Julie Terry
It was only a small news item in today’s newspaper…
Word that the Kansas City Star had replaced its vice president of advertising Julie Terry by a far younger, 30-something dude named Tony Berg from its sister publication in Wichita.
“Tony is a strong digital leader who focuses on getting positive results in partnership with great people,” said Star publisher . “He’s a fantastic problem solver who is very engaged in the community.”
The between the lines on that brief statement:
First it’s an obvious admission that the newspaper needs to focus more on online sales with print ad dollars disappearing at an alarming rate. And second, that it needs to find a way to reconnect with the community, something that’s been missing since publisher’s Art Brisbane and Mac Tully ruled the roost several years back.
“I think advertising revenue has hit rock bottom and the numbers are grim,” says a source at 18th & Grand. “And why wouldn’t they be? Look at the product. What local news are we covering anymore? It’s minimal at best. How can you sell ad space for a product that’s not delivering?”
While new publisher Mi-Ai Parrish has been great at overseeing redecorating the newsroom and steering the Star towards events like the Middle of the Map Fest, she’s been mostly an absentee ballot when it comes to schmoozing advertisers and getting out in the community, the source says.
Not that these problems are unique to the Star, but clearly there is a move afoot to “young down” the newspaper in every way imaginable while tightening its belt with layoffs and buyouts.
Tough game…really tough game.
Well, after a terrible, terrible year at least they’re making changes. It’s going to be wild to see where we are 5 years from now.
While that seems almost unimaginable, I think you”re right…
It’s a brave new world and it’s going to be a whole new ballgame.
(Cliches, anyone?)
On further thought, it looks to me like the end of the Watergate Generation at the Kansas City Star is close at hand with. Think about it, Art Brisbane, Steve Shirk, Bill Dalton, Randy Covitz, Miriam Pepper, Mary Lou Nolan and so many others now gone with a few more to come
If you visit the Star web site you are overcome with all the ads you have to exit in order to read anything — very annoying. The Star is also the only publication of it’s type (that’s been my experience) where you cannot access at least one story for free. Most newspaper web sites have a maximum amount (NYT offers 10 articles a month) of articles you can read — the Star …. ZERO.
They just don’t get it.
I get over 20 articles from the Star for free per month. I just have to click through an ad.
Same deal at my work. Most of their stories I can get through another source: national stories I can go to CNN or Drudge. Royals stories go to a blog.
Nope — cannot open any stories other than the one that is an ad.
Try Mozilla Firefox set to clear it’s history on exit. Add the ad blocker add-on. I get NO ads blocking the story til I hit 10, then I close the browser reopen and start over, as many times as I want.
You can also use an incognito window in Chrome (or similar function in any browser).
You wonder if Warren Buffet is licking his chops, waiting for this turd to sink low enough so he can buy it for pennies on the dollar and fold it into his publishing empire…
Could be, Jedidiah…
But Warren Buffet’s not going to live forever – and probably not that much longer. Be interesting to see if he’s as successful as Apple was in replacing Steve Jobs.
However Buffet’s publishing vision, if that’s what it is, may not survive.
Dumping the local gossip and celebrity news hurt bad. Hearne was badly needed the last five or six years. If anything is going on with high profile people in our city you have to read about here on KCC, nowhere else really. FYI was important local b.s. without it its just ads for concerts and movies. If they didn’t like Hearne they needed to replace him with another younger hip writer to do the same things for KC.
Losing Jason Whitlock was also a blow and mistake. You need the gunfire. Now there is none. New you saw online or tv and nothing special.
Glazer is dead on the money with every point here.
Most of the people that I know, and I realize this is just anecdotal and I am not qualified to discuss demographics without the correct info, who take the Star HATE IT! Really, it is weird. They are actually conservative, older working class people who are disgusted with everything they read in the Star, yet, still get it delivered. I come into contact with a great many people on the job and many of these jobs, over the years, require a long term association and hence, the occasional foray into likes and dislikes of a personal nature.
Again, the Star continues to offer editorial content in conjunction with news slanted to promulgate a Liberal ideology to their customers, that, may be the exact opposite of what their customers are actually interested in.
This is turn makes me think, that it is possible, that comment from above by Jedediah Leland is more on the mark than we might think. If in fact the Star still has X amount of subscribers and delivers a product that is unpopular, a change to a more centrist middle of the road reporting might signal an uptake in profits and survivability.
Thanks Craig, but I’m a shadow of who I was at the Star.
I ran my column as a full time endeavor, that’s obviously not the case here on KCC. I do what I can but it’s a fraction of what is out there and could be done.
For sale: Big steel and glass building. City researching whether tax abatement conveys. 50,000 or best offer when current tennant is out.
Our luck: New tennant a machine shop.
Yael’s unsubstantiated, ad hominem, character assassination of Jeff Roe in today’s paper is brutal. He accuses him of murder.
Some newspaper we got here…
On the Editorial page? It’s not in my paper. ???
Here is it.
http://www.kansascity.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/yael-t-abouhalkah/article16719785.html#/tabPane=tabs-b0710947-1-1
Thank you.