One of The Kansas City Star's biggest problems was blatantly obvious today. I got a copy to read over lunch.
Another mistake, on my part.
The front page of the paper?
Four-fifths of it was on Osama bin Laden. The last one-fifth was on local issues.
The 2nd section of the paper?
In their own words: "Killing Osama bin Laden: A special 8-page section on the hunt, the death and the consequences"
Page A2? The 2nd page in the paper? One-half on national news and one-half advertising.
A3? Same here.
Page A4 finally is a page of local news. Finally.
A5? A full-page ad.
It goes on like that.
The Sports section is the Sports section, they get what they want and need.
The "entertainment" section? "FYI"? There's a huge picture and story on the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival and then Aaron Barnhart covers the White House Correspondent's Dinner.
My points?
The end result is that Kansas City Star is not a local paper.
The one thing they should do BETTER THAN ANYONE, ANYWHERE, is to cover local stories, local people and local color.
If they don't do that, who will? The local TV news stations?
We all know that's at least rare. (See one good exception below).
So on page C4 in the Business section of the paper today is an article--yes, it's finally local--telling of this same Star newspaper laying off yet more staff.
Granted, the newspaper business is dying, sure.
And they've laid off a great deal of reporters, before this latest layoff.
But y'all sure aren't doing yourselves any favor down there at the Star's offices copying and pasting national stories and then expecting us to buy the rag.
The photographer, Eric Bowers, pointed this out on his Facebook page recently:
I reiterate how useless local news stations can be. There was a large demonstration on the Plaza by the Syrian and Arab American community about some slaughtering going on in Syria by the tyrants there and the news stations didn't even send a truck - they're too busy talking about dumb crap like cats stuck in trees in the suburbs to do any actual spreading of world information based on how it relates locally.
And who's covering a scandal up in Parkville right now? Reporter Russ Ptacek on NBC "Action News".
It sure wasn't The Star.
Link: http://www.kansascity.com/
http://blog.ericbowersphoto.com/2011/05/protest-in-kansas-city-against-syrias-bashar-al-assad/
https://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=hpskip#!/video/video.php?v=10150579645520582&comments
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2 comments:
"Ultra local" seems to be working better in many ways then trying to be all things to all people. I think of papers like the Jackson County Advocate and to some extent, the Kansas City Call. These papers, along with many others, focus down on a very certain community. Maybe our local paper would do better to focus down on local issues and leave a lot of the national news to national outlets.
Well, that's what I'm suggesting.
I updated the article with two examples. The photographer Eric Bowers pointed out that there was no coverage of the Syrian protest on the Plaza Sunday evening and Russ Ptacek over at NBC Action News broke a story that has people resigning up in Parkville. Where's the local coverage the Star should be doing? It sure wasn't in the paper today.
If they cover the bin Laden story big time, as they did today, how does that differentiate them from all other media outlets around the world, literally? And those other outlets, whether it's Al Jazeera or the NY Times or Reuters or whomever, will cover that far better. What they should do is get downtown at City Hall and see if there's any scandals they should be hammering. That and check out local business people for the same.
Oh, wait. They don't want to do that. They want everyone as friends and on their side.
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