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

The red-light-camera controversy, which ignited on Tuesday when The Star published a front-page story under the headline “Red-light cameras don’t add to safety,” is very weird.

Almost inexplicably weird.

Almost, I said, and that’s why I suggest you read on.

Darryl Forte

It appears to me, based largely on Wednesday’s follow-up article, which exposed some glaring mistakes in the study, that Police Chief Darryl Forte has taken his first belly flop into the mud since taking office last year.

I also believe that the Police Department came out with this badly flawed study because it was eager to make the traffic-camera program — which City Hall, not the Police Department, initiated two years ago — look like a big money grab by the city.

The real damage, unfortunately, was done by The Star’s first story, the one on Tuesday, which blared the tainted results of the Police Department study. That story was not only on the front page, it was the A1 “centerpiece,” accompanied by an image of a big traffic signal, with statistics printed inside the red, yellow and green lights.

The corrections — “additional data,” as the police called it — came out in a Star story on Wednesday. The problem is that the follow-up article was “buried” on page A4, where it probably was seen by a third or less of  the number of people who saw Tuesday’s front-page story.

In my opinion, KC Star editors should have put the follow-up story on the front page, too. It wouldn’t have had to be a centerpiece story, exactly matching the proportions of the first story, but the errors and omissions in the first article were so significant that the “fix” should at least have made the front page.

But the biggest transgressor here is not The Star; I don’t think the editors understood the significance of the screw-ups and what was behind the curious release of a police study bashing the traffic-camera program.

No, the biggest crook here is the Police Department, which conducted and released the study.

That’s where Forte comes into the picture. He wasn’t quoted or mentioned in either article, but certainly he reviewed the study and signed off on it before it was released.

Let’s take a step back now and look at two of the biggest problems with the study:

First: The initial version did not include the fact that “wrecks caused by red-light runners at the 17 intersections (where cameras are located) dropped from 52 wrecks before the cameras’ arrival to 24 wrecks in the second year after their arrival.”

That’s from the second-day story.

The gist of the first-day story was that the total number of wrecks at the 17 intersections increased after the cameras were installed. But that seemingly damning statistic took into account all wrecks — not just those resulting from red-light running. Many wrecks were rear-end jobs and or from right turns on red. Those types of wrecks result in far fewer serious injuries than the T-bone crashes caused by red-light runners.

The big problem at the camera-monitored intersections — and the main safety reason for installing the cameras — was to reduce red-light running and, consequently, the incidence of wrecks resulting from red-light running.

Holy crap! If the number of wrecks caused by red-light runners went down by more than half (which it apparently did), that alone justifies the installation of the cameras, in my opinion. Red-light runners are some of the most dangerous sons-of-bitches on the road, except for the criminals trying to elude police — and they’re running red lights, of course.

Second: The police study reported that officers had written about 200,000 camera-related tickets since January 2009. “At $100 a ticket,” The Star’s first story said, “these fines could bring in $20 million.” But officials with a private company that has a contract with the city to run the program, 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.

Indeed, the program has proved to be a cash cow for the city, but apparently 25 percent less so than the police department portrayed it.

…And that brings us to this: Why would the Police Department want to trumpet the fact that the program is a cash cow for the city? And why would the department be so careless with numbers that portray the windfall as much bigger than it actually is?

My theory is that it stems from the ongoing bitterness between City Hall — which pays for the Police Department but has little say in its operations — and the Police Department, which thumbs its nose at the city and is run by a board of commissioners appointed by the governor.

For decades , the city has wanted to wrest control of the department from the state (a situation that goes back to the Pendergast days) so that it can hold the department’s feet to the fire on expenditures, priorities and policies.

Currently, City Hall and the Police Department are tangling over the issue of whether the PD should join the city’s health insurance plan, which would save the city, i.e., taxpayers, big bucks.

In an opinion piece last week, The Star’s Yael T. Abouhalkah wrote: “This has been discussed for years at City Hall, yet the goal of saving money for taxpayers has never gained traction with police officers who consider themselves special and want to keep their own insurance plan.”

The police, of course, want to keep things just as they are — less interference from that nettlesome city, don’t you know — and the chances of the Missouri General Assembly relinquishing state control of such a large and important function are probably about zero. I can’t foresee any circumstances under which the state would hand over the reins to KCMO.

So, here’s the scenario that is running through my head…

The traffic commander, whoever he is, brings the study to Chief Forte, and says, “Lookie here, chief, this traffic camera enforcement turns not to be all it was cracked up to be…wrecks everywhere and the money is pouring into City Hall.”

(Remember, as noted above, the private company that runs the program has a contract with the city, not the Police Department.)

And Forte replies, “Well, well, well, let’s put this report out as soon as possible; we’ll show Kansas Citians that our friends across the street are motivated only by the money they take in.”

Maybe I’m wrong, I don’t know. Maybe the chief just didn’t ask enough questions of the traffic commander and wanted to go along with division leaders who had put a lot of time and effort into the study.

All I know is that it does make sense if mutual mistrust and teeth gnashing is at the root of it. The two things that the cops look for in trying to solve murders are what? Motive and opportunity.

They had both in “The Case of the Flawed Study.”

Get Sherlock Holmes in here.

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I think the editors down at 18th and Grand are starting to wise up.

I’m seeing increasing signs of The Star serving up a broader menu of stories — primarily more national stories — than the steady diet of local stories, which reflected the off-kilter philosophy that has drained many major metropolitan dailies of their breadth during the past five to 10 years.

When I was an assistant metro editor at The Star, I constantly lobbied at news meetings for big, national stories to run on the front page. Sometimes it happened, but often it didn’t. The editors were convinced that to stop the downward spiral of circulation, they needed a hyper-local product.

With that mind-set, they were simply following the lead of other major metropolitan dailies…and they all went over the cliff together. (Not to say that was the only reason that newspapers have lost their impact with many people.)

That’s the way it was in the newspaper business way too long: When a few papers decided it was time for a “state-or-the-art redesign” or more feature stories on the front page — or whatever — everybody jumped in for fear of missing the boat.

I always thought we needed to give the readers a good balance of stories on the front page and, especially, to give serious consideration to whatever stories The New York Times planned to run on its front page the next day. Late every afternoon, after its own news meeting, The Times sends to papers that subscribe to its news service a list of the stories it intends to run “out front,” as we say.

In my opinion, if a news editor follows the Times’ lead, it’s hard to go too far off course. The Times has the best reporters, the best editors, the best photographers, the best columnists in the country, so why wouldn’t you want to take its recommendations.

While The Star continues to beat the local drum on the front page, it is watching The Times more closely, and, in so doing, giving the readers more of what they need (like far-reaching stories with significant implications) instead of what they say they want (like entertainment news and stories about animals).

For years, while the bottom lines of major dailies have plummeted, newspapers have been chasing the holy grail of “what the readers want.” Hasn’t worked, and the pursuit should have been given up long ago.

In each of the last three days, The Star has run on its front page a major story that The Times ran on its front page, too. (The Times also generated each story.)

On Tuesday, it was a story about the growing wealth gap between members of Congress and their constituents. (It ran at the bottom of The Star’s front page and at the top of The Times’ front page).

On Wednesday, it was the widespread failure of all-metal, artificial hips. (Again, it ran at the bottom of page in The Star and at the top of the page in The Times.)

Today, it was the increasing number of women leaving the workplace and continuing their educations. (The story ran at the top of the page in both The Star and The Times. Hooray!)

Now, you might be asking yourself, “What’s so magical about The New York Times’ front-page story selection?”

Well, in this day of an endless and continuous avalanche of news and information coming at us electronically, all of us can use a compass that helps point us toward what is really important.

Carr

In an interview yesterday with Terry Gross on NPR’s “Fresh Air,” David Carr, media writer for The Times (and a budding celebrity because he has risen to great heights after beating back the twin demons of alcohol and drugs), explained the importance of perspective.

Trying to assess each day’s torrent of information “whizzing past me,” he said, it’s difficult for him to determine what is important and what isn’t.

He used to think it was “silly,” he said, that editors at The Times spent so much time “organizing the hierarchy of the six or seven most important stories in Western civilization.”

“Meanwhile,” Carr said, “the Web is above them, pivoting and alighting, and all these stories are morphing and changing. And I thought: Well, how silly is this?

“But you know what? I came to want that resting place, where someone yelled stop and decided, look, this is stuff you need to know about going forward.”

Like Carr, I find great satisfaction in that resting place, where experts — having sifted through the day’s news — have done their best to let the rest of us know what we “need to know” in this increasingly complex and maddening world.

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