On opening the paper today

The Star today, this morning, continues to impress. Just seeing the front page of the paper today cofnirms this. If you only saw the 3 front page articles today, you'd know it was good writing, research and reporting, with great local color. One was about on the new minority look and shape of Garden City, Kansas and what it means for the people there and that town and so, of course, for America at large. Terrific. The second good and important one was on the Kansas City University of Biosciences and Medicine and their problems with former University President Karen Pletz. Finally, even the weakest article, the one on DNA testing of track dogs and associated, illegal dogfights, was still good reading and writing. You can see that this continual empasis on local stories, area residents and towns and cities makes for a great paper and is, as I've said before, the thing that will save local newspapers (for as long as they will exist in the transition to the internet and wireless news). So good on you, Kansas City Star and thanks very much for revitalizing the paper.

Notes on a Sunday newspaper

Specifically, today's Kansas City Star:

1) Karen Pletz and the KC Univ. of Medicine: It's great to see the Star report on the Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences and former President Karen Pletz's firing, frankly. She was let go in December but neither anyone from the University or Ms. Pletz herself will say why she was forced out. This situation brings up the following important questions: Since tax money was involved, we have a right to know why the University let Ms. Pletz go. Why was she, in fact, fired? Was there any impropriety--or illegality--or was it merely a disagreement on the path she was taking the University? If it was merely a disagreement, someone from the University should say so, publicly, and as soon as possible;

2) Missions to moon cancelled: Good. I'm no druid but this was a dumb idea to begin. As the article states, "The moon program, called Constellation, already was behind schedule, over budget and deemed too low-tech." And you know what else? It doesn't make sense, cost-wise, to send people into space. Machines can be sent far less
expensively and get a great deal of data. I'd be against this even if it weren't originally George W. Bush's idea but that fact just makes it that much easier;

3) Stupid criminals: I always love reading the short articles from virtually any source, telling of some new knucklehead and their stupid way to end up getting arrested. One of my favorite ones today is the guy who stuck about 75 bottles of lotion in his pants at a Bath and Body Works store back East. (How could stealing 75 8 ounce bottles of lotion benefit you?);

4) Irrelevant Chiefs history: As a city, we need to stop trying to be interested in the history of Kansas City Chiefs on big game days like the Super Bowl. It's pathetic and has nothing to do with anything;

5) Toyota and their recall: In spite of our media's and government's opinions that Toyota has been acting slowly and irresponsibly to its recall of cars to repair the gas pedals, I beg to differ. From what I understand, 19 people were killed over a 6 year period. When it was finally declared a problem, Toyota immediately did big things--they
instituted the recall of millions of cars for repairs to address the problems, they cancelled the sales of 8 of their models, which hurt them badly, financially, the President of the company made a public apology and finally, this morning, I saw a commercial from the company, explaining and addressing the problems and asking for logic to prevail.

If an American car company had these problems, we'd still be waiting for a recall, I'd wager, they wouldn't have cancelled the sales of ANY cars and there would never be a public apology from anyone in the company, let alone the president of the company, for fear of further, ugly reprisals and lawsuits;

6) Possible federal charges for the murderer: It's great to see that there will likely be additional, federal charges against the murderer Scott Roeder and possibly even charges against others who may have helped or worked with him. Yay. Good on ya', Federal Justice Department. Let's make sure he stays in prison for the rest of
his miserable, psychotic, self-righteous life;

7) Casino taxes and revenue: It's disgusting to see casinos asking that the State of Kansas take less revenue from them, and that they should reduce the State's take from 40% to 22%. When casinos first came to the area, they knew they would promise anything and everything to get in the area. The State to take 40% of revenue? Sure, fine. Loss limits for customers? No problem. But after the fact, once
they're in the area and entrenched in the economy, then they start backing out of those agreements. They did away with the loss limits some time ago and now this.

And the casinos will keep asking/pushing for more, with time, too. Like all corporations in America, they're insatiable when it comes to profits and they'll take them from wherever they can get them. If Kansas representatives and their citizens allow this, they're foolish, at least;

8) Aim4Peace coverage: The Star's small article on Aim4Peace (on page C2) was tiny and pathetic. KCTV 5's coverage, online, was far larger and more informative. This is too important a story in town, considering they're trying to reduce or stop the shootings and killings in town, to relegate to such a small, less-informative mention as they gave. I recognize that online "space" is unlimited while extremely limited for an actual paper medium but still, this is an important story that deserves coverage;

9) T. McClanahan and DADT: I can't believe Thomas McClanahan and I agree on ANYTHING but here we are, in today's column, he agrees that we need to, as a nation, discard the military's "Don't ask, don't policy" on gays in the military. How refreshing. He's finally on the right side of an issue;

10) When did the cost of the newspaper on Sunday go to $2.00? More and more money for less and less paper;

11) Aaron Barnhart and news reporting: That said, I hope these notes prove that we need "newspapers" (or whatever we'll call them if/when they go online) and their reporters and badly. As citizens of our cities, states and nation, We are
greatly weakened against our government and corporations as a whole and our government representatives more individually, without them.

Aaron Barnhart's article on budget cutbacks and firings at CBS and other media networks in their news departments is not only true but speaks for McClatchy Newspapers, virtually all other news organizations and The Kansas City Star, too, of course. It's an important article. If you haven't seen it, you ought to maybe take a few minutes and see it.

To repeat (and I will keep covering this here, on this blog, in different ways) we, as citizens of our cities, states and nation, are greatly weakened when our media outlets report important, hard news on our governments and corporations. That includes television as well as newspapers.

(Side note on The Star: their online search engine for their own paper is still miserable and too frequently not helpful).

12) Non Sequitur: The comic is particularly funny but poignant today.

Enjoy your Super Sunday, y'all and GO SAINTS!