.jpg)
In the war between Kansas City’s (faux) hip weeklies, it’s Ink by a nose…
A very long nose.
The Star‘s less than two-year old youth yuppa-zine is kicking some pretty big butt in the all-important, advertising rich fourth quarter against hippie survivalist rag the Pitch.
Here’s the tally.
Not only does the current Ink weigh in with 64 pages to the Pitch‘s 44, it’s narrowed the ad revenue gap. In May 2009 the Pitch was practically printing money with 71 percent of its pages in ads to Ink‘s 47 percent ads. This week’s Pitch is barely squeaking by with barely half its pages in ads while Ink has inched up to 55 percent.
And while the Pitch sports a suburbanesque, lame Gift Guide insert, it can’t touch the calibre of advertisers Ink is taking down. Businesses like Baron BMW, Tivol and Halls.
Which may explain longtime Pitch editor C.J. Janovy’s abrupt flight to KU Med earlier this year.
Break out the Stop the Presses Machinery
Sex pretty much sells, right? But no sex?
Hey, it sells, too. As evidenced by the ubiquitous erectile dysfunction ads flooding today’s media. And crafty Star news editors were quick to pounce on an Associated Press story about "Boomers unhappy with Sex."
Enough for a page 2 A Section placement.
So what did aging newspaper readers learn about themselves?
Well, "the generation that promoted free love and came of age during the sexual revolution has grown old and cranky about sex,’ the story states.
Something about "performance problems," menopause and mismatched expectations.
Uh, this is news? That seniors aren’t getting it up and/or on like they used to. And younger people still are, but really old people don’t really care?
Rocket science at its finest!
Raising / lowering expectations
On Tuesday KCP&L put the grabs on a 4.5 percent rate increase courtesy of its Kansas customers. Two days later the utility’s highest profile promotion plummeted to new lows with barely 20,000 people attending its Plaza Lighting Ceremony.
Consumer backlash?
Nah, just cold weather and an increasing awareness that the lights don’t look any better Thanksgiving night than two weeks (or two months) later.
Speaking of lame promotions…
It doesn’t get much more small-time sophomoric than the Star‘s promotion asking readers to "create an original song extolling the virtues and vices of our fair city."
Something like Wilbert Harrison’s "Kansas City" or the Tony Bennett’s, "I Left My Heart in San Francisco," Star editors say.
Somehow it’s a little hard to imagine classics such as "Kansas City" being hatched by some lame, morning zoo style newspaper promotion.
But who’s to say. With a pair of $50 iTunes gift cards on the line for the top two songwriters…
omg
It appears we have identified the mystery tits from The KC Star TSA article. lol
Joe Tone can pen a pretty piece.
His takes are always interesting to me, anyway.
Pitch vs. Ink
I couldn’t care less about the ads in a paper. Give me content. The Pitch does WAY better in that category than Ink. Newsworthy articles, music news, restaurant reviews, and just when I thought I’d heard of everything something else in the Savage Love column pops up. I don’t care what Joe Blow has in his effing office or that Ink has more minimum wage jobs advertised than Pitch. The Pitch is simply a more interesting and informative read.
Pitch is a better paper
Come to think of it, Pitch is a better paper than The Star. I can’t think of any honest investigative reporting in The Star that would compare with the ongoing stories in The Pitch (honest being the keyword here). When has The Star ever done a story on Terry Riley’s various scandals. Indeed, would you know there were Terry Riley scandals if you relied on The Star for your news?
The Star has more resources to throw at its various tasks, and still can’t produce decent copy over any paper that simply lets its journalists do their job.
True that Altevogt
True that.
Free Ads
Make a worthless rag like INK look more appealing, even though there is no real content in there to speak of. The Pitch will always win that battle, you cannot count duplicate ads, and free ads for naming rights to events as winning against the pitch. Sorry. Smart advertisers know that they will have more exposure in The Pitch and online, and it’s not even close
The John Altevogt Timeline
I’ve gone from thinking he was funny, then sad, then obsessed, to imbalanced, to just plain fucking crazy.