That Noise You Just Heard Was the Death Knell of the Kansas City Star

Yes, sadly, I'm afraid we just saw the precursor of our only local newspaper dying.

Hedge fund wins auction for 

Kansas City Star publisher

What this means, of course, is that this hedge fund, capitalistic, money grubbing, profit only ghouls that they are, will, one by one, cut costs and cut costs and possibly raise the pricing and sell things off left and right until there is nothing there.

I give them a year.

In one year or less, the Kansas City Star will be no more.

And though it is a shadow of its former self, the role a newspaper has to play is an important one.

A very important one. An extremely important role.

• Without a newspaper and their reporters, there will be no one to report on City Hall.
• No one to report on the Mayor.
• The City Council.
• County offices and what they do.
• County representatives.
• State offices and how they effect the area, the region and all of us.
• State representatives and their actions and intentions.
• Trends in the area.
• Highway construction and all its impacts and effect on all of us.

And so much more.

There will be, there is, no organization left to pick up this news and information slack.

The local TV news stations and their reporting, such as it is, if you can call it reporting, touch--and I mean touch--once in a while, on one or some of the biggest, fleeting stories, at best, at most. They'll show some big car wreck or police stakeout but for big, day to day coverage?  We've seen how they go from those, again, big "blow up", brief stories right to some cute little duck YouTube video showing it cross a road because a child helped it out. Or some other pointless, inane 10 second video.

Hard hitting, important news? From a 22 minute, local nightly TV show?

Fuggedaboudit.

And then there's local bloggers. Yes, I know. The irony and maybe even hypocrisy isn't lost on me, reporting about bloggers.

But here's the deal, I don't remotely try to touch on local reporting. It's not my goal nor ever has been.  Just don't say or think some local blogger can or will take up this news gathering slack. It isn't going to happen. They have no reporters, nothing.

Finally, there is the community that is built by having a newspaper. There is the foundation that is--was, used to be--set by having us all read the same source and get good, solid information about our area, our region, our state, our city and county. We were all "on the same page" literally and figuratively. It gave us all a place to start and naturally we wouldn't then all agree on everything but we had that shared base. It did bring us together.

No, it's not just a sad day for Kansas City and the metropolitan area.

It's a tragic day.

We will all be less informed, even less informed, far less informed if not, dare I say it,  even dumber yet.

Honestly.

I'd love to be wrong about this. I'd love to be mistaken. I'd nearly put money on it I'm not.

Links:

Why We Need Newspapers

Why Newspapers Are Still Important to Journalism?

Why We Need Local Newspapers to Protect the Common Good 

This is why we need newspapers

Quote of the day--from Pope Francis

Which, of course, helps explain this:

To local "journalists": This isn't news

I was watching KCTV-5 news last evening when they put on a story they felt was important to us.

The only thing was, it was out of Utah, we found out, and it was about a mom who witnessed another mom, at a different table in the restaurant, who had her kids on "potty chairs."

And this is news how?

With some research, I found that it's also on Fox 4's website. They figured it was somehow important, also. They posted it 6 days ago, so not only is it not news, not only is it irrelevant to us here in the Kansas City, metro area, it's OLD filler, to boot.

Seriously, as I've said before, you'd think these people would be embarrassed. They should be embarrassed, professionally, especially, even if they haven't studied journalism, but especially if they have.

Wow.

I hope they don't also why they have low viewership and why we don't tune in.

Link: http://fox4kc.com/2012/09/06/mom-potty-trains-toddlers-in-middle-of-restaurant/

Yahoo! and Yahoo! News have become solidly Right Wing

In the last few months, there have repeatedly been times when I've seen a headline on Yahoo! News that strikes me as patently biased, Right- Wing "reporting". Today is another such day as this is the headline I saw: Ron Paul Is a Dangerous Tin Man Who Has No Heart (link at bottom) Sure, it's commentary and it's even from one of their "contributors" but could they be any more biased? This isn't even reporting. This is just ugly, very-slanted opinion. Later, up poppedd these two headlines, too: . First this one: Ex-Aide: Ron Paul Foreign Policy is 'Sheer Lunacy' And then this one: Fmr staffer: Ron Paul planned ‘No’ vote for Afghanistan invasion, staff threatened mutiny It seems clear Yahoo! really doesn't want Ron Paul even remotely considered as a candidate. Don't get me wrong here, either--I'm no big Ron Paul fan or supporter. I just think there should be responsible reporting and journalism in the country for the benefit of the voting populace. This is just ugliness, opinion, again, and possibly even vitriol. It serves no good purpose. Link: http://news.yahoo.com/ron-paul-dangerous-tin-man-no-heart-053200808.html

Another local link in The New York Times Sunday

I love looking in The NY Times on Sunday for, well, anything and everything, really, because you just never know what you'll find.  It's like life on a hallucinogenic, that paper.  It's great.  Mind-blowing, even.  What a fantastic way to end and start a week.

And I love checking out the "Vows" section each week, even, because, unlike all the rest of the parochial, condemning newspapers across the country, the Times can and does show marriages, however few, between same-sex couples.

So there one was this week and it had a local connection, too:

Jack O’Kelley III, John Haskins

Jack O’Kelley III and John Alan Haskins were married Saturday evening at Meridian House in Washington. Judge Barrington D. Parker Jr. of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit officiated.

Mr. O’Kelley (left), 43, is a partner in New York for Heidrick & Struggles, an executive recruiting and consulting firm. He advises boards and companies on succession planning for chief executives. He graduated summa cum laude from Hampton University and received a law degree from Yale.

He is the son of the late Maxine H. O’Kelley and the late Mr. O’Kelley Jr., who lived in Burlington, N.C. His mother was an assistant superintendent of the Burlington City school system. She was a member of the board of governors of the University of North Carolina System and a founding director of MidCarolina Bank in Burlington. His father was the chairman of the Alamance County Commission and also a member of the board of governors of the University of North Carolina System.

Mr. Haskins, 48, is an associate managing editor of The International Herald Tribune in Paris, which is published by The New York Times. He graduated from the University of Missouri.

He is the son of Joyce Lee Johannsen of Manchester, Mo., and the late John Lee Haskins, who lived in Des Moines. His mother retired as a public affairs specialist for the Army Reserve Personnel Center in St. Louis. His father owned Gold Coast, a tavern in Des Moines.

My real reason for posting this--besides the fact that he's a local boy--is to point out that, if Mr. Haskins stayed in the area, he wouldn't have this option, unless he drove up to Iowa, got married and came back.

And even then, the Star couldn't and wouldn't show it in the Sunday paper.

Here's hoping for an open-minded, accepting and equal future for us all one day.

And the sooner, the better.

Link:  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/08/fashion/weddings/08OKELLEY.html?ref=weddings

The troubles with newspapers

I suppose this has been covered before but so be it. I'll keep it brief.

The troubles with newspapers--because it's far more than one problem--are that, because they're losing more and more advertisers, they have to charge more and more for their paper, for one.

Secondly, then, we, as newspaper readers (devourers?), get less and less paper, both in quantity and quality.

To wit: two things come to mind today.

Did you see today's issue? Section A of the paper is 17 pages long. If you saw it, you may have reacted to it the way I did and evaluated it the same way, too.

Seven of those 17 pages--seven--were full page ads.

I don't know about other newspaper readers but I feel like a sucker when I get one anymore, unless there's at least one good source of information in at least one column that day. That's a fairly low standard for them to hit and usually, honestly, to me, the Star doesn't even hit that too many times.

The 2nd thing that was brought to my attention (via Tony's KC Blog and Bottomline Communications) is that there are, apparently, to be more layoffs, still, at the Star.

Yikes.

Those poor people down there.

But how about us, the readers, too?

There's just so much less content (quantity) and much less good writing (quality) in the paper, really, how can they expect us to keep taking that thing?

I want to take the paper but just can't justify it.

And I don't see how they can blame us, either.