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

One thing that really galls me is people who are too cute for their own good.

And one such operation is a marketing outfit called Blacktop Creative, which came up with and executed the ludicrous and obnoxious idea of planting 2,000 red, white and blue signs on public property and in people’s yards — without bothering to get homeowners’ permission — to promote a big fund-raiser for Children’s Mercy Hospital.

I’m sure you’ve seen these signs. They popped up Friday morning all over town, especially on major thoroughfares like Ward Parkway and State Line Road. They were — or are — around fountains, along boulevard easements, as well as in people’s yards.

I hate to give the event any mention at all, except I must in order to put this offensive, intrusive marketing program in context.

It’s some sort of celebrity event in June called Big Slick ’16, which features home-grown comedians Paul Rudd, Jason Sudeikis and Rob Riggle. (For the record, I’ve never seen any of the three and now have less interest than ever in seeing them.)

I took this photo this morning on Ward Parkway, adjacent to Meyere Circle.

Let me reiterate what galls me about this yard-sign campaign: The creators apparently gave little or no thought to asking people if it was OK to put signs on their property. That’s pretty damn basic! Some might say it’s not a big deal, that homeowners could just pluck the signs out of the yard and throw them away, except that no one has the right to do that without permission of the owners. It’s an intrusion, a scourge on the landscape, and it is wrong.

Not only that, but putting promotional signs on public property is illegal. The biggest violator of that city ordinance is the political group Freedom Inc., which plasters its signs all over public property, primarily on the East Side, at every major election. The sign ordinance is never prosecuted, of course — it would be nearly impossible to do so — but spreading those signs all over the place is offensive and it creates a big mess that takes months to go away.

…Anyone who has extensive experience in political activism — Pat O’Neill and Steve Glorioso and even me to a lesser extent– will tell you that yard signs are a sensitive business. Guys like O’Neill, Glorioso and the late Pat Gray have put hundreds of hours of work into getting permission from Kansas City residents to place yard signs promoting their candidates and issues.

When I first saw those Big Slick signs, I wondered, mistakenly as it turned out, if they were O’Neill’s handiwork. His firm does a lot of general public relations and marketing, in addition to political marketing. My speculation was prompted in part by the fact that one of those signs turned up on a Ward Parkway corner that is one door removed from my house. A few weeks ago, I had asked my neighbor if she would allow O’Neill to put up a yard sign urging voters to renew the city earnings tax, and she agreed. It was good exposure for the campaign. But when I saw that Big Slick sign in her yard Saturday, I jumped to the conclusion that O’Neill was behind the marketing program and had taken the liberty of authorizing placement of a sign in my neighbor’s yard without checking.

Last night I sent Pat an email asking if he was the offender. He wrote back, saying: “No, I would not do something like that. I was upset at them, too… Spent yesterday pulling those signs from in front of fountains.”

I can attest that he or he and some of his associates spent time pulling up signs because Saturday evening I saw a woman removing signs from the Meyer Circle Fountain island and placing them in the trunk of her car. O’Neill moved quickly to try to minimize the problem because he knew other people would be wondering the same thing I did and that the signage could indirectly reflect poorly on him and other campaign consultants.

I can tell you this, too: O’Neill’s people will be the only ones out there collecting those signs, as they do immediately after political campaigns are over; Blacktop Creative will just let them lie and litter. Hell, Blacktop’s people don’t even remember where they put most of those signs up in the middle of the night. 

…A little more about Blacktop Creative.

In a fawning story Saturday about the Big Slick marketing program, writer Sarah Gish said the signs were the work of “Kansas City branding firm Blacktop Creative.”

Blacktop was founded in 2001 and bought by Barkley Inc., the former Barkley Evergreen & Partners, in 2010. Both firms have offices in the old TWA building on Main Street, in the Crossroads area.

I said up top they were too cute for their own good. Actually, they’re a bunch of smart asses. Their linked-in page says: “We…ride scooters. We play our music too loudly. And shoot each other with Nerf guns. But that’s because we like each other too much not to have a little fun at our own expense.”

Ho, ho, ho. Those crazy geniuses at Blacktop. They’ll do just about anything to have a good time at work, won’t they?

Of course, they really don’t want to work, do they? Because if they did, they would have gone out, knocked on doors and asked people for permission to put up their Big Slick signs.

As best I can tell from the firm’s absolutely shitty website, the president is a hip-looking guy named Shawn Polowniak.

Polowniak

Well, Shawn, you and your crack team really made a mess of things, as far as I’m concerned. Next time you have a bright idea that involves signs on private property, BURN SOME SHOE LEATHER AND GO DOOR TO DOOR AND GET PERMISSION!

…And also, shame on Children’s Mercy Hospital officials for not having the good sense to rein in the Blacktop Creative’s “midnight riders” before they littered the Kansas City landscape late Friday and early Saturday.

Like most other people, I have a lot of admiration for Children’s Mercy Hospital, but I hope Big Slick ’16 is a big flop.

It’s a damn shame prosecutors couldn’t come up with enough evidence to convict Jeffrey Sauerbry in the 2004 murder of Summer Shipp.

This was a case that frustrated law enforcement and the public alike because while it appeared that detectives had “solved” the case, physical evidence was nonexistent, and it all came down to the testimony of a convicted felon, Darrel Wilson, who testified that Sauerbry admitted to him in 2007 or 2008 that he had killed Shipp, then cut up her body and put it in trash bags.

It was a damn shame years before charges and trial occurred, too, because Shipp was an innocent victim. She was going door to door doing market research work in Independence when she disappeared, just vanished. It was pure luck that fisherman found her skull several years later in a body of water. Without that discovery, it is unlikely the state would have been able to charge  Sauerbry.

By that time, Sauerbry had already established himself as a craftier-than-usual criminal, having killed someone in 1998 and managing to avoid prosecution until 2012. It was after that conviction (for which, thankfully, he is serving life without parole) that the Jackson County prosecutor’s office charged him with Shipp’s murder.

I had a little history with this case because I was bureau chief in Independence in 2005 and 2006 — my last stand at The Star — when the crime was still fresh in everyone’s mind but little progress was being made on building a case. I remember there was a prime suspect — Sauerbry, the last known person to see her — but nothing solid tying him to the murder.

…It’s difficult to convict a defendant on the testimony of someone — anyone — who says the offender confessed to him or her. An added problem for prosecutors was that Wilson didn’t come forward after his conversation with Sauerbry. Apparently he just wanted the whole thing to go away. His incriminating story didn’t surface until detectives contacted him.

Still, I thought there was a good chance of gaining a conviction because of the forcefulness of Wilson’s testimony, as well as the details of his conversation with Sauerbry as the two of them were looking for dates online. At trial, when the defense attorney pressured Wilson about inconsistencies in his statements, he picked up a deposition transcript in front of him, threw it down and declared: “By God, he killed that woman. He chopped her up and put her in garbage bags.”

That reminded me of a story a former assistant prosecutor told me in the 1970s about a case he had back then, when I was covering the Jackson County Courthouse. The prosecutor, Jim Speck, said his key witness, when pressed about his eyewitness identification of the defendant, sat in the witness box and said: “It was him then, it was him today, and it will be him 20 years from now.”

That’s the kind of statement — like Wilson’s — that gets a jury’s attention.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to hold Sauerbry accountable for Summer Shipp’s senseless killing.

The only solace, as a said, is he’s in prison for life.

Finally, congratulations to Summer Shipp’s daughter Brandy for pushing relentlessly for justice for her mother. If it weren’t for her efforts, the case might have drifted into the ether.

Ten months ago in this space, former KC Star business reporter Julius Karash predicted that The Star’s headquarters building would be going up for sale.

Congratulations, Julius, your reporting and crystal-ball instincts are as sharp as ever.

Karash

Last Thursday, on Page 13A, Star reporter Mark Davis had a short story saying that McClatchy Co., The Star’s owner, was considering selling and then leasing back both the main building at 1729 Grand and the Press Pavilion a few blocks north on Oak.

Davis wrote: “A sale-leaseback provides cash to the seller and allows continued use of the property with no disruptions to operations, in this case producing and printing The Star and printing other publications. The lease agreement assures the buyer of a tenant and income.”

In theory, it’s one of those idyllic win-win deals. Everybody goes into the vault and tosses big bills in the air and lets them waft down on their heads. And with a debt of about $900 million, McClatchy could really use some cash in the vault.

But a sale-leaseback is not what Julius was predicting for the headquarters building, and I don’t trust The Star or McClatchy when management says that’s what it intends to do.

I believe McClatchy will do that with the Press Pavilion, because The Star is printing several papers there and I feel confident it’s making good money. But the three-story, brick headquarters building is another matter. Time was when about 2,000 employees worked in that building, with the printing presses whirring away in the sub-basement. Now, it’s down to several hundred employees, perhaps less than 500.

The Star doesn’t need that all that space for its editorial operation, and, as Julius pointed out in his June 2 guest post, the headquarters building is smack in the middle of the city’s hottest real estate market, the Crossroads.

“The super-charged pace of development in the Crossroads and Downtown makes 18th & Grand an attractive property,” Julius wrote. “It’s a beautiful, historic structure, built in 1909-11 and designed by Jarvis Hunt, the famous Chicago architect who also designed Kansas City’s Union Station. The site would be a great location for a business, residences or a combination of the two.”

McClatchy already has sold several of its newspapers’ headquarters buildings and others are going up for sale. And other newspaper companies are doing the same thing; those big old buildings, once so stately and symbolic of power and truth, are becoming dinosaurs.

…Not trusting anything McClatchy says, I can easily envision the day when McClatchy announces a sale-leaseback of the Press Pavilion and — surprise, surprise — also says it got an outright purchase offer on the headquarters building that was too good to turn down. And then they’ll move the remaining employees over to the Press Pavilion or rent editorial space somewhere downtown. (At least, I hope it’s downtown!)

More developments related to the future of The Kansas City Star could be forthcoming later this week. At or about the same time Publisher Tony Berg announced the proposed sale-leasebacks, he also called for an all-employee meeting Thursday morning at Union Station.

By all employees, I’m talking editorial, advertising, circulation, production — every department. During the 36-plus years I worked at The Star, I do not recall an all-employee meeting ever taking place. I have no idea what the meeting is about. I ran into a Star newsroom employee today at Costco and she said she had no idea what the subject of the meeting was. With things going the way they are with McClatchy and The Star, it’s hard to imagine that good news is coming on Thursday…As Warren Beatty’s character John McCabe tells Julie Christie’s character Constance Miller in the great Robert Altman movie McCabe & Mrs. Miller, “Money and pain. Pain and money…Money…Pain.”

Yesterday was a great day for the newspaper industry.

For once, the industry was in the headlines in a good way — for a satirical front page The Boston Globe published presaging what a Donald Trump presidency might look like.

I’m sure many of you have seen it by now…If you’re not a Trump fan, it’s ingenious, hilarious and audacious. If you are a Trump fan, as it appears a newspaper called The Washington Times is, it’s “an odd, ambitious and detailed project  doubtless involving multiple reporters, designers and editors.”

Harrumph, harrumph…In other words, doesn’t The Boston Globe have anything more constructive for its staff to do than come up with a farcical front page tweaking Trump?

The answer, unequivocally, is this project says more about the petrifying prospect of a Trump presidency than any amount of “straight” reporting or editorial commentary could do.

The headline on the lead story blares, “DEPORTATIONS TO BEGIN.” Under it, this sub-head: “President Trump calls for tripling of ICE force; riots continue.” Under a photo of Trump speaking in front of an American flag, is a grab-quote from Trump, saying he’ll deport illegals “so fast your head will spin.”

Lower on the page, there’s a headline that had to warm the hearts, in a skewering way, of journalists everywhere: “New libel law targets ‘absolute scum’ in press.”

An “In the News” segment down the left side of the page is led by a short story under this headline: “Bank glitch halts border wall work.”

…For the record, this wasn’t the actual front page of Sunday’s Boston Globe; it was the front page of the paper’s Ideas, or opinion, section.

An editor’s note at the bottom of the page explained the very serious thinking underlying the project:

This is Donald’s Trump’s America. What you read on this page is what might happen if the GOP front-runner can put his ideas into practice, his words into action. Many Americans might find this vision appealing, but the Globe’s editorial board finds it deeply troubling.

An editorial inside the Ideas section says the satirical front “is an exercise in taking a man at his word. And his vision of America promises to be as appalling in real life as it is in black and white on the page. It is a vision that demands an active and engaged opposition. It requires an opposition as focused on denying Trump the White House as the candidate is flippant and reckless about securing it.”

Trump’s reaction, as you would expect, was derisive and dismissive. “How about that stupid Boston Globe? It’s worthless,” he said at a rally in Rochester, New York. “The whole front page is a make-believe story, which is really no different from the whole paper.”

Trump, of course, does not have sufficient sophistication to appreciate satire; he’s a hammer-and-anvil sort who blows and blusters his way forward, lurching from one crazy statement to another, only to retract half of them.

The Boston Globe provided not just its readers but the nation with a landmark piece of satire yesterday. Editorial page editors at major metropolitan papers around the country are probably looking at that and saying, “God, I wish we had done that!”

**

On the subject of editorial pages, the McClatchy website is advertising job openings for two posts on The Kansas City Star editorial page. One posting is for an editorial page editor; the other for a columnist. The new hires would replace Steve Paul and Barbara Shelly, who took buyouts recently. Paul was editorial page editor; Shelly a columnist and editorial writer.

I’m sure the two remaining editorial writers, Yael Abouhalkah and Lewis Diuguid, were thrilled to hear that McClatchy intends to hire replacements for their departed colleagues. It’s good news for readers, too, of course; an editorial page produced by two people, even including someone as prolific as Abouhalkah, would have been a significant disservice to KC Star readers.

(Special thanks to former KC Star employee Jerry LaMartina for bringing the postings to my attention.)

That was the quote from professional golfer Ernie Els after the 19-time winner on the PGA tour six-putted the first hole Thursday at The Masters golf tournament in Augusta, GA.

When I saw the story on ESPN.com this morning, my heart sank in sympathy for Els, whose victories include four major championships.

Almost all golfers can identify with Els and feel his pain because almost all of us — golfers, that is — have been there and done something like that.

I have four putted many, many times, including missing from a foot — as Els did once on Thursday. I’ve come up short from 18 inches — hard to imagine, but true; I’ve missed wide right and wide left; and I’ve struck the ball too hard and watched it hit the back of the cup and pop over. I don’t know specifically if I have ever six-putted, but probably.

Most golfers are subject, at one time or another, to what we call “the yips,” that is, a failure of nerves. With me, the yips are not the exception; they’re the rule. Many times before I take the putter back on a short putt, the “snakes” have me envisioning a jerky little putt where an aberrant electrical impulse overrides thoughts of a smooth, confident stroke.

And, then, when the ball goes astray, it’s like another thing Els said after his losing battle with the snakes: “It’s hard to explain. I can’t explain it.”

Els ended up recording a score of “9” on the first hole, a Par 4. So, after one hole, he was already five strokes over par. Somehow, he pulled himself together, though, and ended up shooting an 80 for the round, which is just eight strokes over par. Nevertheless, he shot himself out of contention and will undoubtedly end up missing the cut after today’s second round. (Players who end up a certain number of strokes behind the leaders after the second day’s play are eliminated from the last two days of competition.)

Here, in more gruesome detail, is how Els’ first-hold implosion unfolded. (By the way, you can Google it and see the video, but as one website I saw warned, “It’s not for the faint of heart.”)

It started after Els was on the green in three, just three feet away from recording a par 4. From that short distance, his tentative, jerky putts started sliding by the hole, back and forth. After four of the errant strokes, Els weakly raised an arm and dropped it in exasperation. A couple of times he looked at his caddy, who stood by helplessly. At one point, the caddy moved closer to him and appeared to say something…No doubt something encouraging.

But encouragement — if that’s what it was — didn’t help because Els missed once more and then nonchalantly tried to one-hand the ball in from 11 inches. Naturally, it lipped out. After another drop of the hand, he reached over the cup and tapped in the loathsome white object from a few inches away.

**

Like I said, I’ve been missing short putts for a long time. I’m just a bad putter who experiences welcome and fleeting periods of good putting. In times past, I would always hope that my golfing companions, or competitors, would concede putts withing a couple of feet. It’s a mannerly tradition in golf for players to tell their companions, “That’s good, pick it up” on very short putts.

For the last few years, however, I have been putting virtually everything. I’m doing that because I know how hard it is to just get the ball in the hole, from anywhere, and I want to play by the rules and know that my final score isn’t clouded by any possible misses on “given” putts.

My best score last year was a 77 on a par 71 course in Pleasant Hill — a course I play regularly. Playing by myself, I putted everything out. The last putt was from two feet or less. I nervously stepped away from it at least once before putting, thinking how important it was and how I needed to be sure to make a smooth stroke.

After it went in, I breathed deeply and smiled. I still have the scorecard in the trunk of the car. On that day, I beat the snakes.

I guess this is the difference between an editorial writer and a reporter:

Yael Abouhalkah, one of two remaining editorial page writers left at The Star, said in today’s editorial that it could turn out “fortune smiled on Kansas City two years ago,” when the Republicans chose Cleveland instead of Kansas City for this year’s G.O.P. convention.

Kansas City shouldn’t want the convention, he wrote, because “it might resemble Chicago in August 1968…when police and anti-Vietnam War protesters clashed in the streets and parks.”

I say: Are you nuts, Yael? This is shaping up to be the most exciting and interesting national convention since the Republicans met here in 1976 and Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford battled to the wire. Every convention since then, on both the Democratic and Republican sides, has been about as interesting as watching a University of Connecticut women’s basketball game, with the outcome preordained long beforehand.

…At that 1976 convention, I was assigned to keep track of Reagan. I followed him and his contingent all over town as he went from delegation to delegation trying to pin down votes. I staked him out at what was then the Alameda Plaza Hotel, where he was staying, and spent a lot of time at a first-floor bar tended by a bartender who went by “Blackie.”

I was on The Kansas City Times then, and between The Times and The Star we probably had two dozen reporters on the convention, held at Kemper Arena, and related events. I didn’t get in on much of the prime-time coverage, but I was thrilled just to be on the periphery. At the time, I’d only been at The Star seven years, and my full-time beat was the Jackson County Courthouse, where I covered both politics and the courts.

…It amazes me that Abouhalkah would wave off this potentially great story, which will give Cleveland a huge economic boost and rock the town in a bigger way than The Temptations could have in their prime.

Of course, the 1968 Democratic convention was a disaster. But big-city police departments have come a long way since then in their human relations and crowd-control methods. Yael cited Trump’s March 12 appearance here, where police pepper-sprayed some protesters, and a few people got roughed up (not sure it was by the cops), and a few got arrested.

So what? Despite the concerted efforts of some who sought to blow that up into an excessive-force scandal, the incident didn’t trigger any outrage, and the story was dead in a couple of days. From all indications, KCPD handled the situation well, and I’ve got full confidence that Chief Darryl Forte, his top deputies and the uniformed officers would preside with wisdom and restraint — and, most important, would maintain order on the streets — at a national political convention.

Some of you might remember that originally, back when KC was being considered for the convention, I wrote I didn’t want it here, mainly because of the inconvenience it would have posed to residents, particularly in getting into and out of downtown. After reflecting on the scale of the event and the P.R. it would generate for our city, I quickly backpedaled and said of course we should want the Republicans to come here.

Now, in light of the way this Republican battle is going, I’m terribly disappointed the Republicans won’t be descending on Sprint Center July 18 to 21. Probably the biggest story we’ll have in KC that week is the Royals playing the Indians…Yes, the Cleveland Indians! Hell, even the Indians’ players are probably going to be sick they’re out of town, missing what is sure to be one of the biggest national stories of the year.

Oh, well…Play ball, and, singers, please give us nice renditions of the National Anthem at The K.

**

I had a sad and nostalgic turn today, when I saw in the paper that an old horse-race fan — a guy I used to see at Omaha’s Ak-Sar-Ben racetrack back in the ’80s — had died.

Herbert “Herbie” Mendelsohn, longtime owner of Sunshine Lighting Co., died April 4.

I got to know Herbie while I was on the features page in the late ’70s and early ’80s. I heard he was a good handicapper and decided to write a story about him. Like him, I regularly made the three-and-a-half-hour run up I-29 to Omaha for the Saturday races. The stands would be filled, and full fields of horses made for exciting wagering.

After writing the story, I used to visit Herbie in his box at Ak-Sar-Ben and solicit tips. He was always willing to share his opinions, and he’d sometimes mark my program with his picks. (I have no recollection, oddly, of how frequently his picks won.)

Herbie Mendelsohn

I remember one horse in particular that Herbie and everyone else at the track loved to root for. His name was Roman Zipper. He always started slowly and came running at the end. Early in his races, the track announcer, Terry Wallace, would say, plaintively, “…and trailing the field is Roman Zipper.” Then coming around the home turn, when Zipper was making his move, Wallace’s voice would rise…”Here comes Rooooo-man Zzzzipperrr!”

Sometimes the Zipper would get up in time, and sometimes he’d fall short. But he always gave the fans a thrill and a reason to return.

Those were great times at Ak…And Herbie Mendelsohn was one great character. He also liked to bowl, play cards and golf, and he was a Royals’ season ticket holder since the team’s inception. Herbie was 88 and lived in Overland Park.

Some strange things are going on…

— In the Brookside CVS yesterday, I heard an indiscreet employee — a guy stacking product on shelves — indicate he intended to vote for Donald Trump. It was the first time I’d heard someone come close to saying out loud that he or she would cast a vote for Trump. But like I say, it was indirect…He was talking to a man who appeared to be a customer — an African-American — and said he didn’t think it would be fair of the Republican Party to yank the nomination from Trump at the convention this summer.

The customer just grunted. Getting no reaction, the shelf stacker moved on to next Tuesday’s E-tax election. He correctly explained to the customer that the election was on renewal of the longstanding earnings tax, which generates more than $230 million a year, or 40 percent of the city’s general fund. He also noted that the revenue went for things like police and fire services…Having completed my purchase, I stood nearby, listening…listening and feeling certain the employee was about to utter some negative comment, despite his careful explanation of the tax. Sure enough, after a pause, he said, “Now, my feeling is the city ought to do a better job of budgeting.”

Again, the customer offered no comment. Blood pressure rising, I nearly plunged into the, uh, conversation. But I held off, deeming it unwise to launch into a drugstore-aisle debate with someone I had never seen before…What I would have said, though, was: “Suppose CVS cut your salary by 40 percent today. How would that affect your household budget, and would you just be able to “tighten up” and go merrily on?”

Disclosure: I’m working with the campaign committee pushing for renewal of the tax, which is paid by people either living or working in Kansas City. A full 50 percent of the revenue comes from people living outside Kansas City. To me, the tax is extremely fair, especially in light of the fact that area residents who don’t live in the city — many of whom have actually fled the city — help pay for services and amenities that Kansas City residents are financing, for the most part…Next Tuesday, vote “YES” on Kansas City Question 1.

Charlie Wheeler

— As many of you know, I’m friends with former Mayor Charlie Wheeler. I’ve done volunteer work for him in two campaigns — when he ran for county executive in 2006 and when he ran for state treasurer two years later. Yesterday and today, I’ve heard from three friends who read that Wheeler is now running for Missouri governor. One person who contacted me, former KC Star reporter Kevin Murphy, wrote: “Better get your campaign know-how and apparatus unpacked. Charlie…will need your help.”

Before there’s a groundswell for me to be Charlie’s campaign manager, campaign chairman, press secretary or driver, let me say this: If appointed, I will not serve.

— I see Kauffman Stadium is offering some new concession items this season. For example, there’s the Champions Alley Burger ($19), described as “a cheese-stuffed, tempura-battered cheddar bacon burger with sweet slaw, chipotle ketchup and fried pickle on a Farm to Market roll.” Then there’s the Champions Alley Dog ($15) — “a bacon-wrapped, tempura-battered foot-long hot dog with sweet slaw and chipotle ketchup on a Farm to Market pretzel bun.”

The only thing that appeals to me about either of those is the Farm to Market bread.

For the health-minded, there’s a kale salad ($10), “with strawberries, apple, Marcona almonds, Boursin cheese and a poppy seed vinaigrette.”

I’ll pass on the kale, too. I’ll spend my $10 on a regular hot dog and a regular Pepsi.

Happy Easter, everyone.

At Country Club Christian Church’s three worship services today, the theme of Rev. Glen Miles’ sermon was “The End Is the Beginning.”

We can all relate. We’ve all experienced endings, transitions and new beginnings. Some endings have segued into good periods and some bad. And then, of course, there’s that ultimate ending and new beginning that Pastor Miles was talking about today.

On a less daunting but yet important front, several members of The Kansas City Star editorial staff are in the process of ending careers and beginning retirements that some of them didn’t anticipate coming so soon.

Five longtime staff members recently accepted another newsroom buyout. They are editorial page editor Steve Paul, editorial page writer and op-ed columnist Barbara Shelly, theater critic Robert Trussell, online editor Jody Cox and assistant sports editor Mark Zeligman.

Their departures, I understand, followed the layoffs of about two dozen employees in other parts of the company. But even those layoffs and buyouts weren’t enough for The Star’s owner, the McClatchy Co., to put down its bloody scythe. No sooner had the newsroom buyouts come to light than five longtime news, features and photo employees were called in and told their services were no longer needed. They are medical writer Alan Bavley, assistant business editor Greg Hack, assistant photo editor Mary Schulte, features writer Jim Fussell and Metro reporter Brian Burnes.

Today, I want to put the spotlight on two of those people — the two I knew the best — Shelly and Burnes.

In the mid-1980s, Shelly was a young reporter covering City Hall for the afternoon Star, while I was covering the hall for the morning Kansas City Times. (The Times was dropped in 1990, with The Star moving to mornings.) Shelly and I shared office space in the 29th-floor “press room,” which offered a beautiful view of the Northland.

Shelly

In those days, the papers competed (it was largely artificial but pushed both papers to excel), and Shelly was a tough competitor, beating me to the punch on stories more often than I liked to admit. But she was unfailingly gracious and friendly, and we always got along well. She went on to nab a coveted spot on the editorial board, where she wrote aggressively and perspicaciously on a wide range of subjects, including the Kansas City school board, the school district and the Missouri and Kansas legislatures.

Her last column, which ran Friday, was a call for Missouri and Kansas residents to elect legislators whose foremost allegiance was to their regions and constituents, not to ideological movements, such as the Republican-led push in the Missouri Capitol to change the state Constitution to allow businesses to discriminate against gays and lesbians.

Shelly wrote:

In the current political climate, any progress in this region will come as a result of smart, visionary leadership at the local level. And from a strong, united defense against the threats from Jefferson City and Topeka.

With that, she signed off, for good, as an employee of The Kansas City Star.

**

Brian Burnes has been one of The Star’s two best storytellers, along with Don Bradley, who, I presume, is staying on.

Burnes

I worked with Burnes in 2005-2006 at my last KC Star outpost, the Independence bureau. The bureau was in a storefront — next to a mattress store — on the northeast quadrant of I-70 and Noland Road. We had about eight reporters in the bureau, and Burnes was among them. What I remember most about him was his professionalism — always showing up with his “work face” on, never complaining and always accommodating with editors — not an easy way to be, given the tensions of the newsroom and the egos often at play.

His primary “beat” was Independence government, but he was also The Star’s all-purpose history writer. One of his biggest contributions to the paper has been his exhaustive coverage of the Hawley family’s excavation of the Steamboat Arabia and its conversion to a popular museum in the River Market.

Early this month, Burnes wrote a Page 1 story about the Hawley family’s next possible undertaking — excavating the remains of the steamship Malta, which sank about 80 miles east of Kansas City in 1841.

Unless Burnes has another story rattling around in “holdover,” he went out on a high note Saturday with a great story about a woman named Stacey Stevens, whose 19-year-old son Matthew was struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver last September in Neosho. The story focused on Stacey Stevens’ relentless push for a legislative bill that would increase the penalty for drivers in fatal hit-and-run cases from up to four years in prison to up to 10 years. Accompanying the front-page story was a moving photo of Stevens standing beside, and holding, a memorial cross bearing Matthew’s name.

Burnes wrote:

When it comes to paying for their actions after killing someone, hit-and-run drivers — responsible for a fifth of pedestrian fatalities nationwide — get away with too much, she believes. By leaving the scene, they deprive investigators of crucial evidence, including a timely interview and the chance to determine impairment.

**

All 10 of the departing employees are leaving The Star a poorer place. Most — maybe none — will be replaced…I wish each of them a good new beginning, whatever they do and wherever they go. And I hope they all continue contributing, in some manner, to progress in Kansas City.

The NCAA basketball tournament is entertaining; the presidential primaries are ever compelling; and the arrival of spring is welcome.

But, man, I wish I was in Cuba this week!

Consider some of recent and upcoming developments involving the U.S. and the country that lost track of time:

— President Obama arrives at Havana’s Jose Marti International Airport at 3:50 p.m. today for a three-day visit. Within a couple of hours of his arrival, he will do a walking tour of Old Havana and take in the sights, including Catedral de San Cristobal.

— Last week, the president eased travel restrictions to Cuba, which will allow Americans to visit Cuba (and take commercial flights there) without signing up for expensive, U.S. government-sanctioned, “educational” tours, like one that Patty and I were on in late January and early February.

— Starwood Hotels and Resorts, which operates Sheraton hotels, among others, signed a deal to refurbish and manage at least two hotels in the Havana area, including a 186-room hotel in the upscale suburb, relatively speaking, of Miramir. Most hotels in Cuba are government owned (you can tell by the service and shortcomings), and Starwood will be the first American hospitality chain to run hotels there.

— The Rolling Stones will perform in a free concert Friday at the Ciudad Deportiva de la Habana arena in southwestern Havana.

The New York Times has given wide coverage to the developments and the Obama trip. The centerpiece in today’s paper, for example, is a story under the headline “Obama Hopes Cuba Visit Can Be Harbinger of Political Change.” Above the headline is a tantalizing,  five-column photo of a “barber shop,” consisting of a single chair on a crumbling floor, with a customer, a barber and several men standing and sitting around.

New York Times photo

“Mr. Obama’s trip, rich with symbolic significance, represents the start of a new era of engagement between the United States and Cuba that could open the floodgates of travel and commerce, and that has already unlocked diplomatic channels long slammed shut. But it also underscores the deep disagreements that persist between two countries separated by only 90 miles but a wide ideological divide.”

It’s hard to imagine the plight of most Cubans and their impoverished circumstances unless you’ve been there. Among other things, the basic essentials of life — decent food, clothing and shelter and reliable transportation — are very difficult for many Cubans to come by. Several times on trips to outlying parts of the island, we saw people dispersed around intersections — just hanging around, to all appearances — waiting for military personnel to randomly stop private vehicles and arrange transportation for those waiting for rides.

Catedral de San Cristobal — jimmycsays photo

As I outlined in two earlier posts, the Cuban economy is upside down, with professional people like doctors and engineers — all paid by the government, of course — making about $30 a month, while people in the hospitality industry (those working on tips) and taxi drivers making that much and often much more each day.

It is truly f_____ up. And the damage, repression and discouragement that communism and the Castros have inflicted on the Cuban people makes the blood boil when you see it up close.

And as much as we might hope that Cuban-American relations will improve and that Cuba will begin to emerge from its quaint but pathetic time warp, almost everything depends on whether any light bulbs go off in the heads of Fidel, who would be 90 in August, and Raul, who is 84. Raul has said he will step down when his current five-year term as president expires in 2018. If he does so, it’s anyone’s guess what will ensue and who will rule.

The country’s first vice president, 55-year-old Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermudez, is considered the leading candidate, but another Castro — Alejandro Castro Espin, Raul’s 50-year-old son — also looms as a possibility. Espin is a blowhard who has said Cubans “have known positive and successful experiences under socialism,” and Diaz-Canel’s views have been described as similarly hardline.

All in all, the prospects for long-term improvement in the lives of Cubans looks quite dim. All we can do is hope for enlightenment and change and, in the meantime, admire President Obama’s attempts to chip away at longstanding barriers between the two countries.

Here is President Obama’s Cuban itinerary:

Today

Arrival at Jose Marti International Airport in Havana, 3:50 p.m.
Meet-and-greet at U.S. Embassy, 4:50 p.m.
Sight-seeing in Old Havana, including the Catedral de San Cristobal de la Habana, 5:40 p.m.

Monday

Wreath-laying at the José Marti Memorial, morning
Official welcoming ceremony, Palace of the Revolution, morning
Meeting with Cuban President Raul Castro, morning
Entrepreneurship summit, afternoon
State Dinner at the Palace of the Revolution, evening

Tuesday

Address to the Cuban people at El Gran Teatro de Havana, morning
Meeting with dissidents and civil society leaders, morning
Baseball have between the Tampa Bay Rays at Cuban National Team at Estadio Latinoamericano, 1 p.m.
Departure from Jose Marti International Airport en route to Buenos Aires, Argentina, afternoon

New KC Star publisher Tony Berg had his public “coming out” yesterday with an impressive appearance on KCUR’s Central Standard show.

Berg exuded the energy one would expect from a 38-year-old person who two months ago landed the most important job on the Kansas City media scene. Among other things, he acknowledged that The Star was facing challenges and was in a critical period of “transformation,” with the company’s emphasis shifting from print to digital.

Asked by host Gina Kaufmann to name some of the biggest challenges, Berg said: “The one that’s at the top of my priority list right now is our delivery. I’m not happy with where it’s at. That’s an area we’re working quickly to rectify.”

If you’ve been reading this blog in recent weeks, you know Berg vowed from the get-goo to address the delivery situation, which crumbled under the previous publisher, Mi-Ai Parrish. He and leaders of the “audience development” department have responded personally to people who have complained about delivery problems. With that attitude, I feel, they should be able to get things smoothed out and perhaps even regain a significant number of subscribers who dropped the paper out of frustration and disgust.

Unfortunately, there’s still the matter of skyrocketing subscription rates — upwards of $40 a month for a standard subscription, from what I’ve heard.

(I’ve been meaning to tell you that I finally got the retiree discount I was entitled to but somehow wasn’t getting after my 2006 retirement. It’s a good deal, and I wish everyone else could get a rate approaching mine…I also want to let you know that, in the wake of an email I sent, Berg got the dial-by-last-name directory reinstated on The Star’s automated telephone answering system.)

Berg

Also in the interview (you can queue up the audio on this page), Berg hinted that he might initiate something else I’ve been advocating. “To some degree, we’ve been our own worst enemy,” he said. “We haven’t done a great marketing campaign to be out there.”

Out there, as in drumming in to people through an advertising campaign that The Star is still the primary and most authoritative news source for a majority of area residents, whether in print form or online.

Kaufmann spent several minutes pressing Berg on how The Star could grow — and be successful in its transformation — as long as it continued laying off employees and offering buyouts.

“Is there an end point?” Kaufmann asked, referring to the downsizing, which began in 2008 and has not let up.

Berg deflected the line of questioning, repeatedly asserting that the situation should not be looked at as reduction but rather a redistribution and realignment of resources.

Just this week, The Star offered another round of editorial-side layoffs, with the goal of cutting five to 10 staff members. The deadline for applying for the buyout was yesterday, and Kauffman said on the air that theater critic Robert Trussell had decided to take the offer. Trussell has been in the Features Department more than 30 years. In recent years, features has also lost its full-time movie critic (Robert Butler), its fine arts critic (Alice Thorson) and its full-time music critic (Paul Horsley). None has been replaced; The Star has chosen to outsource those tasks to freelancers, and you can bet that’s what it will do now with theater criticism.

It’s too bad that when Kaufmann was interviewing Berg, she didn’t know what former KC Star investigative reporter Karen Dillon posted on Facebook Thursday night.

Paul

Dillon, now a reporter for the Lawrence Journal-World, said other editorial-side employees who will take buyouts included Jody Cox, online editor, who has been with the paper about 20 years, and assistant sports editor Mark Zeligman, who has put in at least 20 years. But Dillon’s bombshell was that two of The Star’s four editorial-page writers, including editorial-page editor Steve Paul, are leaving. Paul has been with the paper more than 40 years. He was named editorial page editor 18 months ago.

Barb Shelly, the other departing editorial writer, has been with the paper more than 35 years. If Shelly and Paul are not replaced, it would leave The Star with only Lewis Diuguid and Yael Abouhalkah manning the editorial page, which sets the paper’s political tone and civic compass. I’ve got to assume Berg and Star editor Mike Fannin will fill at least one of the editorial-page posts being vacated. Otherwise, how could The Star continue putting out a decent editorial page? Already, the number of staff-generated editorials has dropped significantly, and the Monday Op-Ed page has been dropped.

Shelly

Trussell

Cox

Zeligman

When Tony Berg said The Star has challenges, yes, it sure does. It’s going to take all of Berg’s youthful energy and every bit of whatever resourcefulness he has to keep The Star moving forward.

By God, he’s determined, though, and seems very intelligent, and you can’t underestimate the significance of strength at the top of an organization. It was reassuring for me to hear him say on the radio, “It certainly won’t be on my watch that The Star goes down.”