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Posts Tagged ‘The Kansas City Star’

“Shocking discovery” leads to dull story

Posted in journalism, Uncategorized, tagged , on July 30, 2010|

The TV anchors love to set up the next story — the one coming after the impending round of commercials — with teasers like, “You won’t believe this next story…Don’t go anywhere!” or “Shocking discover in Kansas City…You’ll have to hear it to believe it.”

That’s usually the signal to flip channels because the station promoting the pyrotechnics is guilty, invariably, of hyperbole. After all, if it was such a big story, wouldn’t it have been the lead story at the top of the broadcast?

And yet, every once in a while stories come along that merit some hyperventilation and deserve to be written and reported in a you-gotta-be-kidding tone. Such was the story that led The Star on Thursday about the rediscovery of the shotgun that was used to kill political leader Leon Jordan 40 years ago.

The Star gave it an attention-grabbing headline — “The missing gun turns up — in use by police,” which captured the irony of the situation: The weapon had disappeared from the evidence room at police headquarters. But from that tantalizing headline, the story, while inherently interesting, went downhill because the reporter wrote it like he was reporting the discovery of a turd in a sand box.

It just goes to show you that even Pulitzer-Prize-winning reporters like Mike McGraw have their off days and need the guidance of watchful editors. Along with Mark Morris, federal courts reporter, McGraw is the best investigative reporter at The Star.

He wrote Thursday’s story because it was a follow-up to a “take-out” that he and reporter Glenn Rice did a couple of weeks ago on the 40th anniversary of Jordan’s slaying — one of Kansas City’s greatest murder mysteries.   

Being The Star’s primary investigative reporter, however, McGraw writes relatively few stories — devoting his time to the big throws. As a result, his style is not well suited to the big, breaking developments that are the bread and butter of most “daily” reporters, who write several times a week and are experienced in calibrating their stories to the appropriate level of excitement.

And, make no mistake, this was exciting news: Police lost the gun that was used to kill Jordan, perhaps selling it at auction in 1976, only to repurchase it the following year from a gun shop and put it to use in one of its patrol cars. Presumably, the Jordan murder weapon has been in one or another patrol car, moving about the streets of Kansas City, the last 30 years or so.

But consider how McGraw opened his story:

“In a reversal of an earlier decision, Kansas City police are reopening a 40-year-old investigation into the 1970 shotgun slaying of black political leader Leon Jordan.

“The about-face came after local civil rights leader Alvin Sykes met with Police Chief Jim Corwin, and comes on the heels of another major development in the cast. Police have rediscovered physical evidence in the case that they had earlier said was missing.”

I hate to say it but “blah, blah, blah.” Pro forma. No imagination, little thought.

It’s not until the third paragraph that McGraw mentions the discovery of the Remington 12-gauge shotgun that was used to kill Jordan outside his Green Duck tavern early on the steamy morning of July 15, 1970.

Unfortunately, the pace of the story does not pick up; it plods through its entire 34 column inches.   

Now, let’s analyze the key elements of the story.

Is it important that police have decided to reopen the investigation (which they had earlier indicated they were not interested in doing)? Of course. Is Sykes’ agitation important? Yes. But ask yourselves….What’s the most astonishing part of this story? Right…the shotgun being found in a police car! 

Without question, the lead of the story — the first sentence or two — should have turned on the gun. 

It could have gone something like this:

“The weapon used to kill political leader Leon Jordan has been found…not buried in the police evidence room but in a patrol car, where it circuitously ended up decades ago after police disposed of it.

“The astonishing development, along with the discovery of other missing evidence in the case, has prompted police to reopen the Jordan case, one of Kansas City’s most enduring murder mysteries.”    

To me, that strikes at the inherent drama of the case and immediately gets the reader focused on the seminal question: “How in the world did the gun end up being used as standard equipment in a police patrol car?”

The lead usually is the key to grabbing the readers’ attention. In this case, the subject matter is so interesting — and the layout (including a 16-1/2 inch photo of the gun) was so good — that  most readers probably stuck with McGraw, even through his lackluster account.

But with a better lead and a more dramatic pitch throughout the story, he could have maximized readership and had a story that merited a spot in his portfolio of “all-time-best stories.”

Some people might say, “Who are you, Mr. JimmyC,” to cast aspersions at Mike McGraw?” My answer is this: I was not nearly as good a reporter as McGraw. He’s one of the best in the country, and The Star is fortunate to have him. But on this day, with this story, he blew it. And, by now, he probably realizes it.

His line editor (his immediate supervisor) could have — should have — saved him. So could other editors who looked at the story before publication. But they didn’t.

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The sun is setting on Jason Whitlock’s run at The Kansas City Star

Posted in journalism, sports, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on July 22, 2010| 3 Comments »

With the Chiefs getting set to open summer camp next week in St. Joseph, this is a good time to address a subject I’ve been thinking about lately.

Jason Whitlock.

More specifically, Jason Whitlock and his future at The Kansas City Star, where he’s been a fixture for 16 years.

In my opinion, Jason is effectively finished at The Star. I’m not just basing that on the fact that he hasn’t had a column in the paper – either sports or one of his ridiculous “independent thoughts” op-ed pieces — since June 2. No, the tell-tale sign that he’s effectively finished is that there have been very few inquiries and very little speculation, anywhere, regarding his absence from print.

That tells me that he has essentially become irrelevant, as far as readers of The Star are concerned. At this point, The Star might as well cut his big, fat salary loose and spend the money on some more reporters or copy editors.

In recent weeks, The Star has been running a box, usually on Page 2 of the Sunday sports section, saying that Whitlock is on vacation. A few weeks ago, someone at The Star told me that Whitlock had gone on vacation and then had a death in the family.

But still…seven weeks? Nobody at The Star gets that much time off; I’m pretty sure five weeks is the maximum.

He’s been writing columns for Foxsports.com, and he’s been Tweeting, but, like many a suspect on A&E’s “The First 48,” he’s “nowhere to be found” in the pages of The Star. I haven’t put in an official inquiry to anyone at The Star because if a separation is looming, I won’t get a straight answer. Besides, it’s not particularly material if he does resurface in print because, as I said at the outset, my point is that he’s effectively finished at the paper.

Here are three reasons I say that:

:: During the go-go years, when Whitlock and Joe Posnanski were a solid one-two punch, just about everyone who followed sports couldn’t wait to read what Whitlock and Poz had to say. They had a symbiotic journalistic relationship that worked to the benefit of the readers. With Whitlock often wielding the hammer and Posnanski bringing the lyrical touch, the duo gave the readers a reason to open their papers early. Then, a year ago, Posnanski left The Star to become a senior writer at Sports Illustrated, and the magic quickly disappeared. It was like any great team – Burns and Allen, Martin and Lewis – they were just a lot better together than as solo acts.

:: We came through the entire conference realignment story, which went on for many weeks, without an utterance, as far as I can tell, from Whitlock. It has been, by far, the biggest story in college sports this year, and The Star’s supposed No. 1 columnist never wrote about it. The people who carried the ball for The Star on that story – and ever so capably – were reporters Blair Kerkhoff and Mike DeArmond and columnist Sam Mellinger. Mellinger is Posnanski’s successor. A baseball expert, he has made great strides in his relatively short tenure. He’s like Posnanski in that he’s prolific, but he’s different in that he relies less on turning a phrase and more on insight and keen observation.

:: Finally, the Chiefs are in a sorry state, and, while they still are very popular, they are not nearly as relevant as they used to be under “King Carl,” as Whitlock memorably referred to former Chiefs president Carl Peterson. They have an earnest but unimaginative owner in Clark Hunt; they have a hot-headed, yet dull-as-dirt coach in Todd Haley; they have an egocentric president, Scott Pioli, who hides in his office; and they have a sub-par group of players. So, really, what does it matter what Whitlock might write about this year’s Chiefs?   

Let’s face it…Whitlock’s day in the sun as a columnist for The Star has passed. I wish him luck in the future, but it’s time for him and us to move on.

The king is dead! Long live the king! (Mellinger, that is.)

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As you were….

Posted in journalism, Uncategorized, tagged , , on July 2, 2010| 1 Comment »

For me, the most uncomfortable part of The Star’s afternoon news meetings — held every day at 4 p.m. to assess how the next day’s paper was coming together — occurred at the end of the meeting.

It was part of the wind-down, after the various editors had spoken on behalf of their stories and after everyone had weighed in with their opinions regarding which stories should go on the front page.

That’s when the managing editor, or whoever was presiding at the meeting, would say these words: “Any corrections?”

Whenever I  had to acknowledge that I, or someone on the desk I was representing, had a correction for the next day’s paper, I always wanted to curl up in a ball and not be seen. That being impossible, however, I would try to keep my voice steady and state quickly and concisely what the error was and how it occurred. Then I’d try to beat the crowd out of the room. 

In the newspaper business, the journalist who errs — and, by extension, his or her editors — bathes in the waters of ignominy. It is the grade-school equivalent (although no longer imposed on children) of sitting at the front of the room wearing the dunce cap.

With long schooling in the matter of errors, then, I read with great interest readers’ representative Derek Donovan’s column on the editorial page on Sunday, June 27.

It was a very informative column, for readers and reporters alike, because it summed up The Star’s approach to corrections at this point in its history. Donovan made at least two basic points:

1) Readers who are paying attention to such things want to see the corrections run in the same spot every day;

2) When it comes to corrections caused by bad information from a source, the paper should consider changing its style and say that the problem was source related. 

I don’t have a strong opinion about his second point — telling the readers when misinformation from sources was the root of a problem — but I do think that if The Star decided to do that, reporters would be working very hard to convince editors that “sources” were the cause of many problems.

Reporters will do just about anything to stay out of the corrections column. I know because more than once I didn’t self-report errors that no one but me knew about in my stories. 

On the other major issue that Donovan addressed — the placement of corrections — I have very strong opinions.

Donovan was careful — I don’t know why — not to say whether he thought the corrections should always be in the same place. As I see it, when the corrections do not run on the same page every day, when the editors make the readers go looking for them, it tends to devalue the corrections. 

The Star used to run the corrections on A-2 every day. Some time ago — months or maybe a year or more — the corrections began moving around. Donovan explained the variance by saying that the Page 2 design “doesn’t always allow room for the complete list.”

Well, let me tell you, if The Star really wanted to run the corrections on A-2, the page designers could make it happen. They don’t need rulers anymore; the computer does all the math, so don’t give me any page-design excuses.

Taking my basic point a step further, when the paper devalues the corrections, I believe it sends a subtle signal to the journalists that acknowledging errors isn’t as important as it was when they were in the same conspicuous place every day. It reduces the pressure on the journalists to police themselves. 

On Tuesday, I sent an e-mail to Donovan, laying out my theory and asking him if he had any comment. He wrote back: “Nope, I don’t have any comment. I learned the hard way that interacting with anti-Star bloggers is a losing game for me.”

Hmmm. Anti-Star? Me? I don’t think so. Do you sense some defensiveness there? If that’s the prevailing view at The Star — the enemy is right outside the door! — it could go hand in hand with devaluing the corrections. The line of thought (unspoken, of course) could be: “Well, circulation is down, and we’re not getting read by as many people as we used to, so why should we do all these mea culpas on Page 2 every day?”

If that’s the thinking, it’s misguided. I believe it’s important for a paper to own up to its mistakes and to do so very publicly and conspicuously. Put them on the same small platform (Page 2) every day. That’s responsible journalism.

That’s what The New York Times does — puts them on Page 2. Sometimes The Times’ list of corrections takes up 15 or more column inches. But taking responsibility is good for the soul of a paper. Its’ humbling but, at the same time, ennobling.

The Star could stand to follow suit.

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A “big story” built on a shaky foundation

Posted in journalism, Uncategorized, tagged , , , on June 28, 2010| 1 Comment »

As it should, The Star is pushing hard to keep the Karen Pletz story alive and moving forward. 

In its zeal to stay ahead of the game, however, I think The Star made a big mistake in its latest story, published Sunday, by granting anonymity to three sources who didn’t deserve it.

The story essentially reported the contents of four letters, written three to five years ago, and sent to Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences board members about Pletz’ $1.2 million salary and her questionable expenditure of university funds.

Only one of the letter writers, physician Maureen Dudgeon, who led the university’s bioethics program, was willing to go on the record. She wrote an anonymous letter to several board members in April 2007 and resigned after the board took no action on her complaints.

Reporter Alan Bavley, The Star’s medical writer, built his story around Dudgeon precisely because she was willing to go on the record. From there, however, the story loses momentum because it devolves into anonymous sources.

The first letter to board members, for example, was written by a university employee in 2005.  Bavley does not say whether the employee signed his name to the letter, although I think we can assume that he did. The letter was sent to two board members, the IRS and the Missouri attorney general’s office.

Bavley wrote: “The writer asked to remain anonymous because of continuing ties to the medical community.”

To that, I say balderdash. If you think about it, it means that the writer of the letter would rather have the medical community regard him as discreet about outrageous conduct rather than someone courageous enough to expose reprehensible conduct. Furthermore, I’m sure that just about everyone who is intimately familiar with the Pletz situation is well aware of the letter writer’s identity. So what’s to hide?

To me, Bavley and his editors should have pushed the letter writer hard to go on the record…or the story should have run without the information.

Same for the third and fourth letters, one of which was sent by a student to board members and the other by a whistle-blower to the university’s auditing firm.

Now, the whistle blower has got to be widely known, otherwise she wouldn’t be a whistle blower. And yet, Bavley granted her anonymity “because of continuing relationships in the Kansas City health care community.”

Cop-out, that’s all you can say — by the whistle blower, Bavley and the editors. Everybody washes their hands and walks away.

As for the student — now a medical resident — she asked that her name not be used “because she feared reprisals.” That’s the oldest, tiredest excuse in the book.

Feared reprisals? From whom? People who would make life difficult for her because she had stood up for what was right? Because she saw obvious problems at her school and wanted to see them corrected? 

Ridiculous.  

Yet, I’ve been in Bavley’s shoes, and I know how difficult it is for a reporter to withhold anonymity. When you’ve got a source talking and the information is flowing — and you’ve already granted anonymity — the last thing you want to do is shut off the spigot.

Nevertheless, Bavley and his editors should have pulled in the reins on their eagerness to get the big, six-column story that they wanted. From the outset, they should have talked about the conditions under which they would grant anonymity, and that issue should have been re-evaluated every step of the way, depending on what the sources were saying and why they wanted to be off the record. Anonymity is not carte blanche; you can seek to change the terms along the way.  

If Bavley could have gotten just one of the three anonymous sources to agree to be on the record, along with Dudgeon, the story would have been much stronger and less gossipy.

Often, a reporter has to become a salesperson — first selling a story idea to an editor, then selling the idea to sources so they will want to participate and, finally, selling sources on the importance of putting their names behind what they believe in. 

In my book, Bavley gets a B-minus for the story and an “F” for salesmanship. Likewise, his editors get an “F” for failing to shepherd the story responsibly.

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