Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

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 »

As the kitchen heats up, Smokey Dyer appears to be heading out the back door

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on March 2, 2012| 13 Comments »

A big fire is burning down at City Hall, and the fire chief is heading for the hills.

City Manager Troy Schulte and Mayor Sly James have pinned Chief Smokey Dyer into a corner with their directive that he come up with a plan to cut $7.5 million from the Fire Department’s budget.

In his 2012-2013 budget message to James last month, Schulte proposed cutting 105 firefighters. Fire calls, he said, have dropped by more than 60 percent the last 10 years, largely because of improved building codes, inspections and fire prevention education. Clearly, he implied, a bulging firefighting force was no longer needed.

Dyer’s and the fire union’s response? They chirped like birds whose nests were being threatened, saying such a cut would compromise public safety.

As the screeching went on, Schulte and James wisely put the ball in Dyer’s court, directing him to come up with his own plan for saving $7.5 million.

Smokey

Dyer, who is nearing 65, has made it clear he wants no part of a significantly trimmed-down department. A City Hall source said Wednesday that Dyer was thought to be close to resigning after Schulte’s and James’ directive that he figure out how to cut more than 100 of the department’s 1,370 positions.

Now, it looks like Smokey has cooled off a bit…enough anyway to hang on until he gets a nice golden parachute. And on Thursday the council accommodated him by approving a retirement incentive package.

The council approved a retirement-policy change that will affect only Dwyer, and perhaps future fire chiefs. Under the change, as reported by The Star’s City Hall reporter, Lynn Horsley, “Dyer would be eligible for an annual pension of about $42,000 if he were to retire soon.”

As it is, the city’s retirement plan is only available to a member of the firefighters’ pension system after 25 years of service. Dyer has been the chief slightly more than 11 years. Previously, he spent 13 years as fire chief in Lee’s Summit before retiring from that city.

I think the ordinance that the council approved is good: A fire chief who has served for at least 10 years, even if he came from another city, should be eligible for a decent pension. Good fire chiefs are hard to find. And, as some council members said, the 25-year-rule could make it difficult to recruit top-notch fire chiefs who did not rise through the KCMO ranks.

The bigger point here, however, is that Smokey seems to have one foot out the door at a time when the department is really going to need some shrewd leadership to help guide it into a time of retrenchment. As Mike Waller, a former Kansas City Star editor, once told me, “It’s easy to manage in good times, when there’s plenty of money, but it’s a lot harder when there are cutbacks.”

Dyer has been very popular with the firefighters and their union, Local 42, because he has been able to help them get big, fat salaries and raises without sacrificing any manpower.

Now, however, Smokey’s and the fire union’s real good thing is about to come to an end.

The city can no longer afford a 1,370-person department where firefighters salaries average $56,000 and they get bigger raises than other city employees.

Something’s got to give: In some way, shape or form, the fire department is going to suffer.

The council has only itself and earlier councils to blame, of course: it was elected council members, worried about running against fire union opposition, who caved in repeatedly to former firefighters’ union president Louie Wright.

In January, The Star’s Yael Abouhalkah said this in a column about Wright’s retirement:

“A big part of the recently retired fire union’s president’s legacy is a bloated Fire Department that costs Kansas Citians at least $10 million more every year than it reasonably should. That’s $10 million going to more than 100 unneeded firefighters. It’s $10 million that could be used on smoother streets, bridge repairs, better park maintenance and new technology to catch tax cheats.”

It’s enough to make you clench your teeth, but it’s hard to bring about real change because Local 42 is so damned powerful politically. They back their candidates with money; they vote; and their families vote. On the other hand, many people who complain about how the special interests get what they want don’t bother to vote and, in many cases, don’t even keep themselves informed on day-to-day developments. In a way, the apathetic get what they deserve.

But enough of that sermon…back to the here and now.

Under new fire union president Mike Cambiano, the firefighters have dug in for this new battle. Horsley reported that several hundred firefighters packed into the City Council Chamber yesterday in support of Dyer and a no-job-cut budget. (Frankly, I don’t know how several hundred firefighters were able to squeeze into the chamber, unless fire regulations were ignored and firefighters were sitting in each other’s laps.)

As this face-off advances, it will be interesting to see just how hard and far James is ready to push against the union. After all, he was elected last year with firefighter union support, and he almost surely will seek re-election in 2015.

At Thursday’s council meeting, he gave an indication of a softening of position.

“We ought to be able to find some ways to make sure we’re not unnecessarily cutting large numbers of firefighters,” he said. “Nobody wants to do that. That’s not palatable. We’ve got to dig beyond the obvious and look at things that are not so obvious.”

We’ll probably end up with some sort of compromise where fewer than 50 firefighting jobs are cut and the budget gurus come up with a “previously unidentified” few million bucks — look what we found! — that makes the union happy. For now. 

But by the time that happens, Smokey might have hit the door, or he’ll be mighty close.

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 »

Obama’s decision on the super PAC: Stand on principle or increase the risk of losing re-election?

Posted in politics, Uncategorized, tagged , , on February 14, 2012| 21 Comments »

Sometimes, my beloved New York Times tends to get too liberal and idealistic for my Democratic tastes.

One of the things I love about The Times is that it holds politicians to extremely high standards — as it should, of course — and seldom lowers the bar.

But in an editorial last Wednesday, The Times held President Barack Obama to an unrealistically high bar, in my opinion, when it chided him for deciding to cooperate with a super PAC called Priorities USA Action.

The Times said that Obama’s announcement “fully implicates the president, his campaign and his administration in the pollution of the political system unleashed by Citizens United and related court decisions.”

By agreeing to play ball with a super PAC, the editorial went on, Obama “gave in to the culture of the Citizens United decision that he once denounced as a ‘threat to our democracy.’ ”

The editorial ran under the headline, “Another Campaign for Sale.” The subhead said, “President Obama reverses position and joins the sleazy ‘Super PAC’ money race.”

Yes, the super PAC system is sleazy, and, yes, the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision of 2010 was crazy and has further tainted our elective system. And, yes, it would be great if President Obama had decided to forgo the super PAC route.

But at what cost? Everyone knows the power of money in politics…If you (or somebody supporting you) can go on TV and say your opponent is a dipstick thousands of times more than you can say the same about him (or her), you’re likely to prevail. You have to respond to negative ads, and you need just about equal resources to even try to effectively counteract them.

The Times’ editorial board thoroughly dislikes all the Republican candidates and will undoubtedly endorse Obama for re-election. So, what it was doing in this editorial, it appears to me, was calling on Obama — its candidate — to take the biggest gamble of his political life and run without super PAC support.

Two days after the editorial was published, The Times ran five letters to the editor about the editorial.

Two of the writers sided with The Times’ editorial, and three took Obama’s side.

One of those who sided with The Times, Paul Bloustein of Cincinnati, said: “President Obama is a very principled man, until he isn’t. His decision to use super PAC money in his re-election effort is hugely disappointing…fear of being a one-term president has trumped principle.”

The other writer who sided with The Times, Margaret McGirr, Greenwich, CT, said: “It doesn’t get better than this: watching the very same people who scolded Supreme Court justices for their decision on campaign finance defend setting up a super PAC.”

I agree, however, with the letter writers who said Obama was left with little choice, if he hoped to be re-elected.

Douglas J. Cocuzza of Hackettstown, NJ, said, “You don’t bring a knife to a gunfight. You are forced to bring a gun or not participate in the fight.”

Also using a fight analogy, Mike Cockrill of Brooklyn said: “If you’re in a boxing match and the judge says you can use chairs, you’d be a fool not to grab a chair when your opponent comes after you with one. Later in the recovery room, you can both discuss whether the chair rule is a bad one.”

(Don’t you love that last line?)

William D. Bandes of Roseville, CA, got the last word:

“You write that President Obama is ‘telling the country that simply getting re-elected is bigger than standing on principle.’ Getting re-elected is bigger than surrender, better than handing the reins over to those who bought government by giving us Citizens United in the first place.”

To be precise, Bandes should have said “better than handing the reins over to those who are trying to buy government” because the super PAC people haven’t yet bought either the executive branch of government or both divisions of the legislative branch.

I completely agree with Bandes that this is a case where the stakes are simply too big for Obama to forgo super PAC money. I sure don’t want any of those Republican dipsticks in the White House. Do you?

What Obama needs to do is get re-elected, hope some conservative Supreme Court justices die or retire and then appoint some justices who will get the court off the errant course it’s been on under John Roberts, Anton Scalia and the dope whom Jack Danforth gave us, Clarence (Coke Can) Thomas.

Read Full Post »

KC Star: Excellent Sunday paper and a sports reporter winds up a four-decade career

Posted in Uncategorized on February 13, 2012| 19 Comments »

Hats off to The Star for a fine Sunday paper. The front page consisted of three “enterprise” stories, that is, not breaking news but stories reported and written over a period of days or weeks and focus on a person or development that has been in the news.

Two sports-age stories —  one on new Kansas City Chiefs’ offensive coordinator Brian Daboll and the other on Royals’ outfielder Alex Gordon — contributed to an overall excellent print edition.

A closer look at the front-page stories…

:: The Sunday “centerpiece,” by Rick Montgomery, was about the so-called Neo Luddites, those who eschew cellphones, iPads, computers and the like. Montgomery built the story around a man named Jeffrey Ruckman, a Kansas City composer who writes his scores by hand.

The only caveat on this story is that it trailed off at the end because it failed to return to Ruckman, whose personality Montgomery did a good job of developing in print, at the very end.

:: Another story, by Tony Rizzo, told the tale of Kansas Citian Odessa Brown, who got away with a murder in Muskogee, OK, but later confessed to it while serving time for a second murder. Her conscience got to her, and she seemingly has turned her life around in prison.

The only problem I had with this story is that it failed, as far as I can tell, to say how old Brown is. Because she graduated from high school in 1983, I figure she is about 47…But, as a wise editor once warned me, never make the reader do the math.

:: In the third story, Karen Dillon put the microscope on the dysfunctions of the Gardner, KS, city government. It involves the city’s loss of a huge intermodal freight hub (Edgerton stepped in and annexed the property), a mayor and interim city administrator who are openly defying the Kansas Open Meetings Law and a councilman whose goal is to drive the mayor crazy.

Dillon

Dillon is The Star’s environmental reporter, but she combines her knowledge of that field with a great talent for investigative reporting. It was good to see her on something besides asbestos and polluted water.

***

Finally, JimmyCsays sends out heartfelt congratulations to The Star’s Mike DeArmond, who retired Saturday after a 40-year career at the paper, almost all of it on the Sports Desk. He has covered University of Missouri athletics the last 20 years.

Mike DeArmond (right) and son Gabe, who also is a sports reporter

An opinionated and tenacious person, DeArmond once challenged former Royals’ outfielder Amos Otis to a fight after Otis got lippy with him for no good reason. After DeArmond made it clear he wasn’t going to let Otis mess with him, the two got along just fine.

DeArmond has certainly earned his sheet cake and pizza party. Good luck, Mike!

Read Full Post »

Santorum, Romney and Paul run one, two, three locally, as well as statewide

Posted in Uncategorized on February 8, 2012| 12 Comments »

Perhaps those of you who are interested in politics would like to know how the top candidates for the Republican nomination for President fared Tuesday in Kansas City and Jackson, Clay and Platte counties.

As far as I can tell — and I’ve looked and looked — The Star didn’t run the local results of Tuesday’s presidential primary election, either in print or online.

I hope I’m wrong. If not, it’s very disappointing.

I worked the election yesterday as a “deputy commissioner’ ‘in Kansas City, making the rounds of seven polling places in the Northeast part of Kansas City. (I’ve done that for several years now, and it’s always interesting and informative.)

When I got home at about 8:45 last night, I was interested, of course, in the statewide outcome. CNN was already projecting Rick Santorum as the winner, which was a bit surprising to me, but I knew he had been the only candidate to visit the state before the nonbinding, preferential primary.

I wanted to see local results, too, but thought I’d wait until this morning.

Instead of getting the local results in today’s Star, however, I had to go to the website of three jurisdictions (KC, Jackson and Clay) and call one (Platte) to get the results.

Here they are, then:

Kansas City, Mo.

Santorum — 2,502
Romney — 1,709
Paul — 824

Jackson County (not including Kansas City)

Santorum — 7,372
Romney — 4,695
Paul — 1,922

Clay County (including the Kansas City part of the county)

Santorum — 3,567
Romney — 1,538
Paul — 770

Platte County (including the Kansas City part of the county)

Santorum — 1,551
Romney — 832
Paul — 292

The main thing that surprised me about those results — although it probably shouldn’t have — was the large Republican vote in Jackson County, where, again, the vote totals do not include Kansas City.

That shows dramatically the extent to which Republicans have cut into what traditionally has been a Democratic county (when you include Kansas City).

The political C.O.G. (center of gravity) seems to have swung to the GOP in Jackson County.

Jackson

President Andrew Jackson is probably sitting up in his grave today, preparing to mount a campaign in his namesake county.

It was his followers, after all, who created the modern Democratic Party in the 1830s, after “Old Hickory” was elected President.

Wikipedia says that Jackson “fought politically against what he denounced as a closed, undemocratic aristocracy.”

And isn’t that just about a perfect description of today’s Republican Party?

Read Full Post »

Citadel Plaza: No citadel, no plaza; so far, just junk

Posted in Uncategorized on February 3, 2012| 30 Comments »

Slowly, federal and city governments are taking steps to mop up the criminal and environmental detritus of a long-term, aborted attempt to develop the northwest corner of 63rd and Prospect.

On Thursday, as reported by The Star’s Mark Morris, developer William M. Threatt, 71, pleaded guilty to failing to properly remove and dispose of asbestos while overseeing the planned Citadel Plaza retail project in the early and mid 2000s.

Threatt and a co-defendant who pleaded guilty last October, Anthony Crompton, face up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000. A sentencing date has not been set.

The damage that those two inflicted — along with the previous City Council, which stupidly voted in 2008 to provide $20.5 million to jump start the project — is clearly and pathetically visible.

A concentration of trash

The acreage essentially is a big, brown field, littered with tires, plastic bags, trash, discarded carpet, concrete chunks and asbestos-tainted building materials.

What was supposed to be there was an $80 million shopping center, including a grocery, retail stores, restaurants and homes.

The difference between success and failure in this instance has left the city with perhaps the biggest East Side abomination in city history.

Most, or perhaps all, of the money that the council approved in 2008, was not appropriated after it became clear that Crompton, Threatt and their Community Development Corp. of Kansas City could not deliver on the plans they laid out on paper.

Looking south, across 63rd Street, toward Research Medical Center

Looking south, toward a Valero station on 63rd Street

The firm had no experience with a major development, and the council gave it the green light primarily because it was under pressure from East Side leaders and community members to deliver a major project to a neighborhood that was ripe for development and that would give the 63rd and Prospect area a big boost.

The council, in short, voted on hope rather than track record. After the city pulled the plug on the Citadel project, however, Threatt and Crompton sued the city for failure to deliver on the $20.5 million. Two weeks ago, a $15 million court settlement was finalized.

Yes, that is $15 million in taxpayer funds.

Looking east, from the Citadel site, toward a BP station on the northeast corner of 63rd and Prospect

Looking north on Park, a block west of Prospect

As Morris reported in his story: “For its $15 million, the city received most of the real estate and the rights to take another crack at redeveloping it.”

He quoted city officials as saying none of the money would go to Threatt. Same goes for Crompton, I trust.

The whole mess reminds me of the proposed Sailors project east of the Plaza many years ago, when the council approved a multi-story office building that had Plaza area residents up in arms. Like Community Development Corp., the R.H. Sailors Co. had no experience with a development on the scale that it was proposing.

In that case, fortunately, citizens who were opposed to the project mounted a successful petition drive, and voters defeated it at the polls in 1986.

In this case, the city is giving up a lot of money, and it looks like it’s going to be a while before the brown, trashy field on the northwest corner of 63rd and Prospect will be converted into something respectable.

On a positive note, however,when I was out photographing the site yesterday, along came an official with the City Planning & Development Department. The official, Andy Bracker, was taking photos and familiarizing himself with the site, in preparation for a major clean-up. He said he would be tracking the progress closely.

An hour or so later, I sent him an e-mail, asking when the clean-up might begin and how much it might cost.

He wrote back, saying that the plan was “to clean up the site as soon as practicable,” and that he didn’t have any facts and figures on the job just yet.

Let’s all wish Andy the best of luck and hope that the current City Council makes some wise and careful decisions about what should happen next on the northwest corner of 63rd and Prospect.

Yes, thank you, Mr. Threatt, Mr. Crompton and 2008 City Council members

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 »

Letters to the Editor: From dead on to drivel

Posted in Uncategorized on January 30, 2012| 12 Comments »

To me, one of the best benefits of having a subscription to the printed edition of The Star is turning to the Letters to the Editor page, going over them leisurely and checking out the headlines for ones you might be interested in.

I would venture to say that very few people who go to kansascity.com bother to go to the letters page — too much clicking and the layout isn’t appealing.

So, for those of you who haven’t been keeping up with the letters, I’ve earmarked a few from recent days that I’d like to single out and comment on…Maybe you’d like to comment, too.

:: Wednesday, Jan. 25, “KC Fire Department budget cuts necessary.”

Jean Kaiser of Liberty posed the question of why Local 42 of the International Association of Fire Fighters has such a “stranglehold” on city policymakers. She goes on to say:

“Mike Cambiano, new president of the firefighters union comments,  ‘I can’t imagine the city manager — who never consulted the fire chief about a reduction in force — would endanger public safety of the safety of our firefighters.’  That is inviting hysteria.

“It is common knowledge that the schedule and workload of firefighters, while providing needed emergency service, also provides time to sleep, exercise and barbecue — all while on the clock.”

Troy Schulte

I agree with Cambiano that City Manager Troy Schulte should have given Chief Smokey Dyer the courtesy of a call to advise him that he was going to recommend cutting 105 positions from the force. But Kaiser hit home on the point about all the down time that firefighters have.

The union, of course, would prefer to keep everyone’s attention on how the firefighters are constantly putting their lives on the line. Of course, they go into very dangerous situations sometimes, but at many fire stations there’s a lot more time spent shopping for groceries, preparing meals, eating and watching TV than going out on calls. I once had a KCK firefighter tell me, “It’s an easy job.”

:: Wednesday, Jan. 25, “Former House speaker.”

Fran Baker of Lee’s Summit wrote a short and bittersweet letter: “Did Steve Kraske need a transfusion after bleeding his heart out all over the Jan. 21 front page about former Missouri House Speaker Bob Griffin?”

Bull’s eye. I can’t stand stories that glamorize crooks, especially crooks who maintain their innocence, even after admitting wrongdoing.

I read Kraske’s story as far as the 11th paragraph, which went like this…

“Griffin’s message is this: He was innocent. He didn’t do what prosecutors said he did. He didn’t steer work to his longtime friend in exchange for cash. Even though he eventually pleaded guilty to a single charge of bribery, he didn’t do it, and he wishes now that he had stood up for himself and fought even harder.”

For the record, in 1997, Griffin was convicted of bribery and sentenced to four years in prison after pleading guilty to a charge of trying to steer a $16 million casino-related contract to a consulting business owned by one of his allies, Cathryn Simmons. Griffin admitted in court that his deal with Simmons was that he would get a cut.

A few years before Griffin took his fall, a former state rep sat on my deck and said of Griffin: “He’s crooked.”

:: Thursday, Jan. 26, “Presidential coverage.”

This one is singular only because it should never have seen the light of print.

Here’s the letter of Frank Berry, Kansas City, in its entirety:

“CBS News is shooting itself in the leg. It matters not whether one agrees with candidate Ron Paul. Fair and impartial coverage is the issue.

“I, for one, will no longer view CBS News. And I’m sure there will be many others who are of like mind.”

What is the reader to make of this? Obviously, CBS aired something about Ron Paul that ticked off Berry. But what did it air and when, and exactly what did Berry find unfair? All of that should have been included to put the complaint in some sort of context.

Perhaps Berry did put it in, and Lewis Diuguid, the letters editor, edited it out. That’s unlikely, however. I think Diuguid simply was on autopilot and included a letter that made no sense — letter that should have gotten the “delete” treatment.

:: Tuesday, Jan. 24, “Loosen up slots in KC.”

This is one of the daffiest letters I’ve ever seen.

Citing news about the upcoming opening of a new casino in KCK, Larry Wilhite of Bonner Springs had some advice for casino managers everywhere.

“As a casual attendee at the casinos, I recommend that the slot machines allow a player to play longer on the money they feed into that machines.

“It seems now that a $20 bill fed into a quarter machine takes about five minutes to lose. I don’t mind losing $20 in the slot machines, but it is annoying to me that I can’t at least have minimum of 15 minutes of play for that amount. You hardly have time to sit down and relax and your twenty bucks is gone.

“Loosen up the machines and allow people’s money to last longer, even if the person ends up losing it in the long run.

“I think this is the biggest gripe among slot players — not being able to play as long as their $20 should allow.”

Kind of makes you want to hit your head a couple of times, doesn’t it, to see if it’s your brain that’s not functioning properly? But, then, after a second you realize it’s definitely Wilhite’s brain that malfunctioned.

When Missouri voters overwhelmingly approved “riverboat gaming” about 20 years ago, nobody thought about how fast they might lose their money; they just wanted an opportunity to lose their money…It was, “Get the boats in here as soon as possible!”

Larry, I’ve got news for you: The casino managers’ philosophy is the same as that of the late, great W.C. Fields (pictured above): “Never Give a Sucker an Even Break.” 

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »