a reporter would have to pay $4,200 to review legal invoices that his law firm submitted to the county.

A judge last year ruled in favor of The Star, saying that by charging such an outrageous fee, Clay County was subverting the Sunshine Law’s intention to give the public access to most government records.

At the time, commissioners Luann Ridgeway and Gene Owen held sway, and they decided to appeal the judge’s ruling to the Missouri Court of Appeals.

Beyond that case, Ridgeway and Owen were making a mockery of the Sunshine Law. They were so bad and had fallen into such disfavor with county residents that they decided not to seek another term in office and left office last year. Replacing them were Jon Carpenter, a former state representative, and Megan Thompson, who had been the Clay County clerk.

Recently Carpenter and Thompson joined Commission Chairman Jerry Nolte in voting to withdraw the appeal. In a story posted Tuesday on The Star’s website, reporter Steve Vockrodt, who had written extensively about the abuses of Ridgeway and Owen, posted a story that provided evidence of the satisfying end of this ordeal:

“On Tuesday morning, a Star reporter requested commission spending in December 2020 through a Sunshine Law request. Most of the records were produced before noon.”

For the first time in years, the political winds appear to be at the backs of Clay County residents.

**

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The Eagle Scout Tribute Fountain, pictured here, has a special place in my memory.

The fountain and monument are located on the northeast corner of 39th and Gillham, just a few blocks from where I rented an apartment when I first moved to Kansas City in 1969, a year after the monument was completed.

But it wasn’t the proximity to my apartment that makes it stand out in my memory. I associate the fountain with a particular story I wrote back in the early 1970s and with a certain photographer who took the main photo that accompanied the story.

So let me tell you the story behind the story — and a few other stories about the photographer.

The photographer was George “Wes” Lyle, who was legendary at The Kansas City Times (the morning edition of The Star) before I arrived. He was a handsome, leathery-looking guy who had a beautiful shock of white hair, even then, when he was in his 30s.

Wes was an outstanding photographer. He took big, bold pictures that captured mood, personality and setting. But he was just as devoted to his vices — drinking, smoking and sex — as he was to photography.

He not only indulged himself in all three categories while off duty but also during and at work.

Of course back then you could smoke in any and all office buildings, and at 1729 Grand some employees kept bottles of liquor in their desks or, in Lyle’s case, in the photo lab. And some employees, including the then-managing editor of The Times, would drink their evening “lunch” at a bar/restaurant named Labruzzo’s, on Grand Avenue just south of 18th Street. (It’s now the Green Lady Lounge.)

**

When I arrived at The Star, I had less than a year’s experience in journalism and had no idea how things went at a big-city newsroom. Wes Lyle showed me one dimension of it.

Often back then, the night city editor — an erudite man named Don D. “Casey” Jones, who collected art — would send reporters out with photographers to “cruise,” that is, look for news. It’s the dumbest way in the world to try to find news, but, in Casey’s mind, it was better than having reporters sitting in the newsroom with their feet on their desks and photographers lounging in the lab.

One of the first times I went “cruising” with Wes, he said, “I gotta make a stop at a friend’s house.” I thought that a bit odd, but then the photographers always drove so they were in charge of the cruising expeditions.

Straightaway, we headed for a house on a street just east of Theis Park, where, Wes said, a lady friend lived. Now this was before long before cellphones, so Wes had either called her from the office or was just dropping by on the expectation she was home. She was.

So, for about 45 minutes, I sat in the car doing absolutely nothing while Wes was inside getting his jollies and undoubtedly downing a few more drinks. When he came out, he said nothing, and we proceeded to drive around killing time. He was relaxed, though…

Turned out Wes, who was single, had other lady friends he’d pop in on, and, in addition, he was sometimes on the make at work. I remember hearing one day that he’d had sex with a newsroom receptionist on a back-of-the-building elevator. Seventeen-twenty-nine-Grand had only three stories, so no ride was ever very long, but I presume either Wes or the receptionist depressed the “close door” button until that particular ride was over.

Knowing him, and the receptionist, I have no doubt it happened.

**

Now, onto the story behind the Eagle Scout Fountain story…

In frequenting the Midtown bars, around which my social life revolved in the early ’70s, I had come across a band called The Stoned Circus, led by a guitarist named John Isom. (Many years later he had a band called Johnny I and the Receders.)

I wanted to do a story on the band and pitched the idea to the Star Sunday Magazine editor, who went for it.

The Stoned Circus frequently played at a bar called the Inferno Show Lounge at 40th and Troost. That’s where I first approached Isom and asked if he would be game for a story about the band. He was.

Wes got the photo assignment, and one night I agreed to meet him at the Inferno so he could take photos. It was smokey in the bar and so dark, as I recall, you had to watch every step. The only part of the decor I remember was red velvet wall covering.

Wes had had a few drinks before he arrived, and then he sat down and drank a few more while listening to the band and taking in the scene. After a while, I said, “Wes, when are you going to take some pictures?” He looked at me with a long face and glazed eyes and said, “I can’t do it; I’m too drunk.”

“What?” I said. “We’ve gotta get these pictures!”

“Not tonight,” he said. “I can’t do it.”

Right there, for some reason, I thought of the Eagle Scout Fountain. I proposed that we meet there the next day and take the main photo there. The next morning, then, everyone showed up at 39th and Gillham (Wes was sober), and we situated the band members around and among the figures in the monument.

The photo was fantastic. It was on the cover of the Feb. 28, 1971, edition of the Sunday magazine. All these years I have kept a copy of that story but not of the cover itself. I wish I would have asked Wes to make me a print of the photo.

**

I’ve been thinking a lot about that story, and about Wes, the last couple of days. When I went to The Star’s online obituaries Sunday morning — as I do every Sunday morning — I saw that Wes had died Feb. 21.

For years, he’d lived in the Cathedral Square Towers Apartments downtown, where, for years, he shot photos of the morning sky out of an apartment window.

He was still drinking, I feel sure. He was, anyway, the last time I saw him, which was at a KC Star reunion at the Kansas City Country Club several years ago. I had chatted with him for a few minutes after he arrived, when he suddenly excused himself, saying, “Gotta get a drink.”

Somehow, Wes made it to age 86. Here are two photos — one from the obit and one from 2019. Former KC Star photographer Ginzy Schaefer took the 2019 photo. (Thanks, Ginzy!)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Below is an image of a secondary photo Wes took for that Sunday Magazine story…We had gone back to the Inferno at some point for this photo, which ran inside the magazine, with the text.

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We returned to KC last night after a month in Florida.

It’s the longest period Patty and I have ever been away from home. Five days were devoted to driving — three on the way down, two on the return — and 26 days relaxing.

We spent the first week in Naples (I’m sure some of you saw my photos from there) and the next three in Clearwater and Dunedin, which is 175 miles north of Naples. To give you perspective, here’s the map…

Naples is about as far down as you can go on the west coast, while Clearwater and Dunedin are part of the fabulous Tampa Bay area. It’s warmer in Naples, of course, but overall we much prefer the Clearwater, mainly because it is much more of a “regular” city than Naples, where the wealth is over the top.

This one fact will tell you all you need to know about the difference between Naples and Clearwater: Where you pay $110 plus tax to play 18 holes on a good golf course in Naples, you can play the Clearwater Country Club (open to the public) for $50 plus tax.

Now, here are some photos from the second leg of our trip.

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