The Star Isn't as Bleak on Mission Gateway

Out local Star paper ran the following article today.

Future of Johnson County’s Mission Gateway 

in question

On their website, it had this headline:

‘We’ve waited so long’: Future of Johnson County project in question, funds in limbo

A bit from the article:

The property has the hallmarks of an active construction project: a yellow crane, orange cones and temporary chain link fencing. But there are no sounds of dirt moving or concrete being poured. And no workers in sight.

After 15 years of delays and tempered expectations, work has once again halted at the ill-fated $225 million Mission Gateway development in Johnson County. And it’s unclear if or when it might start back up.

And check out this ugliness.

Workers left the site after two major funding sources were put on hold during the coronavirus pandemic. Since then, at least a dozen liens have been filed on the property, claiming invoices have gone unpaid to contractors and suppliers.

“We have not been paid,” said Jerry Messick, one of the contractors and owner of Metro Interiors in Lee’s Summit. “I can tell you that without any guilt because it really pisses me off.”
Keeping in mind, as the article states, too, this has been going on for 15 years. Wow.

So true. So very true. I wrote and posted this July 16, last week.

Mission Gateway: 

The Construction Project From Hell

To say, however, that the project is "in question" when you have a huge slump in retail shopping anyway and then now, this pandemic which makes even construction difficult, let alone, again, weakens that same retail shopping and, for the foreseeable future, dining out, restaurant business and then movie-going, too. Yes, it makes the funding of this project highly suspect, if not out and out deeply in doubt to very unlikely. Funding is drying up all over but especially here, on this nightmare.

I say again,  what should happen is the developer finally, finally faces the ugly reality, declares bankruptcy on the entire project then donates the land, the entire site, to the city of Mission for a park.

It won't but that's what should happen.

At one point in the article, the Star asks if it wasn't "The right idea at the wrong time."

To which I'd answer no. It was never the right idea. The former site worked and was good-looking and well-placed. It should have been updated, at most.  And all this was, of course, at the worst possible time, for all the reasons I mention in my post above--the 2008 financial collapse, the collapse of retail and now this pandemic and all it brings down on everything here.

Good luck, Mission.

You're gonna' need it.

What's the Matter With Kansas?? Again

Since when do state government agencies not follow the direction of the sitting governor?

Since Kansas.  Since now.

Kansas Board of Education rejects Kelly order delaying schools opening to stem virus

And all she did, all Kansas Governor Kelly did was say schools should be backed up a few weeks, to September, to after Labor Day, to open. That was it.

Thanks, Republicans!

Meanwhile, this.

Kansas labeled a coronavirus ‘red zone’ as cases spike, White House document says

Tell us, Republicans, is that Kansas Board of Education or Bored of Education?

And what part of killing international pandemic do you all not get?

The state's business is more important than your children?

Really?

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

Congratulations, Kansas City?

Kansas City just made a big, rather important, national list and it's in and from The New York Times, too.

Here Are the 98 U.S. Cities 

Where Protesters Were Tear-Gassed

98 U.S. cities where protesters were tear-gassed recently, as we know, for protesting the murder of an  American citizen by a police officer on the streets of Minneapolis.

And yes, Kansas City, Missouri, you're on the list. Our own Kansas City, Missouri police force gassed fellow citizens.

Not legal in war but a-okay for our police to use on tax-paying, American citizens here on our streets.

Ain't we great?

Aren't we special?

American exceptionalism, all right.

Link:

Tear gas has been banned in warfare. 

Why do police still use it?

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.

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.

The Republicans' AHCA Wealthcare

What they, the Republicans, are presenting, offering, disguised as health care for us all.

Note to the Kansas City Star

Ladies and gentlemen at the Kansas City Star:

You know your readership is falling off. You've known and experienced it, sadly, for years. We all know it. We ache for you. Heck, we ache for our society. The local newspaper is something we used to all share. It was a foundation of information  most of us all checked in on daily and read. We know those days are gone.

But some people still read you, of course, and thank goodness. And some others of us out here read you online. I'm one of them. And I've noticed something about you and what you do daily. My suggestion, if taken, could help you, I believe, if you take and execute it.

The suggestion?

You have to be like the "big boys" out there in newspaper land---like your counterpart across the state, for instance, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch---and CHANGE YOUR ONLINE PAGE ONCE A DAY.

You have to update. Daily. It has to change.

Apparently this is a radical idea for you all down there or a lot to ask or expect but--NEWS FLASH:  if your site doesn't change daily, there's no reason for us out here to check in on you daily.

Imagine that.

Now I know the Post-Dispatch comparison is a tough one because they're much bigger and have more money and they're an older paper (I think/believe) and have more power (read:; Pulitzers) behind them but YOU CAN DO THIS. In fact, you really must do this. If you don't change up your paper online, daily, you will lose any reason for people to check in on you. I know. I looked in yesterday, read some articles and then checked today, just now.  WAY too many of the same, leftover articles.

I know this is tough. I know it demands more of you. I know it will likely cost. And it requires some creativity, too, sure. But that's the business you're in today and you more than likely know it.

So that's what needs to happen, Star. I hope you can do it. You need it, we need it. You need it to exist. You need it to stay relevant. You need it so it keeps the clicks happening, online. You need it to keep the revenue coming in.

It's not fun. It's not pretty, Yes, it's demanding but you have to do it or, God forbid, you won't be around.

This is about your survival.

The clock is ticking.

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.

Quote of the day--with your Sunday morning news

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.

America's media

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.

Great article from the Star brings up questions about jobs and our legislators

The article in the Star this past Sunday was, I thought, an excellent, timely one and one that raises excellent questions: 

 

The road to ruined roads

Oil-rich Texas has built more highways and bridges than any other state, but over the next two decades it will fall $170 billion short of what it needs to keep the sprawling network in good repair. 

California transportation officials estimate that 60 percent of the state’s roads and a quarter of its bridges need repairing or replacing, at a projected cost of $70 billion over a decade, some $52 billion more than the available funds.

Over seven years, Kansas went from spending three times as much on highway upkeep as it did on building new roads to devoting four times as much money for construction as for maintenance. Missouri, meanwhile, shifted its spending heavily toward repairs but saw its outstanding bond debt quadruple.

And it has plenty of great, even important information in it but the question it raises, I think, for us, in general, but also for our governmental legislators from the state level, in Jefferson City, all the way to Washington and our Congressional leaders, is this:

We needs jobs in the nation. We need work. We need work for our people, our citizens. Our infrastructure needs repairing, improving and updating.

Why is not our government creating this work so we create these jobs?

I've asked this here before, specifically as it relates to Interstate 70 from St. Louis and the Illinois border to the East, all the way to Kansas City and the Kansas border in the West.

We need this. 

Why isn't this happening?

More here:  U.S. keeps building new highways while letting the old ones crumble

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/search_results/?q=the%20road%20to%20ruins#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/02/02/4045803/us-keeps-building-new-highways.html#storylink=misearch#storylink=cpy

The New York Times, shining the way for our Star

There is a fascinating, and insightful article in The New York Times Sunday about the transition for and of that old, venerable paper into the news, information and entertainment source it will hopefully, into the future.

A Milestone Behind, a Mountain Ahead

Fortunately, The Times, to date, understands as so few newspaper groups do, that in order to be a vital relevant and important source for news, information, arts and entertainment for its readers and subscribers, you need excellent, experienced reporters and writers.

Fortunately, too, for more local newspapers (like the Star), is that they don't need to do the more national and international reporting The Times does.

What people in the newspaper industry need to know and develop is that the only way they can survive is by transforming what they are on paper to an online version and that will require being multi-media source and experience that covers their cities and metropolitan area and all the counties involved and even the region the paper serves.

By doing this, by transitioning to an online source and by including writing and photography and video and music, everything, a "newspaper" will be able to survive.

But the people doing these papers now, need to understand that.

If they don't, if they don't understand and do that and as soon as possible, they will, quite likely, die.

And until they do, until they realize this, the end of that newspaper will likely be far sooner than they think.

Dear God, About that Powerball...

Dear God,

If you're up there (and surely it seems you're not), and if you really do intervene in people's lives down here (again, seems highly, highly unlikely), please, please make sure someone or, better yet, some big group of people who are very responsible and level-headed and intelligent and beneficent eventually wins this big Powerball lottery jackpot prize.

In the first place, it could do a great deal of good for a great number of people all across the nation and even the world, if done right.

In the second place, on the flip side, it could really, really screw up someone's life--or people's lives--if the person who wins it couldn't handle it and we've seen plenty of that in the past.

Just sayin', Lord.

If you're there, please make this make sense.

Amen.

Link: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/millions-chase-record-500m-powerball-175725660.html

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

Major-league, Midwest, Republican stupid

Well, it seems Missouri and Kansas outdid ourselves in the last 24 hours.

As would happen, the "major-league stupid" is from 2 different, Right Wing, Conservative Republicans. You no doubt heard, right?

The first, from Republican Senate candidate Todd Akin when he said women aren't likely to get pregnant from a "legitimate rape"--his term, apparently--because the female body somehow blocks these, rocket scientist that he is.

Forget that he's not a doctor. Forget that there's no scientific, biological support for this very Right Wing contention, he put it out there, regardless.

The response, fortunately?

G.O.P. Trying to Oust Akin From Race for Rape Remarks

WASHINGTON — Fearing that a seat crucial to winning a Senate majority could slip away, the national Republican establishment on Monday unleashed a furious campaign to drive Representative Todd Akin, the party’s newly selected nominee, out of the race against Missouri’s Democratic senator.

Amid an uproar over provocative comments on rape and abortion that Mr. Akin made in an interview broadcast on Sunday, the National Republican Senatorial Committee declared that it would withdraw financial and organizational support for Mr. Akin, including $5 million in advertising already reserved for the fall. In the interview, Mr. Akin said victims of “legitimate rape” rarely got pregnant.

What too many people don't know, however, is that Mr. Akin's stance on this issue is far from solitary. He's not the only Republican who ever said or mentioned this very wrong idea as truth:

"The thing is, his comments were hardly some kind never-before-heard gaffe. Arguments like his have cropped up again and again on the right over the past quarter century and the idea that trauma is a form of birth control continues to be promulgated by anti-abortion forces that seek to outlaw all abortions, even in cases of rape or incest. The push for a no-exceptions anti-abortion policy has for decades gone hand in hand with efforts to downplay the frequency with which rape- or incest-related pregnancies occur, and even to deny that they happen, at all. In other words, it's not just Akin singing this tune.

Take Christian Life Resources, an educational site, for example. It reprints an 1999 article on the topic that seeks to make the same distinction between categories of rape as did Akin, and for the same reason. Wrote John C. Willke -- a physician who in the 1980s and early 1990s was president of the National Right to Life Committee -- in the piece, originally published in Life Issues Connector:

When pro-lifers speak of rape pregnancies, we should commonly use the phrase 'forcible rape' or 'assault rape,' for that specifies what we're talking about. Rape can also be statutory. Depending upon your state law, statutory rape can be consensual, but we're not addressing that here .... Assault rape pregnancies are extremely rare."

So this gaffe by Todd Akin is informative, at least for me, if not for lots of us. Who knew a group of people actually thought women might not risk pregnancy if it's a "legitimate rape"?

What sexist pigs.

The second stupid thing to come out of the midwest Monday was, rather famously, from our own Kansas Representative Kevin Yoder when, again, rocket scientist that he is, he decides to skinny dip in the Sea of Galilee while on a very official trip, representing our own US federal government.

Man, I love these people.

Links: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/21/us/politics/republicans-decry-todd-akins-rape-remarks.html

http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2012/08/20/159397067/issue-of-abortion-back-in-spotlight-in-swing-states#more

http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2012/aug/17/barack-obama/obama-says-ryan-supports-banning-all-abortions/

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/08/20/legitimate-rape-an-old-right-wing-trope.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/20/chuck-winder-rape-abortions_n_1366994.html

Good news for Google and Kansas City, likely bad for Sprint?

News out yesterday on the ever-changing technology and communications markets:

Phone cos. lose broadband subscribers for 1st time

NEW YORK (AP) — Phone companies are losing the high-speed Internet game. In the second quarter, the landline phone industry lost broadband subscribers for the first time, as cable companies continued to pile on new household and small business customers, thanks to the higher speeds they offer in most areas.

Good news for Google with their Google Fiber, sure. And good for Kansas City, since we're getting Google Fiber first in the nation.

But how about Sprint?

Are they part of the old-line phone companies, using the old utility poles and that more limited transmission capability?

It would seem so.

Sure, Sprint has the cell towers but they don't have the capabilities they write of here, in this article, that the cable companies have, it doesn't seem.

Anyway, the article then goes on to present some potentially bad news for us in time to come:

"The flow of subscribers from phone companies to cable providers could lead to a de facto monopoly on broadband in many areas of the U.S., say industry watchers. That could mean a lack of choice and higher prices."

So who really knows?

Things change and things are changing with such speed, it's difficult to say.

Just from right here, right now, and this vantage point, it doesn't look or sound good for Sprint.

Hopefully they think of something brilliant.

And quickly.

Link: http://news.yahoo.com/phone-cos-lose-broadband-subscribers-1st-time-205430306--finance.html

Breaking news: Yet another shooting

Breaking just now:

Police officers among 'multiple casualties' as gunman opens fire near Texas A&M

By M. Alex Johnson, NBC News

Updated at 2:40 p.m. ET: "Multiple" people, including an undetermined number of police officers, were shot when a gunman opened fire Monday near the campus of Texas A&M University in College Station, police and university officials said.

The gunman was in custody, College Station police said.

Few details were immediately available. A College Station police spokeswoman told The Dallas Morning News that there were multiple injuries" at the scene, "including officers."

Campus officials issued an alert to faculty and students for an "active shooter" two blocks southeast of the university, which houses the library of former President George W. Bush.

I say/ask again, when will we ever learn?

Link: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/08/13/13261291-police-officers-among-multiple-casualties-as-gunman-opens-fire-near-texas-am