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

It is now clear why former State Auditor Tom Schweich killed himself: He was emotionally unstable — prone to periods of being “very low” and if not clinically depressed at least subject to bouts of situational depression.

An exhaustive report released late Tuesday by the Clayton, Missouri, police department shows the extent of Schweich’s emotional and physical problems.

In addition to significant emotional dips, Schweich also had a chronic physical condition — Crohn’s disease, an inflammatory bowel disorder that typically causes stomach pain, diarrhea and weight loss.

Crohn’s frequently exacts an emotional toll on sufferers and their families. WedMD says: “Having Crohn’s disease can be stressful. The disease affects every part of your life. Seek support from family and friends to help you cope. Get counseling if you need it.”

I never saw Schweich in person, but in every photo I’ve seen, he never appeared healthy; he looked gaunt and pale…No wonder.

Schweich

Schweich, who was seeking the Republican nomination for governor, shot himself with a .22 caliber pistol the morning of Feb. 26. His wife Kathy was in the same room at the time he shot himself, but she had her back to him and was talking on the phone to a woman with whom Schweich had been speaking before handing the phone to his wife.

In the days leading up to his suicide, Schweich was preoccupied but what he saw as a “whispering campaign” that he was Jewish. He wasn’t Jewish, but he probably thought that if he wasn’t able to stamp out the rumor, it would cost him support and campaign contributions in some quarters.

Schweich wanted to go public and call out Republican Party chairman John Hancock, whom he believed was spreading the unfounded rumors. But all of Schweich’s political advisers, including former U.S. Sen. John C. Danforth, were urging him to hold off.

Schweich was also upset about a radio ad that likened him to the Barney Fife character on the old Andy Griffith TV show.

From Tuesday’s police report, it is easy to deduce that while the whispering campaign and the Barney Fife ad may have caused Schweich significant distress, the underlying factors in his suicide were emotional instability and overall poor health.

Police found more than 20 prescription drugs in Schweich’s home, including prednisone — a steroid that can have uncomfortable side effects — and hydrocodone — a painkiller.

Antidepressants did not appear to be among the drugs.

The strongest evidence that Schweich was not a well man, however, came from police interviews with three people: Schweich’s wife Kathy; Martha Fitz, a woman who is a friend and ally of Danforth and was a friend and adviser to Schweich; and Trish Vincent, Schweich’s chief of staff in the auditor’s office.

Here are excerpts from police interviews with the three women:

Kathy Schweich

“K. Schweich informed me (the interviewing officer) that her husband had talked about killing himself before and had done so while handling his firearms, but that she never thought he would actually act on his statement. She further explained that she knew he would sometimes get depressed…”

(The two lines that immediately follow those words are blacked out in the public version of the police report, so we don’t know what else she might have said about her husband’s depression.)

Martha Fitz

Fitz told an officer that Schweich could “get depressed from time to time” but, like Kathy Schweich, “she never thought he was at the point of suicide.”

Trish Vincent

“Although she (Vincent) does not believe that he suffers from depression, she does know that there are times when he seems ‘very low’…She further informed me that she does not believe that any one person or event caused him to kill himself, but that there was an accumulation of numerous things that added stress…and caused him to kill himself. T. Vincent described T. Schweich as a very anxious person who took everything very personal.”

**

I think the first reaction many people had when they heard about Schweich’s suicide was bafflement at how a veteran politician who was running for governor could get so upset about a false rumor or a below-the-belt radio ad that he would take his own life.

I never bought it. And in a Feb. 27 post, I theorized that clinical depression was the root of Schweich’s problem.

In light of the police report, I believe more than ever that Schweich was clinically depressed. Further, I think he probably avoided seeking a diagnosis or treatment because he knew it would end his chances of becoming governor.

Tom Schweich’s suicide was a terrible tragedy, but, truth be told, he was totally unfit to serve as governor. At least through his suicide he escaped his demons.

I would bet a hundred bucks that the most-read story in the print edition of Saturday’s Kansas City Star was the one about the four young dipsticks who robbed a guy in Independence Wednesday night after the only girl in the group invited the victim — whom she knew — to meet him and have sex with her.

The story ran at the top of A4, which features local news.

There are two reasons this was probably the most-read story in the paper:

1) The defendants are white.

2) The perps were incredibly stupid.

The latter point always makes for a good read, and the former…well, let’s just say it’s not very often that you see four mugs shots of white people stripped under a crime story.

Three of the defendants look like they might be high-school students; two are 18 and one, the woman, is 19.

For the record, the defendants are Sydney M. Adams, the woman; Zachary A. Donahoo and Tristen W. Bishop, the 18-year-olds; and 23-year-old James T. Hunter. All four are charged with robbery and kidnapping.

As for the dumb-criminal dimension, like I said, the victim knew Adams, apparently very well. The story describes Adams as an “old friend” of the man she solicited.

So, if you’re planning a robbery — and you don’t intend to kill the victim — why would you solicit someone who knows you and can identify you? What would possibly make Adams think she and her compatriots could get away with it????

If you haven’t read the story, here’s what happened, in a nutshell: The guy arrives at the residence and Adams meets him wearing only a towel. She directs him to a bedroom, where he is confronted by the three guys, one of whom has a gun. They rob him, take him for a ride and release him. An Independence police officer spots him — he’s wearing only boxers and shoes — and interviews him. The gig is up.

Longtime Independence reporter Brian Burnes did a good job with the story — just played it straight and let the head-scratching facts carry it. Also deserving credit are the editors who decided to play the story prominently and strip the mug shots below the headline.

**

Too bad we don’t always see such good editorial judgment.

On Tuesday, The Star ran a three-paragraph under the headline “Kansas man gets four years for beheading man with guitar string.”

I don’t know if the story ran in a print edition. Bill Barnhart, a reader of the blog, called it to my attention.

Bill wrote: “The Star has been reporting about this guy that killed another man with a piano or guitar wire and was sentenced to only four years. How could something like that happen? It doesn’t seem right. Have you heard anything more about that one?”

Great question.

When I got to checking, I found The Star’s three-paragraph story, which The Star picked up from the Associated Press.

The story, out of Lyndon, KS, about 20 miles south of Topeka, said a man named James Paul Harris, 30, was sentenced Monday in Osage County District Court for involuntary manslaughter in the death of 49-year-old James Gerety. It went on to say that Harris originally was charged with first-degree murder but pleaded no contest to the reduced charge in December.

The Star’s version of the AP story gave no indication whatsoever why the charge was drastically reduced and why Harris got only four years.

But when I Googled the AP story, I found a couple of versions that offered more information. One key sentence that The Star omitted said the prosecution was hamstrung by ‘credibility issues’ with a major witness.

That sheds a little light on the issue, but not much. I got the full story on the website of the Topeka Capital-Journal, which had sent a reporter to Lyndon to do an in-depth story. The story included these paragraphs:

The prosecutor’s office accepted the plea to the less serious homicide charge of involuntary manslaughter because prosecuting James Gerety’s slaying as a premeditated first-degree murder faced challenges, Osage County Attorney Brandon Jones said.

Other than a portion of the victim’s skull, prosecutors didn’t have the victim’s body, the murder weapon hadn’t been recovered, not all the prosecution witnesses were available, and prosecutors faced “credibility issues” with a major witness, Jones said.

“It was going to be a tough case to prosecute,” Jones said.

That explains why the prosecutor was willing to accept a plea bargain with a four-year sentence in a gruesome case.

The Star’s handling of the story, on the other hand, was nothing less than a disservice was to its readers.

A good rule of thumb — and I don’t know if I’ve heard this before or if I’m just coming up with it now — is that if a story poses more questions than it provides answers, it’s better to not run it at all, if you’re not willing to take the time to run down the answers. 

In the case of the guitar-cord slaying, KC Star editors were just plain lazy.

**

One other Star note. Some of you have probably noticed that for most Kansas City Royals’ night games, The Star is now reporting the final score and a few bulleted highlights, instead of full game coverage. There are two reasons for that: The Star has gone to earlier deadlines, and it is trying to push more traffic to the website. Another upcoming change is a redesign of the print edition and the website.

I’m sure that, like me, most people who read or heard about Tiffany Mogenson’s tragic death on Oct. 11, 2013 have, at one point or another, put themselves in her place when reflecting on the circumstances of her death.

She was alone in her car, sitting in the driver’s seat, stopped eastbound on 75th Street at Roe Avenue (I think), when a car going 90 miles an hour hurtled up (that’s redundant, but accurate) and crashed into the back of her car.

Tiffany suffered head and pelvic injuries and died almost instantly.

I have put myself in her position because I realize full well it could have been me. Of course, it could have been you — any one of you.

Kansas City Star photo

I put myself in Tiffany’s position and wonder what my reaction would have been? I (or you) probably would have heard the roar of an engine, or at least some unusually loud sound, and glanced up at the rearview mirror. Death approaching. Nowhere to go, no time to take evasive action.

Maybe I would scream. Maybe I would curse. Maybe I would pray. I guess I would instinctively duck as much as I could and hope the unguided missile coming at me would catapult over my car after initial impact…and that, miraculously, I would live.

But almost any scenario you could imagine that involved survival probably wouldn’t happen. Miracles seldom attend events like that.

I hope Tiffany, a 30-year-old dance studio owner and former Chiefs cheerleader, didn’t see or hear anything until impact. But I’m afraid she did.

It’s the capriciousness of it and the fact that things like that aren’t supposed to happen at 75th and Roe that boggle the mind.

Who hasn’t sat at that light? Facing any direction at one time or another? I probably go through that intersection — usually east or westbound — two to five times a month.

…I feel so sorry for Tiffany’s husband Mike, for her sister Stacy Chaloux, for her 8-year-old niece and for all her relatives and friends. She was ripped from them and robbed of her future by a guy who had been drinking for 24 hours, supposedly because he was depressed over a pending divorce.

The man, 33-year-old Roy Lee Maney, was sentenced on Wednesday to 15 years and eight months in prison for reckless second-degree murder and leaving the scene of an accident.

How about that for irony? Maney lived…Not only lived but was able to run from the scene before being caught.

Just before the crash, a Prairie Village police officer had been pursuing Maney for speeding. (He had at least two other prior traffic violations, including one for speeding, as well as a conviction for not having insurance or a driver’s license.)

In Maney’s maniacal path was Tiffany Mogenson, idling at the intersection, perhaps listening to the car radio. She was there, alert and alive one second, dead several seconds later.

It was an unimaginably rotten and tragic convergence of events. And it could have been me. It could have been you. But for just plain luck.

Yesterday’s primary election has set the stage for showdowns in two key City Council races between challengers backed by special interests and incumbents who have shown that their goals coincide with the city’s best interests.

Here are the two races that, over the next two months, will be getting the most attention from people who follow Kansas City politics.

District 4 At-Large: Incumbent Jim Glover, a four-term veteran, will be trying to hold off challenger Katheryn Shields, a former City Council member and former Jackson County executive. This race will be voted on citywide.

District 1: Unless something changes (more about that in a minute). incumbent Dick Davis, former c.e.o. at the Area Transportation Authority, will battle it out with Heather Hall, a newcomer who is associated with the Tea Party. Even though this is an in-district race and will be voted on only in Clay County, it could be pivotal to Kansas City’s immediate future.

Here’s a closer look at the two races.

Jim Glover-Katheryn Shields

Glover

Glover defeated Shields by fewer than 500 votes (12,913 to 12,451) in Tuesday’s primary, with two other candidates finishing far back. Glover and Shields will go head to head in the June 23 general election.

Glover is going for a fifth council term. The City Charter limits office holders to two consecutive terms, but with a break of at least four years between each two-term stint, a candidate can run as many times as he or she chooses.

Glover first served on the council from 1991 to 1999. He ran for mayor in 1999, the year Kay Barnes was elected to her first term. Glover then was elected to the council in 2003, and in 2007 he again ran unsuccessfully for mayor. (Mark Funkhouser was the winner.) In 2011, Glover was once again elected to the council.

Shields

Shields was on the council from 1987 to 1995, when she was elected Jackson County executive. She served three terms as county executive, leaving office at the end of 2006.

Glover’s foremost achievement was helping bring Costco, Home Depot and Marsh’s Sun Fresh to Midtown in the late 1990s. As architect of “The Glover Plan,” he pushed relentlessly to fill Midtown’s retail black hole, and area residents have reaped the benefits ever since.

Glover is a strong advocate for neighborhood improvements, and he is an adversary of Firefighters’ Local 42, which continuously agitates for bigger Fire Department budgets, more union firefighting jobs and a broader fire union sphere of influence. Local 42 is supporting Shields.

As City Hall reporter for The Star from 1985 to 1995, I covered both Shields and Glover. I did volunteer work for Glover and contributed financially to him when he ran for mayor in 2007. I also contributed to his council campaign four years ago.

I have not volunteered for Shields in any of her campaigns and to the best of my recollection have not contributed to her financially.

My biggest concerns about Shields are her allegiance to Local 42 and her motives for wanting to return to office. My guess is that she misses the spotlight and the “action” and simply wants back in. Glover is not without ego, either — like I said, he’s run for mayor twice — but I think he has a better vision of what it takes to keep the city moving forward. From me, he gets the nod on “the trust factor.”

Heather Hall-Dick Davis

Hall

Hall defeated Davis yesterday by a vote of 1,380 to 1,267. Davis narrowly edged former Local 42 president Louie Wright and will advance to the June 23 general election. According to final, unofficial results, Davis had 1,267 votes to 1,235 votes for Wright.

The Clay County Board of Election commissioners will certify the result on Friday. Wright would then have five days to get a court order, if he wanted a recount. (Getting such an order would not be difficult.)

I put in a call to Wright at a restaurant he owns in North Kansas City — Johnny’s Back Yard — but had not heard back from him before publishing this post.

Tuesday’s three-way contest poses an interesting dynamic for the general election. Davis has the support of the Citizens Association, an organization that has long fought for progressive city government. Hall will have the backing of the Tea Party and the Fraternal Order of Police, of which her husband is a member.

Wright

If Wright does not seek a recount (or if he does and again falls short), he will likely swing Local 42’s backing to Hall. That would be significant and would make Hall the favorite to win the general election, although it’s possible that a larger general-election turnout would give Davis a boost.

Besides the union scenario, also working against Davis are his age — 78 — and the fact that he is not an avid campaigner. Bob Mayer, a developer who is an adviser to Davis, put it very candidly when I spoke with him today.

Davis

“He (Davis) and his supporters are going to have to step it up to win that race,” Mayer said.

Mayer interrupted our chat — understandably — to take a call from Davis. Later, Mayer sent me an email saying, of Davis, “He is very realistic and understands what he needs to do.”

I covered Dick Davis a bit when he was at the ATA and have always liked and admired him. I have contributed to his re-election campaign. I don’t know Hall but am concerned about her Tea Party and union connections…For me, Davis is the clear choice. I hope he campaigns hard and is able to raise enough money to get his message to Clay County voters and convince them he’s the clear choice.

I didn’t expect to be going to the Royals’ home opener today. My daughter Brooks and I wanted to go badly, and I put in for the ticket lottery a few months ago.

But a few weeks later I got an e-mail from the Royals saying my name was not among those who had won the privilege of buying tickets.

That was that, I thought. But then, unbeknownst to me and Brooks, my wife Patty went into action. Both my birthday and Brooks’ are in March, and on Brooks’ birthday, Patty gave us each a water container with Royals’ logos. That wasn’t all, though. Inside each container was a ticket to opening game. Patty had gone to one of the online ticket-selling sites and paid who knows how much for good seats for me and Brooks.

Of course, we were thrilled and had been looking forward to this day for a long time. As it turned out, the occasion more than met our lofty expectations.

Despite a long wait to park and a light mist falling through the first seven innings, the occasion was one to savor and remember. We missed much of the pre-game festivities, but we were there in time for the Kansas City Symphony’s performance of the National Anthem, and we took our seats moments before the first pitch.

As you know by now, the Royals beat the White Sox 10-1, winning their season opener for the first time in seven years. Their previous opening-day victory was March 31, 2008, at Detroit. It had been a long opening-day drought, but I think almost everyone in the stadium today fully expected the Royals to win.

Naturally, I took my camera so I could document the occasion. Here’s what it looked like at “The K.”

The scene outside, before the game.

A few people got an early start.

Gotta get in there for the first pitch!

Some great bargains on beverages.

Alex warms up before the start of an inning.

The view from Row AA of Section 211, where we were fortunate enough to sit.

Ruby, ruby, ruby!

Brooks and the blogger.

Lookin’ good from top to bottom.

“KC” (lower left) hangs the “W,” below the 1985 World Championship flag (right), the 1980 American League Championship flag (left), and the 2014 league championship flag, which was raised before the game.

You could see this coming four months ago: The Rolling Stone story’s about “Jackie,” the otherwise anonymous University of Virginia student who claimed to have been gang raped at a fraternity party has officially and completely blown up in the magazine’s face.

Rolling Stone today retracted the story and published on its website a 13,000-word report written by three people with the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. Rolling Stone asked the journalism school to investigate the story last December, after other publications, including the Washington Post, raised significant questions about its credibility.

The journalism school’s report said the magazine failed to engage in “basic, even routine journalistic practice” to verify details of the alleged assault, which supposedly occurred at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house on Sept. 28, 2012.

The Rolling Stone writer, Sabrina Rubin Erdely. relied almost exclusively on Jackie’s account and made only token attempts to verify it.

Sabrina Rubin Erdely

In abandoning basic journalistic methods, Erdely not only anonymously quoted three of Jackie’s former friends who supposedly knew about the assault but also used quotes, supposedly from the friends, that Jackie provided. Erdely didn’t get the quotes herself; she let Jackie put words in their mouths and published those words!

Jackie refused to give Erdely the full names of the three friends, and Erdely did not attempt to independently contact them. The writer and her principal editor, Sean Woods, got around the identity problem by using pseudonyms for the friends. They did the same thing for the alleged organizer of the gang rape, a man Erdely referred to as “Drew,” whom Erdely inquired about but also failed to contact.   

Failing to contact the friends, the investigative report said, was a key element in the story’s faulty foundation.

“In hindsight,” the report said, “the most consequential decision Rolling Stone made was to accept that Erdely had not contacted the three friends who spoke with Jackie on the night she said she was raped. That was the reporting path, if taken, that would have almost certainly led the magazine’s editors to change plans.”

**

I wrote about this back in December, when Rolling Stone acknowledged that there were “discrepancies” between Jackie’s account and facts that had been uncovered since the article appeared.

In response to a comment at the bottom of that post, I wrote this sentence: 

My guess is that Jann Wenner, co-founder of the magazine and still the editor in chief, will fire just about everyone who was involved in reporting and editing the story.

Unbelievably, astonishingly, Wenner told The New York Times that no one would lose their jobs — not Erdely, not Woods, not managing editor Will Dana, who raised no objections.

The Times said that Wenner “acknowledged the piece’s flaws but said that it represented an isolated and unusual episode.”

Will Dana

For his part, Dana said the following in a three-paragraph introduction to the Columbia School of Journalism report:

“We are…committing ourselves to a series of recommendations about journalistic practices that are spelled out in the report. We would like to apologize to our readers and to all of those who were damaged by our story and the ensuing fallout, including members of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity and UVA administrators and students.”

Tonight, I read the Columbia report, and it is appalling.

Consider this excerpt, for example:

Stronger policy and clearer staff understanding in at least three areas might have changed the final outcome:

Pseudonyms…Pseudonyms are inherently undesirable in journalism. They introduce fiction and ask readers to trust that this is the only instance in which a publication is inventing details at its discretion. Their use in this case was a crutch – it allowed the magazine to evade coming to terms with reporting gaps. Rolling Stone should consider banning them. If its editors believe pseudonyms are an indispensable tool for its forms of narrative writing, the magazine should consider using them much more rarely and only after robust discussion about alternatives, with dissent encouraged.

Checking Derogatory Information. Erdely and Woods made the fateful agreement not to check with the three friends. If the fact-checking department had understood that such a practice was unacceptable, the outcome would almost certainly have changed.

The report also lambasted Woods, the principal editor, and Dana, the managing editor.

Of Woods, the report said:

Sean Woods

“Sean Woods…might have prevented the effective retraction of Jackie’s account by pressing his writer to close the gaps in her reporting. He started his career in music journalism but had been editing complex reported features at Rolling Stone for years. Investigative reporters working on difficult, emotive or contentious stories often have blind spots. It is up to their editors to insist on more phone calls, more travel, more time, until the reporting is complete. Woods did not do enough.”

Of Dana, it said:

“Dana might have looked more deeply into the story drafts he read, spotted the reporting gaps and insisted that they be fixed. He did not.”

**

What a horrible day for journalism. And, perhaps more important, what a fateful day for Rolling Stone.

By itself, the phony story would have badly damaged Rolling Stone’s credibility for a long time to come. But by failing to fire any or all of the three principal players in this journalistic fraud — the writer, the story editor and the managing editor — the magazine has effectively followed its admission of cheating with a kick to the readers’ and the public’s face.

For me, an Arizona resident summed it up best in a comment posted on The New York Times’ website:

“It’s pretty obvious that nobody at Rolling Stone thinks they actually did anything wrong. This should disqualify them from ever being considered a ‘news source’ again.” 

There’s an obituary in today’s Kansas City Star that probably won’t register with the vast majority of area residents.

But for those of us who have been around 30 or 40 years or so and who have followed the news closely during that time, this particular obit is of keen interest.

Pete Tamburello

Below a photo of a smiling, gray-haired man with large-rimmed glasses is the name Peter Joseph Tamburello. Mr. Tamburello lived to the ripe age of 83. His obit starts out like this:

“Peter was a lifelong Kansas city resident, a graduate of Northeast High School, and an Eagle Scout. He served in the United States Army during the Korean conflict.”

Ah, yes, an Eagle Scout and a war veteran.

But wait, there’s more!

It’s not in the obit, but Pete — I’m switching to the more familiar mode now because I sort of met him once (more on that in a minute) — also was:

:: A “soldier” in the Kansas City’s La Cosa Nostra during the mob’s “glory years” in the 1970s.

:: A close associate of the longtime Kansas City mob boss Nick Civella.

:: A twice-convicted felon. Once for his role in a Las Vegas casino money-skimming scheme and another time for attempting, along with Civella, to bribe a prison official to get favorable treatment for a Civella nephew who was incarcerated.

Pete served several years in prison. I couldn’t find the lengths of the prison terms, but I think they were significant, especially in the casino-skimming case.

**

Last December, I wrote about my 1980 encounter with Pete and Nick. It was at Game 5 of the 1980 World Series — the series the Royals lost in six games to the Philadelphia Phillies.

In brief, Nick and Pete attended the game with tickets that a friend had finagled from state Sen. Harry Wiggins. Early in the game, Wiggins went to the seats to see who the friend had given them to and, to his shock, found Civella and Tamburello in the seats.

Wiggins called The Star, and an editor got ahold of me (I was on assignment at Kauffman Stadium). A photographer and I then approached Civella and Tamburello, and I interviewed Civella — with Tamburello standing beside him — in the lower concourse, down the first base line.

The encounter got a little testy. During the interview, Tamburello shoved a camera being held by a KMBC-TV cameraman, and Civella slapped at the Star photographer’s camera. After the interview, the two men returned to their seats but left the game a short time later. It was one of my most invigorating days as a reporter, and the story was on the front page the next day.

At the time, both Nick and Pete were awaiting trial on the bribery charges.

There were two skimming cases — the Tropicana and the Argent — where the mob muscled into ownership and exacted a portion of the revenue. The mob’s share was paid out regularly, in cash, to trusted couriers. Pete was charged, along with several other mobsters, in connection with both cases.

In the Tropicana case, a grand jury indicted 11 people in November 1981. Pete was the only one to be acquitted. In the Argent case, which was a few years later, he pleaded guilty.

Civella also was indicted in the Tropicana case but was never prosecuted because he was in prison on the bribery conviction, dying of cancer. He died in March 1983, six months before indictments were handed down in the Argent case.

**

Back to that obit…After returning from the Korean War and getting his discharge, Pete operated a plumbing supply business before entering the restaurant business.

“He owned and operated several restaurants…including Antonio’s Pizzeria, Hello Dolly’s, Taco Pete’s, Georgie Porgie’s, Sir Kenneth’s Fish & Chips and Marty’s BBQ.”

Antonio’s Pizzeria, which had its beginning on Troost just south of 47th Street, was a nexus for KC’s mobsters. After one or more of his arrests, Civella listed his occupation as part owner of Antonio’s Pizzeria. I don’t know if Civella ever made any of the pizza, but it was damn good; I was a regular there in the early ’70s.

…And so, on Monday, Pete will be laid to rest after a Mass of Christian Burial at St. Patrick Catholic Church in the Northland.

I’d like to hear the eulogy, but I don’t think I’ll attend. Just like at Game 5 of the World Series, there will be a lot of eyes on people who aren’t part of the immediate and extended families.

Late last year, Jeb Bush said he knew how a Republican could win the White House in 2016.

“…(I)t has to be much more uplifting, much more positive, much more willing to…’lose the primary to win the general’ without violating your principles,” he said.

Then, he added, “That’s not an easy task.”

No, it sure isn’t. Not with the religious right running around supporting a law in Indiana and a bill in Arkansas that would give private businesses the right to refuse service or do business with people whose lifestyles or religious principles they don’t agree with.

Fortunately, at least for his party’s chances of winning the presidency, Bush appears to mean what he said when he talked about being willing to “lose the primary to win the general.”

On Wednesday, Bush did an about-face on the Indiana “religious freedom” law, which triggered a storm of outrage. (The Indiana and Arkansas governors are now urging their respective legislatures to clean up the mess.)

A New York Times report said that at a Silicon Valley fund-raiser, Bush told a small group of potential supporters that a “consensus-oriented” approach would have been better at the outset.

The Times story went on to say:

“Mr. Bush’s comments were strikingly different in tone and in scope from what he said on Monday night in an interview with the conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt. In that interview he praised Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana for doing the ‘right thing’ and said that the new law was similar to one in Florida and to a law signed by President Bill Clinton in 1993.”

Similar, yes, but with key differences. For one thing, the Indiana law gives businesses the ability to use the law to defend themselves against civil-rights suits brought by individuals. That’s a key divergence from the federal “Religious Freedom Restoration Act,” which lets people use that law to defend themselves against civil-rights suits brought by the government.

The Indiana law — as currently written — opens the door for situations like those being cited in media coverage, where a bakery could cite the law in defending itself against a legal claim brought by a gay couple for whom the bakery refused to make a wedding cake.

To his credit, Bush saw that he could get whipsawed if he remained intransigent. He realized that the Indiana law was an overreach that presented individuals, and some businesses, with the option of discriminating against certain groups and individuals. And he reversed course.

It’s the kind of mess that John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012 probably wouldn’t have had the good sense to extricate themselves from. Fearing the wrath of the religious right, they probably would have closed their eyes and let their sleds go careening over the cliff, instead of jamming their toes into the snow.

To get himself off the margins and back in the mainstream, Bush said that while religious freedom is a core value of our country” and a basic right, “we shouldn’t discriminate based on sexual orientation.”

That was good — but not as good as what Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas said.

By now, I’m sure, you know that Hutchinson’s son Seth, a 31-year-old union organizer in Texas, had told his father that he objected to an Arkansas bill similar to the one in Indiana. He even signed a petition urging his father to veto it.

Seth’s entreaty helped the elder Hutchinson see the light.

“The issue has become divisive,” the governor said, “because our nation remains split on how to balance the diversity of our culture with the traditions and firmly held religious convictions. It has divided families and there is clearly a generational gap on this issue.”

…Any Republican presidential candidates who refuse to acknowledge the generation gap on gay rights will find themselves, in the short term, in the religious right’s good graces. But that’s not where the Republican nominee needs to be in November 2016, in my opinion.

So, I applaud Jeb Bush for looking past the madding crowd of right wingers on the issue of “restoring religious freedom.” It’s an indication that he won’t let himself be browbeaten into taking positions that make him look like foolish to the 21-to-40 set, who — if roused from their political apathy — could have their way at any time.

With the impending retirement of longtime Kansas City Star Managing Editor Steve Shirk, Editor Mike Fannin and Publisher Mi-Ai Parrish have a significant decision to make.

Replacing Shirk, who was at The Star more than 35 years, will be difficult. If this job had come open 10 years ago, several senior editors would have been competing for the job. Among them, in all probability, would have been then-Assistant Managing Editor/Metro Randy Smith; another (but lower ranking) assistant managing editor, Michael (O.J.) Nelson; and Anne Spenner, who was Smith’s right-hand person.    

But all those people left when it became clear that down sizing was the order of the future after the McClatchy Co.’s ill-fated, $4.5 billion purchase of the KnightRidder chain, including The Star, in June 2006.

It only took a couple of years to see that the fish — McClatchy — was trying to get its jaws around a whale. (McClatchy wasn’t the only fish whose eyes were bigger than its stomach: Lee Enterprises, of the Quad Cities, overpaid for the Pulitzer papers, led by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.)

I retired the month the McClatchy purchase closed, and two years later, The Star started laying people off. (Whew!)

Among those laid off was Jeanne Meyer, then co-managing editor, along with Shirk. (Her husband, Keith Chrostowski, is The Star’s business editor.)

With one managing editor out, Smith and Nelson saw the writing on the wall and started making other plans.

In 2008, Nelson got a chance to return to his home state of Nebraska as editor of the Lincoln Journal Star. And off he went. (He has since retired.)

Smith moved out of the newsroom and for a year or two worked in the Human Resources Department, where, to his chagrin, he had to help determine who got laid off. (As a result, through no fault of his own, he became persona non grata in the newsroom.)

But in 2009 a great opportunity surfaced for him: He was offered the new post of Donald W. Reynolds Endowed Chair for Business Journalism at the University of Missouri. Of course, he snapped it up.

Spenner, the third leg of what had been a solid Metro stool, completed the trifecta in 2011, when she took the post of vice chancellor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

She was succeeded by Greg Farmer, who had been news editor (overseeing the copy desk and deciding most story placement) and then website editor.

He has held the AME/Metro job the last four years, and, as far as I can determine, has done well. I never worked for him, but it seemed to me that he had good interpersonal skills and strong news judgment.

He’s relatively young, in his early 40s, I would guess, and, to me, he’s the odd-on favorite to succeed Shirk.

Someone who will get consideration — and probably will apply — is News Editor Charles (Chick) Howland, who’s in his 50s. Howland was formerly an assistant metro editor, whose relaxed and even-keeled personality contributed to him being extremely popular with reporters.

A long-shot candidate might be Scott Canon, a former national reporter and business-desk reporter who has been an assistant metro editor the last several years. He, too, is probably in his 50s. Like Farmer, he is strong in web technology, having covered the field for many years.

Farmer

Canon

Rosen

If I had to pick another long shot, it would be Sports Editor Jeff Rosen, who came to The Star four years ago from the Houston Chronicle. He’s in his early 40s. I don’t know anything about him, except that the sports section continues to ring up big honors. But The Star has a history of elevating sports editors to lofty newsroom positions.

Fannin made the jump from sports editor to editor, and before him, a former sports editor named Dinn Mann (grandson of Roy Hofheinz, the man who built the Astrodome) was promoted from sports editor to Page One editor in the early 2000s. He left two or three years later to become vice president at MLB.com.

**

With all the layoffs and down sizing that have been taking place, there has been speculation that the Star won’t replace Shirk, whose last day is April 10. On his blog, kcconfidential.com, my friend and former KC Star colleague Hearne Christopher recently quoted an anonymous newsroom source as saying, “I don’t know that anybody’s taking his (Shirk’s) place. I think they may just consolidate jobs.”

I think the source is off base. I can’t imagine The Star, or any other major metropolitan daily, operating without a managing editor. The managing editor is the person who has his or her hands on the copy every day — reads every story nominated for Page 1 — and who supervises all newsroom personnel and, in general, is the judge who keeps order in the court.

The newsroom cannot run itself, and the editor, Fannin, would be hard pressed to run the newsroom, although, with the slimmed-down staff, I suppose it could be done.

If, on the outside chance, we should learn that The Star intends to juggle positions so it doesn’t have to name — and pay — a managing editor, you can bet that, in short order, at least the Monday and Tuesday print editions would be dropped. We may see that anyway, the way things are going, but dropping the position of managing editor would seal the unholy deal.

So, Mike and Mi-Ai, let’s get cracking on naming a new managing editor.

The Star recently lost an exceptional amount of journalistic talent with the retirements, via buyout, of reporter/editor Darryl Levings, assistant metro editor Elaine Adams and sports reporter Randy Covitz.

But the most painful loss to me, as a reader, was that of investigative and courts reporter – and periodic columnist — Mark Morris.

Morris, a friend for many years, was one of those reporters who, when you saw his byline, you knew you were in for a good read. There aren’t a lot of reporters about whom that can be said, and with Mark, KC Star readers were privileged to be on receiving end of bushels full of thoroughly reported, felicitously written stories.

But at 61 years of age and with 31 years of service behind him, Morris said goodbye to The Star last week. You might have read his last column, which appeared in Monday’s paper under the headline “Hear ye, Hear ye, court is now adjourned.” (In case you didn’t, here it is.) In the column Mark reflected on his 17 years of courts coverage. One of his seminal pieces of advice was to defendants in criminal cases: “Never represent yourself in court…You’ll be convicted.”

Mark and the family Black Lab, Booner, outside the home in Liberty

Mark is rightly proud of his career at The Star, and while talking about it at his Liberty home on Thursday, he emphasized that he had left the paper voluntarily and with a sense of satisfaction.

“I had a great run at The Star,” he said. “The people (managers, in particular) have been good to me…I left at a good time.”

My association with Mark

I intend to recount some of the highlights of Mark’s career here — including his brief ascension to “bestselling author” and examples of his resourcefulness and powers of observation — but first I want to tell you how he and I came to be friends.

I had already been at The Star for 15 years when Mark arrived at the paper in 1984 (I arrived in 1969, to spare you the math) as assistant night city editor. Prior to that, he had worked at smaller papers in Fulton and Centralia, Missouri.

He advanced to night city editor, but then, after a decade as an editor, made the somewhat unusual switch of becoming a reporter. (The customary path of upward progression in journalism is reporter first, then editor.)

In 1994, then, he joined me at City Hall, which I had been covering since 1985. We had a good time at City Hall, working out of the 26th-floor press room, yards away from the City Council Chamber. We also became friends and turned out a lot of good stories. At one point in the mid-90s, federal and state authorities were investigating four council members – Michael Hernandez, Chuck Weber, Jeanne Robinson and Carol Coe — and three ended up being convicted of felonies – all except Coe.

In 1995, I became an assistant metro editor and took charge of the Wyandotte County bureau, where I spent the next nine years. Mark stayed at City Hall until 1998, when he was named federal courts reporter, the post he held for the last 17 years of his career.

…Here I want to inject a note that is important to both Mark and me. Since I began blogging in 2010, Mark has never provided me with any inside information about developments at The Star. In fact, because people at The Star knew that we were friends, he was careful to maintain arm’s-length distance. So, any “scoops” you have read in this blog about The Star did not come from Mark, directly or indirectly. 

Some career highlights

Mark gathered about 20 first-place honors and awards during his years at The Star. Those include:

:: The 2010 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for “A New Slavery,” a five-part series he and two other reporters, Laura Bauer and Mike McGraw, did on human trafficking.

:: The 2010 Investigative Reporting award from the Associated Press Sports Editors for 2011 for “Trouble in Jayhawk Nation,” a series of stories on a ticket-skimming scandal by employees in the University of Kansas ticket office. (Other staff members shared the award.)

:: The 2012 Best News Story award from the Kansas Press Association for “Bishop, KC diocese indicted.” Reporters Judy Thomas and Glenn Rice shared the award.

In 2001 and 2002, Mark and a Michigan reporter, Paul Janczewski, collaborated on a book titled “Fatal Error,” about a Michigan housewife who convinced her lover, a former Cass County deputy sheriff, to murder her husband. For one week – the first week of March 2003 — the book was on The New York Times Extended Bestseller List, ranking 30th in the “paperback nonfiction” category.

Talking excitedly while moving around his kitchen yesterday, Mark said: “Do you know what that does (having reached “bestseller” status) to my obituary? That’s awesome!”

A bonus – in more ways than one – was the Lifetime cable channel’s decision to exercise an option to make a movie out of the book. It aired in 2006 under the title “Fatal Desire.”

Although “Fatal Error” is Mark’s only book so far, it probably won’t be his last. He has “two or three ideas” for writing projects and plans to move forward in due time.

Before any work-related retirement projects get underway, however, Mark has a couple of other important engagements. In the days ahead, he and his wife Carolyn will spend a week together in France, where Carolyn is headed on a business trip for Nestle Purina PetCare Co., with which she is a manager.

After that, both will pour much of their free time into helping prepare for the scheduled July wedding of their 28-year-old daughter Sarah. Sarah, an optometrist, lives and works in California. Their other child, 25-year-old Will, is a medical student in Arizona.

Journalistic resourcefulness (Example No. 1) 

— The Lonnie Moore case

 On Tuesday, March 29, 2011, an Independence police officer shot and killed a 41-year-old drifter named Lonnie Moore after Moore began shooting at the officer on a patch of Interstate 70 overlooking the Bass Pro Shop.

As best Mark can recall, he was on vacation when Moore was killed. The reporters who were working the story didn’t get Moore’s identification for two days and were unable, despite their best efforts, to find out much about him.

The only visual evidence reporters had to go on was a photo that a camera at a local bank had captured of Moore when he was robbing the bank. (That’s why police were after him.) When Mark returned to work the following Monday, an editor dropped the Moore story in Mark’s lap. The assignment: “Find out who this guy is and give us a profile.”

Before jumping into electronic records, Mark began to study the photograph. He noticed that Moore was wearing a baseball cap with the letter “T” superimposed on the letter “C” and immediately recognized it as a Minnesota Twins cap.

With that, Mark began combing through online Minnesota law enforcement records and, bingo, up popped the name of Lonnie Moore, above a lengthy criminal record. A few weeks later, under Mark’s byline, The Star published a fascinating front-page profile on Moore.

Journalistic resourcefulness (Example No. 2)

— Kansas City Council members convicted of bribery

I mentioned earlier that, at one time in the mid-90s, four former Kansas City Council members were being investigated for possible public corruption.

Mark knew that council members Michael Hernandez and Chuck Weber were the targets of one investigation, and he was trying to find out exactly what the investigation revolved around. He homed in on a proposed residential development being pushed by the Frank Morgan group.

For several weeks a council committee was holding hearings and taking testimony on the development proposal, which needed City Council approval. As part of the deal, officials in the City Development Department were requiring the developer to pay $521,400 to for construction of part of an access road, Line Creek Parkway, in the Northland.

The City Clerk’s office routinely publishes reports from City Council and council committee meetings, and it also tapes those meetings. Mark spent hours and hours poring over the written reports and the audio tapes, looking for any suspicious developments.

Finally, one day while going over the paperwork at home, it struck Mark that between one hearing and the next, the requirement for the developer’s participation in Line Creek Parkway had vanished without explanation. Like Hercule Poirot’s “little gray cells” churning into action, the disappearance of a few words produced an epiphany for Mark. And from there the story took off.

It turned out that Hernandez had agreed to drop the road-construction requirement in return for a $20,000 bribe. On another development project, he was taking a bribe of $50,000. In both instances, the idea was for the money to go to one or more nebulous Hispanic development groups and then be funneled back to Hernandez.

Weber’s role was more limited: At one committee meeting, at Hernandez’ request, Weber left the council chamber and reminded Walker LaBrunerie, a member of the Morgan development group, that the $70,000 in “contributions” had not yet been made.

Ultimately, Weber and Hernandez were convicted of felonies and left the council in disgrace. Hernandez was sentenced to 15 months, and Weber to five months, with a recommendation for home confinement.

LaBrunerie and another member of the development group, Mark Morgan, also were charged and convicted. LaBrunerie was sentenced to a year and a day, and Morgan, a son of the late banker and developer Frank Morgan, got an 18-month sentence.

Moral? Crime doesn’t pay, but the stories can be priceless…Sorry to see you leave The Star, Mark, but many of your friends and followers will be looking for you under the arc lights in the months and years to come.