Tony: At Least the Star Has A Decent Sports Section

Not so long ago the Kansas City Star was the area’s first and foremost source of important political, cultural and local news.

That was before the Internet.

That’s not to suggest that there isn’t hope for Kansas City’s biggest producer of birdcage liner featuring two day old news printed on it. The Star’s sports section contains some of the most widely read content produced by the “paper of record” and it’s supported by throngs of people online as well.

Too bad that Kansas City sports enthusiasts are some of the biggest dolts in town who require an endless stream of tax money to support their self-indulgent hobby. Don’t worry, I have examples which prove that sports is the last refuge of the bygone era of dead tree journalism. We’ll start with the current interracial adultery scandal and end with minor celebrities towering over more experienced local reporters. Check it:

Dominating tonight’s cable news: Tiger Woods taking his hot ass Swedish bikini model for granted and looking for other trim is a subject that I’d like to read about it more in the Star’s sports pages tomorrow. Undoubtedly, Star sports columnist Jason Whitlock will have some insight into the ethics of carousing.
There won’t be new information but Whitlock writes well no matter what grammar nazi white people say and the perspective might be worth enduring the Star’s ugly website to obtain. Other than that, Kansas City’s paper of record hasn’t captured the zeitgeist of this town since Clinton was in office. They’re always late to the story, their coverage is mostly bland, and there’s as much excitement in the pages of daily paper as there is on Saturday Night at the house of columnist Mike Hendricks, where I imagine that he and his wife do a real-time demonstration of routine (mundane) plowing for their lame gardening book.

Not to fear, the Star is attempting to tackle online media distribution in the digital age i.e. the Star has a Twitter account with a whopping 5k followers. Meanwhile, B-list pitchman Ashton Kutcher has 4 million subscribers to his Twitter Feed and another three million “fans” on facebook. Yep, Demi Moore‘s boy toy is the future of new media while Star newsies are sitting around collecting the last of their scaled back checks and making mean-spirited anonymous comments on local blogs.

Again, there’s a silver-lining on the dark cloud looming over Dead Tree media. Media consumers are going other places for their local, political and entertainment news. Meanwhile the ever-increasing number of old white guys who want to shut out the rest of the world and simply look to the sports section to reaffirm their world view seem to be holding up the overinflated pageviews the Star attempts to sell to their dwindling list of advertisers.

So, sports coverage seems to be the answer to the failure of daily dead tree media in Kansas City as long as some of the most talented sports columnists don’t take to the web themselves and quit carrying the rest of the paper.