A Way The Star Could Sell More Newspapers

Yes, herewith, a way our own Kansas City Star could sell more newspapers.

In the paper Friday, there was an entire two page section of the paper called "Uplift." It had, on those two pages, four articles. Two each, obviously. So they were large articles. One was from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, another from The Washington Post, the 3rd and 4th simply from the AP. That was it. So here's the radical idea to get more readers. Hire one-- or at most, two--more reporters to do just that. Report. And for this and other sections of the paper, have this reporter or these reporters write--wait for it--LOCAL STORIES. Imagine that. Have this person or these persons send out a letter from them and the Star, to every church and local non-profit and charity organization, asking them for good suggested stories on local people, doing good to great, local work. Everyone from churches to the City Union Mission, the Nelson, art galleries, universities, everywhere. You can't tell me people wouldn't respond. And then you know what would happen? Local people would read and want to read those stories. Heartwarming story from Pittsburgh on sisters doing good work in their neighborhood? Sure, okay. But get stories on locals doing great work here? Watch your readership increase. It's a natural.

Why We Need Newspapers, Why We Need the Star

Two excellent examples, presently, from our own Kansas City Star of why, exactly, we need newspapers, yes, and our own Kansas City Star. It's this kind of reporting.

Why was Missouri conservation director paid for years of comp time after termination?

Worlds of Fun was sued for polluting. Then Missouri loosened its pollutant limits

Who, exactly, does the footwork, does the research for articles like these on local and state government if newspaper reporters aren't out there?

Local bloggers?

Certainly not.

On top of these examples, there was the series they did earlier in the year about the nearly complete lack of transparency of the state of Kansas government to its residents.

Effectively, our local paper covers local, city governments of several cities in the area, but also 2 state governments, of course, in Missouri and Kansas.

If you already subscribe to the Star, either the online or paper versions, or both, good on you. Keep it up. If you don't subscribe presently, please do so. At minimum, subscribe for the online version.

I Have a Bad Feeling About This

I have a bad feeling about this.

I was downtown last week at the Kansas City Star building and saw all these tiles. There were lots of them. Apparently they are going to put them all over the West side of the Star's building, on an outdoor entrance area.

The idea is fine and all, if maybe a kind of waste of advertising dollars. The people are just going in the building. It doesn't mean they'll buy a subscription to the paper because they see these.

But here's the thing.

I have this bad feeling that these tiles are going to outlast the paper.

I'd so love to be wrong.

The Big Reason Our Kansas City Star Will Likely Fail?

So, I've been thinking for a while I should maybe subscribe to the Kansas City Star to support local reporting, important as I think it is. If they don't have the reporters out there, covering local news, local government and keeping our representatives in check, who else is going to? Some local blogger, in his  mother's basement, practicing caustic "yellow journalism" at its worst, posting sexist, misogynistic photos of scantily clad women and using ALL CAPS HEADLINES, inciting his very racist readers and commenters?

I don't think so.

So I tried to get an unlimited online subscription.

Wow.

You would not believe how difficult they make it to do this.

I tried going online to subscribe but they don't offer, simply, an online subscription there. It's unlimited online plus the paper or nothing at all.

Already. Right there. Do you realize how crazy that is, in this day of people wanting their news online? They should offer the online subscription, right up front, period. People are wanting, possibly, to throw money at them but they don't give that option.  Insane. And that's just to start.

So I phone.

Oh, brother.

The first message there, on the phone, is that their "call volume is heavy and there may be a wait."

What the what??

Call volume may be heavy?

Are you freaking kidding me?

It's the Kansas City Star.  It's a newspaper.  Your subscriptions and list of readers has famously been falling FOR YEARS. People are DROPPING the paper, not picking it up. Everyone knows this. It's a nationwide, very well known phenomenon and it's local, as well. We all know this.

So they then give you a bunch of recorded options but all of them assume you are already a subscriber.

Get that.

They don't even put on an option to TAKE ON NEW SUBSCRIBERS.

All they can do is respond to you if you're already taking the paper. It's insane. No simple, "To become a new subscriber, press lucky 7" or anything like it. If you don't take the paper already, it doesn't recognize you, can't recognize you and so, you have to respond with something else, as though you are already subscribing, in hopes that someone will come on and help you actually GET AN ONLINE SUBSCRIPTION.

But here's the next problem. I did just that. Pushed the buttons, gave them the responses so I could actually get a person to speak to so I could subscribe.

I was put on hold.

Again.

It went on and on.

Frankly, I had to clean up to get to work.

Here's the deal.

You can't subscribe to the local paper, to the Kansas City Star. Or if you can, they certainly don't make it easy.

You would think they would have a link on their home page online to do so but no.

Then you would think they would have quick, easy prompts, to actually get to someone, on the phone, who could and would help you do just that, to get a subscription.

But they don't.

Honestly, at this point, I've no idea how to subscribe to the paper unless one has oodles of time in the middle of the day.

Good luck, Star.

I have no idea how you're going to survive. It's the 21st Century. Please join us.

And this from a guy who is convinced newspapers are important.

Missouri's Ozarks Are Getting Embarrassing

Two headlines yesterday from the Star: 

Gruesome details of transgender teen’s Ozarks slaying emerge as four are charged

‘Lynch Kaepernick’ homemade doormat isn’t a racial thing, Ozarks bar owner says

A lot of us thought we were better than this. All of us.

A lot better than this.

An Article Nearly Everyone At The Star Should Read

There's an excellent article---no surprise---in today's Sunday Edition of the New York Times that, as I said, virtually everyone down at our own Kansas City Star should read. It is:

A Year of Challenges in the News Business

It's mostly all about what their newspaper---and virtually every newspaper--should do given our changes to how people are reading and accessing news and what used to be newspapers now.

One of the most pointed paragraphs:

The biggest change is probably that so many of them read The Times now not just in digital form, but on a smartphone. That means that visual journalism — including video offerings — must become more central than ever. It also means that even more journalism must be presented with digital tools at the forefront, not as an afterthought.

And this:

“We have to keep asking ‘what’s the best way to tell this story?’ ” Mr. Baquet said. That means that the newsroom itself needs to change — substantially.

Here's hoping this is the direction The Star is headed.

It doesn't seem so but here's hoping. I certainly wish them well.

Today's Kansas City Star. And What's Wrong With It

I saw this morning's, today's Kansas City Star and just looking at the front page and then through it shows you, easily, quickly, precisely what's wrong with it.

If you have one, if you saw it, you know the biggest part of the entire page was one big picture. That's all.

Mind you, it was in color but that was it.

And that story?

It was a sports story.

Sports. On the front page.

You'd think that might be in---what?---the sports section? Maybe a small teaser about it on the front page and then the huge pic and story there?

Nah. It's the Kansas City Star.

Then, after that, what's up? What else is on the front page?

What caught my eye and what likely caught the average reader's eye was a rather large title to the left declaring "The Star gains a new leader."  (For a moment, I thought it read "reader." We all know they're pretty desperate).

What got me and gets me about this is that their big news for the city is----ta daa!----all about them.

I ask you, ladies and gentlemen, does anyone besides the people at the newspaper and the person's family and friends truly care or bother themselves with who, exactly, is the publisher, new or otherwise, at the local newspaper? I know I don't. Well, not unless he or she could somehow save it all.

From there, the front page has yet another color picture, this one on the standoff by the domestic terrorists in Oregon and it takes up about 1/4 of the page.  After that, is has a small teaser about North Korea's leader possibly setting off a nuclear warhead. Something trivial like that. You can open up the paper and check that out if you want.

So of all that, what DOESN'T the front page have?

It doesn't have any local stories on local topics that are important to Mr. and Mrs. Kansas City in the area. You know, you and me.

Nothing on City Hall. Nothing on Mayor James. Nothing on any of the city's larger issues and problems. Nothing.

Of course, that's what you get when you slash your budget and lay off so many of your local reporters and writers.

What's in most of the paper?

Articles on the nation and the world that come off reporting wires like the AP.  Things you can get anywhere. Things that people do, in fact, get anywhere. Like the television and their computers.

If you don't have local stories with local problems and possible solutions and local people and stories with local color, why have a newspaper? Indeed, why GET the paper?

And that is what is wrong with any and every newspaper in this nation, if it's struggling. It adds to their problems of people turning away from these things anyway.

People are, as I said, already turning away from newspapers. Why really chase them away because you don't cover local stories and local people? You have to have good writing on interesting, even important, compelling stories that matter to the residents or there's really no reason for you to exist.

I said it here before, as the Star transitions from newsprint to the computer, as all media is, it would behoove the organization to get people with cameras out in the city---still and moving video---for local stories and local events. It would give people reason to go to their sites.

But if the printed paper cannot and does not give local writing and reporting, it only hastens the decline of the paper, it increases the numbers of people not taking or buying it and it only brings on the demise of the paper that much faster.

It seems obvious, to date, where the Kansas City Star is headed.

I don't hope or wish for it but it surely seems certain. This star is setting. And pretty quickly. Sadly.

Side note: What's both ironic and really pretty awful is that the cheap, sleazy, "yellow journalism" exhibited daily, nearly hourly over at "Tony's Kansas City" blog probably does a better job of covering local stories, especially at City Hall, and across town, than the Star.  Even with his tabloid journalism techniques, his ALL CAPITAL LETTER headlines, his repeated use of the same, tired photos for story after story, his blatant sexism and his allowing deeply racist, really ugly, even hateful people to post comments on his site, it, tragically, probably reports more local news better than the Star.

If that isn't enough to make one almost nauseous about local media, nothing will.

What's up with the Star this week?

What was that with the Star this week?

Yesterday, it was a size-shrunken version, first. Height and width was reduced and it was only four columns wide.

What was that?

Then, for a couple days, it was on a really hard, white--no doubt cheaper--paper stock.

Today?

Today it's back to the old, familiar newsprint--well, except for the Johnson County pull-out--and 5 columns wide.

It's like Forrest Gump famously said with the Star now:  "You never know what you're gonna' get."

I don't envy the situation either the Star--or any newspaper, of course--or the US Postal Service are in. Both of them have continuing loss of revenue and advertising and customers so they have to keep raising their price and/or giving less and less product or service or both, so fewer and fewer people use the product so they have less and less income and profit so they have to raise the price higher so they have fewer customers...and, well, that ugly dog keeps chasing its own very ugly tail.

It's one bad spiral.

Down.

How NOT to have a newspaper go digital and into the future

Regarding The Kansas City Star and all regional newspapers:

The battle of New Orleans : Columbia Journalism Review

 

A good and important read.

It tells of the end of the Times-Picayune newspaper and its reporters.

It made me rather nauseous to read it.

It makes me fear for our future.

Could we now accept that AT&T technicians shouldn't be out alone at 3 am?

The good news, if this is good news, is that the apparent murderer of 58 year old AT&T employee Kevin Mashburn was arrested.

As you likely know, Mr. Mashburn is the AT&T employee who was out last week at 3 am, doing his job, when someone sneaked up on him, smashed him in the head and left him to die.

So sad. So tragic. So unnecessary.

It seems the accused--one Bryan Middlemas--phoned a former cellmate to tell him what he did that night and that person turned him in for the reward.

What seems true and that needs to be said is that AT&T and all companies should have policies wherein no one--no one--should be out in the city, working, in the middle of the night like this, alone. This happened in Gladstone. If it happened there, I think we can safely say it could easily happen in any part of the metropolitan area.

It reminds me so much of what our Dad told us as teenagers. That is, that "No one but murderers, rapists and thieves are out in the middle of the night."

A bit of an exaggeration but not by much.

Links: http://www.kshb.com/dpp/news/crime/bryan-middlemas-charged-in-the-murder-of-att-worker

On the demise of the American newspaper

"We draw ever closer to the once-unthinkable day when some major American city has no newspaper whatsoever."

That quote is from a column by Leonard Pitts, Jr. of the Miami Herald newspaper this past Saturday. (Link, as usual, below).

When this happens--heaven forbid, though it seems as though it's going to happen--that a city or cities across America won't have newspapers, it will not just be a sad day for that city or those cities and even America, it will be a tragic day, a dangerous day for all of us.

When there aren't reporters to ferret out stories about our government representatives or our government overall, we will lose yet more power in our societies.

When those newspapers aren't there to pay those reporters to search out stories about our corporations and what business is doing in private, with or without those same government representatives and/or institutions, we will be a weak people, indeed.

There are other problems and losses, too, like the fact that newspapers could and frequently did give us both sides of an issue and the fact that we all had a common basis--that newspaper--from which to draw our common background, whether we accepted or believed it all or not.

So go ahead, make fun of your local newspaper or reporters or what have you. Tbey may not be great, they may not be perfect, they may not be what they once were but they gave us what information we would not otherwise have gotten.

It may have been some backroom deal. Some "sweetheart deal." Some illegal or even just unfair or unethical one.

But without that newspaper and without their payroll and without, again, those reporters, we know nothing.

Or we run that risk, surely and simply.

Link to original article: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/06/23/2863825/these-are-not-ordinary-times-for.html#morer

Arthur Bryant's via Australia

There's an article in an Aussie rag about our own Arthur Bryant's Barbecue: Humble Kansas restaurant Arthur Bryant's Barbecue has some famous fans Don'tch'a just love how people so frequently assume that, because it's Kansas City, that it's also gotta' be Kansas? That kills me. A bit of what they say (link at bottom): "Arthur Bryant's resembles a cafeteria from the 1950s, because it hasn't changed since it catered to baseball players and fans from a nearby (and long gone) stadium." Link: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/travel/world/humble-kansas-restaurant-has-some-famous-fans/story-fn302659-1226254410567

The big Iowa endorsement: oh, here's a shock, huh?

Breaking Republican political news: Des Moines Register backs Mitt Romney for GOP nomination Wow, didn't see that coming, huh? Link: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/des-moines-register-backs-mitt-romney-gop-nomination-014155146.html

On my Father's Day gift this year and Kansas City

My daughter found for me this year the most terrific gift in a book by one formerly local photographer, one David Douglas Duncan. The book is called "Photo Nomad."It seems the gentleman got exposed to photography at a young age here in town with one of the first plastic cameras that happened to be his sister's. From there, he eventually shot for the old Kansas City Star and then for Hallmark under Joyce Hall. From there, he went out across the world. He ended up shooting for National Geographic and many other very famous international media organizations. One of those was Life Magazine for Henry Luce and company. He took pictures covering World War II, Vietnam and a great deal of the world. The heck of it is, he also shot very personal and private pictures of and for Pablo Picasso and his wife. What occurred to me is, I'm thinking it could make a terrific story for someone in Mr. Duncan's family to maybe retell, if possible, on, say, Steve Kraske's radio show on KCUR. Anyway, if you're interested, you might look out for it. One of the most fascinating things about it for me, too, is that in 1953, Mr. Duncan told the media mogul Henry Luce that France's Vietnam War was not going well and basically that it shouldn't continue. He got called on the carpet for it at the time, by Mr. Luce himself. If only we would have followed his advice, as a country, since Mr. Duncan was there, on the ground with the troops, photographing it at the time with the soldiers. Anyway, you might want to look into a copy. It's not a difficult read as so much of it is his photography and some light writing. Link: http://www.amazon.com/Photo-Nomad-David-Douglas-Duncan/dp/0393058611

This family needs to prosecute this, if they can

From the Star this afternoon:

Drive-by shooting in KC wounds grandmother on porch

A 50-year-old grandmother was wounded in a drive-by shooting today in the 2600 block of Agnes Avenue in Kansas City.

 She suffered a non-life threatening wound to her shoulder, police said. Police listed her medical condition as being between fair and serious.

Her grandson had quarreled with some other people earlier in the day. Police were investigating whether that dispute was connected to the 3:15 p.m. shooting.

The victim was on her front porch with four other people when a white car containing four men drove by. One of the occupants stuck a gun out the window and fired at the porch. The car fled southbound.

If the family knows who did this and don't prosecute, they can't say a thing.

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke (1729-1797)

Just saying.

Link:  http://www.kansascity.com/2011/05/09/2862644/drive-by-shooting-in-kc-wounds.html

A problem of The Star's they make themselves

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

Interactive, online newspaper map

I got this in an email today.  Perhaps you've already seen it:

Go to this site, you just put your mouse on a city anywhere in the world and the newspaper headlines pop up:

http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/flash/

Double click and the page gets larger...you can read the entire paper on some if you click on the right place. You can spend forever here.

Also, if you look at the European papers, for instance, the far left side of Germany will pop up as The Stars & Stripes (European edition, of course). Additionally, this site changes each day with the publication of new editions of the paper.

Pretty cool, really, isn't it?

The things they come up with.

It seems we have all the information in the world, nearly, but we still don’t know much or we just aren’t very bright.  We have all this information about our world but we don't seem to be able to solve our problems.

We have data but not solutions.  Data but not wisdom.

People being held accountable

An advertisement RootsAction, an American Human Rights group, placed in a Spanish newspaper:


A Spanish judge, acting under international law, will soon decide whether to investigate US officials' roles in authorizing torture. We hope you agree that such cases must go forward, despite pressure from the Obama administration to drop them.  The organizations sponsoring this advertisement represent hundreds of thousands in the American public who believe the US government must be held to the same rule of law as other countries. We thank the people of Spain for your courage, and ask for your support as your courts consider bringing American officials to justice for the crime of torture.


From their website:


Despite earlier assertions by President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder that waterboarding is torture, former President George W. Bush publicly stated three times last year that he authorized waterboarding and added proudly that he would do it again. In a TV interview aired on November 8, Bush said he considered waterboarding legal "because the lawyer said it was legal." Waterboarding and other forms of torture were banned by the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, ratified by the United States in 1994. 


Maybe people will be held accountable one day after all.  


I doubt it seriously but it would be nice.


Links:  http://warisacrime.org/content/american-human-rights-groups-place-ad-spanish-newspaper-encouraging-prosecution-us-war-crimi
http://rootsaction.org/

Steve Kraske on--gulp---President Palin

Steve Kraske wrote in his column Sunday a fascinating, if scary to the point of threatening bit about Sarah Palin having a better than average possibility of becoming the next president of the United States.

"If Palin runs and beats a beleaguered Obama",--heaven forbid--he writes, we will, most surely, be going straight to hell, handbasket or no.

That is the only person I can think of who could both have a shot at being president AND do a worse--much worse--job at it than George W. Bush did.

And that's saying a great, great deal.

God--if there is one--help us.

Link:  http://www.kansascity.com/2010/12/11/2513968/should-we-take-palin-seriously.html

Quote of the day--on fairness

"At the heart of this discussion is the issue of fairness. Are we willing to continue consuming now at the expense of our children and grandchildren's welfare? Are we really willing to see ordinary people without jobs and losing their homes at the same time that we preserve lower taxes for the wealthy?"  


--Linda J. Bilmes, The Los Angeles Times

Link:  http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/12/19/105395/commentary-us-budget-woes-more.html#storylink=omni_popular