Showing posts with label reporters. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reporters. Show all posts
Sunday, May 9, 2021
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.
Wednesday, July 15, 2020
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:
Tuesday, June 20, 2017
Republicans and Closed Government
First this President, now the Republican Congress, too, show how closed and aloof and distant Republican government out of both houses of Congress and this White House are.
Trump did this last February.
Trump Ousts Real News Outlets
From Press Conference
This happened yesterday.
It got worse, too.
Sean Spicer took questions from
Russian media but not CNN, WaPo
or Politico
And then there's Congress' well-publicized but very private internal negotiations over our health care.
Senate GOP defends writing its
healthcare bill in private
Fortunately, some even in their own political party are, in fact, thinking this is maybe wrong.
Can you imagine if that last President and the other political party tried ANY of this?
Why aren't we raising Hell yet?
Sunday, July 15, 2012
Heard today on the Penn State scandal
"If they play football come September at Penn State, something's wrong." --Bob Costas, NBC sports reporter, writer, speaking today to David Gregory on "Meet the Press"
Monday, July 2, 2012
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
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
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Local News Reporting Sucks, Part I
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Note the weekly, stupid article from The Star today
Here it is again from The Kansas City Star: DUI checkpoint planned for this weekend Kansas City police will operate a sobriety checkpoint this weekend. I mean, come on, don't we pretty much know the Kansas City Police and/or the Overland Park police are going to be out virtually every weekend, checking for drunk drivers? Isn't that pretty much common knowlege? And for whom is this article, anyway? Is it to tell the drunks or the sobers? Honestly, it's virtually the same article every time, too: "The time and location of the checkpoint was not disclosed, except that it will be conducted sometime Friday through Sunday at a location known for drunken-driving-related crashes or arrests." Notes to The Kansas City Star: 1) Do us a favor, you can stop printing this article. Forever. Really. We know. and 2) It's doing yourself a favor, too, hopefully. Maybe you could have an honest-to-goodness reporter go out, dig up a story and print it in this space, instead, and improve your readership. As stated earlier, the city of KCMO just let a $1m contract for IT work that went to a company down in Florida. Go snoop around there and see what you can find. If all else fails, go talk to Russ Ptacek before he leaves town. See if he'll give you any tips on how to do reporting. He's good at it and knows what to do and where to go. With all the cities around here, surely there's a scandal somewhere, in case you ever get interested in news. Link to original article: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/02/21/3441992/dui-checkpoint-planned-for-this.html
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
The unnecessary joke that is the local evening news
The evening news has now become, after parroting the local and dying newspaper, a recap of whatever loose connection they can make between the latest YouTube video and what's happening now.
Last evening, as a terrific example, KCTV 5 ran a video of a snowplow in New York City that trashed an SUV, as though it had any connection to what's going on here in Kansas City:
Sad.
Pitiful.
Pathetic.
Reporters, anyone?
Bueller?
Last evening, as a terrific example, KCTV 5 ran a video of a snowplow in New York City that trashed an SUV, as though it had any connection to what's going on here in Kansas City:
Sad.
Pitiful.
Pathetic.
Reporters, anyone?
Bueller?
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
"Infotainment" killing important reporting we need
I just ran across this quote from Chris Hedges on ‘The Death and Life of American Journalism’ at Truthdig.org:
"Newspapers, which engage rather than entertain, can no longer compete with the emotional battles that hyperventilating hosts on trash talk shows mount daily. The public, which has walked away from newspapers, has embraced the emotional carnival that has turned news into another form of mindless entertainment."
The same, unfortunately, is also true of too many blogs. That is, they think they must "entertain", rather than give news solely. This explains some blogs self-perceived "need" to post sexist pictures of scantily-clad women or other waste (in this case, hurtful waste) along with reports of local, regional or city news. These same kinds of blogs are also good at either "preaching" what is right, and true and good or they're particularly good at proclaiming the end of the world or the end of the city or some such tremendously horrible thing.
More:
"We are shedding, with the decline and death of many newspapers, thousands of reporters and editors, based in the culture of researched and verifiable fact, who monitored city councils, police departments, mayor’s offices, courts and state legislators to prevent egregious abuse and corruption. And we are also, even more ominously, losing the meticulous skills of reporting, editing, fact-checking and investigating that make daily information trustworthy. The decline of print has severed a connection with a reality-based culture, one in which we attempt to make fact the foundation for opinion and debate, and replaced it with a culture in which facts, opinions, lies and fantasy are interchangeable. As news has been overtaken by gossip, the hollowness of celebrity culture and carefully staged pseudo-events, along with the hysteria and drama that dominate much of the airwaves, our civil and political discourse has been contaminated by propaganda and entertainment masquerading as news. And the ratings of high-octane propaganda outlets such as Fox News, as well as the collapse of the newspaper industry, prove it."
Now, here's the part that indicts the "man on the street", the average citizen:
"Corporations, which have hijacked the state, are delighted with the demise of journalism. And the mass communications systems they control pump out endless streams of gossip, trivia and filth in lieu of news. But news, which costs money and takes talent to produce, is dying not only because citizens are migrating to the Internet and corporations are no longer using newsprint to advertise, but because in an age of profound culture decline the masses prefer to be entertained rather than informed...Money flows to advertising rather than to art or journalism because manipulation is more highly valued than truth or beauty."
Here, then, is the core of the problem:
"American society, once we lose a system of information based on verifiable fact, will become disconnected from reality."
It is really sad. And maddening.
Worse, it weakens the citizenry.
But what're ya' gonna do, you know?
If you want me, I'll be over here, banging my head against this wall.
"Newspapers, which engage rather than entertain, can no longer compete with the emotional battles that hyperventilating hosts on trash talk shows mount daily. The public, which has walked away from newspapers, has embraced the emotional carnival that has turned news into another form of mindless entertainment."
The same, unfortunately, is also true of too many blogs. That is, they think they must "entertain", rather than give news solely. This explains some blogs self-perceived "need" to post sexist pictures of scantily-clad women or other waste (in this case, hurtful waste) along with reports of local, regional or city news. These same kinds of blogs are also good at either "preaching" what is right, and true and good or they're particularly good at proclaiming the end of the world or the end of the city or some such tremendously horrible thing.
More:
"We are shedding, with the decline and death of many newspapers, thousands of reporters and editors, based in the culture of researched and verifiable fact, who monitored city councils, police departments, mayor’s offices, courts and state legislators to prevent egregious abuse and corruption. And we are also, even more ominously, losing the meticulous skills of reporting, editing, fact-checking and investigating that make daily information trustworthy. The decline of print has severed a connection with a reality-based culture, one in which we attempt to make fact the foundation for opinion and debate, and replaced it with a culture in which facts, opinions, lies and fantasy are interchangeable. As news has been overtaken by gossip, the hollowness of celebrity culture and carefully staged pseudo-events, along with the hysteria and drama that dominate much of the airwaves, our civil and political discourse has been contaminated by propaganda and entertainment masquerading as news. And the ratings of high-octane propaganda outlets such as Fox News, as well as the collapse of the newspaper industry, prove it."
Now, here's the part that indicts the "man on the street", the average citizen:
"Corporations, which have hijacked the state, are delighted with the demise of journalism. And the mass communications systems they control pump out endless streams of gossip, trivia and filth in lieu of news. But news, which costs money and takes talent to produce, is dying not only because citizens are migrating to the Internet and corporations are no longer using newsprint to advertise, but because in an age of profound culture decline the masses prefer to be entertained rather than informed...Money flows to advertising rather than to art or journalism because manipulation is more highly valued than truth or beauty."
Here, then, is the core of the problem:
"American society, once we lose a system of information based on verifiable fact, will become disconnected from reality."
It is really sad. And maddening.
Worse, it weakens the citizenry.
But what're ya' gonna do, you know?
If you want me, I'll be over here, banging my head against this wall.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
It needs to be said
Dave Helling and Steve Kraske are two of the best things happening in Kansas City when it comes to reporting political issues and stories for the Kansas City metropoltan area, the state of Missouri and the Midwest.
Without their reporting and writing, we wouldn't know a lot about what's going on in this city, for good or ill and we need them and their work.
Without their reporting and writing, we wouldn't know a lot about what's going on in this city, for good or ill and we need them and their work.
Monday, September 22, 2008
You think the next administration should be open?
After the darkness of the current Presidential and Vice Presidential administrations, don't you want to think the next one will be open and accountable to us, the American taxpaying and voting public?
Sure you do.
So do I, naturally.
And wouldn't you think that, right now, with so little time left in this campaign that the candidates would both be open AND promising that their administrations would be open?
I would. But that's not the case.
Check this out:
According to the Kansas City Star newspaper yesterday, "John McCain hasn't spoken to the press corps that follows him for five weeks, or invited national reporters onto his bus in more than two months."
TWO MONTHS??
And this is the guy who wants us to vote for him?
Are you kidding me?
There's more:
"On the Straight Talk Air Express, reporters chanted: 'Bring Mac back! Bring Mac back!' The staff smiled and pulled the cabin curtain."
Still more:
"Another time, after they asked McCain adviser Steve Duprey to bring the candidate back to talk, Duprey returned--wearing a McCain mask."
Funny, huh?
NOT.
And finally, to really top things off and close out today, there's this: On the campaign trail in the past few days, the McCain staff isn't letting "Little Miss Sunshine", Sarah Palin, interact with reporters and ask questions. They're just propping her up for speeches, letting her regurgitate her studied diatribes and then scurrying her off the stage and out of the public eye.
No questions.
No answers.
So, if all those rocket-scientist "undecideds" out there help vote these 2 clowns into public office in November, don't expect any light coming out of the White House. That place will be so dark, it'll make Dick Cheney proud.
Sure you do.
So do I, naturally.
And wouldn't you think that, right now, with so little time left in this campaign that the candidates would both be open AND promising that their administrations would be open?
I would. But that's not the case.
Check this out:
According to the Kansas City Star newspaper yesterday, "John McCain hasn't spoken to the press corps that follows him for five weeks, or invited national reporters onto his bus in more than two months."
TWO MONTHS??
And this is the guy who wants us to vote for him?
Are you kidding me?
There's more:
"On the Straight Talk Air Express, reporters chanted: 'Bring Mac back! Bring Mac back!' The staff smiled and pulled the cabin curtain."
Still more:
"Another time, after they asked McCain adviser Steve Duprey to bring the candidate back to talk, Duprey returned--wearing a McCain mask."
Funny, huh?
NOT.
And finally, to really top things off and close out today, there's this: On the campaign trail in the past few days, the McCain staff isn't letting "Little Miss Sunshine", Sarah Palin, interact with reporters and ask questions. They're just propping her up for speeches, letting her regurgitate her studied diatribes and then scurrying her off the stage and out of the public eye.
No questions.
No answers.
So, if all those rocket-scientist "undecideds" out there help vote these 2 clowns into public office in November, don't expect any light coming out of the White House. That place will be so dark, it'll make Dick Cheney proud.
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