Gina Kaufmann
Tap dance, anyone?
Talk about interesting timing, three days after my column calling out Kansas City Star editor Mike Fannin for failing to deliver a quality newspaper, up popped the devil in the form of a kid gloves interview with KCUR FM host Gina Kaufmann.
What are the odds?
Understandingly, Fannin sounded a little uncomfortable.
Frankly I’m surprised he agreed to the interview at all, regardless the timing. After all, how easy can it be to try and convince people that all is well at 18th and Grand after a death march from 2,000 employees to maybe 500-ish, with less of pretty much everything imaginable journalistically with the exception headstones.
Don’t get me wrong.
None of that’s on Fannin, he just happens to the captain of Kansas City’s Titanic. Which healthy salary aside, is mostly an unenviable position.
My point in calling Fannin out was to point out the obvious.
That despite seven years on the job as editor, the Star appears rudderless and adrift. And while you can point to the obvious – that any number of the reporters and columnists who made significant past contributions are pushing up daisies – there still are 125 mostly full timers in the newsroom according to Fannin. Yet despite that wealth, the Star’s daily output is embarrassingly lacking in quality content.
Mike Fannin
And that’s on Fannin, a sports dude who thus far has failed miserably to make the cut as an across the board newsman.
Unfortunately, no amount of boasting by on KCUR about employing a 68 year-old Cuban newspaper designer dude on the job can make up for mediocre content.
Remember the expression Sarah Palin used a few years back, lipstick on a pig?
“It’s not just a redesign of our print and digital products,” Fannin told Kauffman. “It’s a rethink.”
Horse hockey.
Fannin’s had plenty of time for rethinking and putting together a halfway decent newspaper, despite of all the necessary layoffs and cutbacks. Still he’s failed to deliver.
Ned Yost
In sports parlance, how long do you think Ned Yost would have lasted as manager of the Kansas City Royals with Fannin’s track record?
When Kauufman pried Fannin for details of upcoming major changes to the look and content of the all-important print edition of the Star, he told her “philosophical” changes include a “one stop recap of yesterday’s news with thoughtful enterprise stories.”
Hold it right there, Kauffman said, honing in on the word “recap.”
“You know, news outlets have historically liked to announce things that are new, that people haven’t already heard,” she chided. “And you were saying that you’re thinking of the print edition as a recap of the previous day’s news.”
“We’re trying to get people a recap of the day’s news,” Fannin said sheepishly. “You know,a one stop shopping for what occurred yesterday. But also surround that with, you know, thoughtful enterprise, investigations, you know, stories that have depth and meaning and relevance to them.”
Cut the cake however you may, there’s little doubt that moving to a recap news format with filler stories and the odd investigation is clearly a departure – and likely a necessary one.
Because clearly the days of pretending day-old stories by the New York Times about troop movements in the Middle East are front page news are o-v-e-r. Despite that the Star still does exactly that.
“We’re an around the clock news organization,” Fannin fibbed.
Bullshit.
Even in the days when the Star fielded more than 2,000 employees, it was mostly a 9 to 6 job with a handful of editors, the odd reporter and sports staffers soldiering on until 10 pm or midnight.
The only time I ever saw any 24/7 energy at 18th and Grand – and trust me, I was one of the few people bumping around there late at night and weekends on a regular basis – was when the FYI section covered the OSCARS or the Grammys and rare other instances.
And weekends have always been a ghost town at the Star.
The other odd aspect of Fannin’s interview went down when he dissed the hundreds of reporters, columnists and staffers who were either exiled or fled in fear for their futures.
“Any suggestion that our staff is in some way a lesser version that some staffs we’ve had in the past doesn’t go down easily,” Fannin told Kauffman.
Do people talk to you about the changes they’ve seen, Kauffman probed.
“I get lots of compliments,” Fannin again fibbed, bbefore awkwardly adding the question, “Are you guys okay?”
“All successful newspapers are ceaselessly querulous and bellicose. They never defend anyone or anything if they can help it; if the job is forced on them, they tackle it by denouncing someone or something else.”
“The average newspaper, especially of the better sort, has the intelligence of a hillbilly evangelist, the courage of a rat, the fairness of a prohibitionist boob-jumper, the information of a high school janitor, the taste of a designer of celluloid valentines, and the honor of a police-station lawyer.”
H. L. Mencken
Ahhh, you should read some of my pieces in small town America. I got the Carthage Fire Chief fired when the city council couldnt get it done! A simple search of the Carthage Press will find a series of editorials that got the trick done.
Guest editorials? You aren’t an employee, correct?
It is most probable said city council wouldn’t rather than couldn’t.
You are basically supporting Mencken’s statements.
Furthermore, A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.
Man wilsun, sounds like things are really clicking in Hooterville.
Hey, Dude, good to hear from you. Contrary to Harley’s picking at me over what I do, (and his lack of ability to PROVE all the “nationul bloggs he writes for) I write on a regular basis for a number of smaller market papers. I also contribute to one state wide distributed alternative paper out east and have a 2,600 word essay the New Yorker is about to pull the trigger on.
The difference is, you can FIND the places I write and actually read them! Not so, Harlet.
Its not a reality show, but Im soon to be an “institution” just the same. No more box selling for me!
Perhaps the most telling question was when he was asked if The Star had any credibility.
If you have to ask…
Fitz wrote about this after that interview and the only Star insider to argue in support of the Star claimed that The Star was happening on social media, where it needed to be. Here are the numbers from Facebook on local news outlets. The Star has 62,000 “likes” on their page on Facebook. KSHB has over 110,000. KMBC has over 184,000. KCTV5, just under 250,000 and Fox 4 has over 273,000. So Fannin’s claim that The Star is the areas dominant news gathering organization is simply wrong.
As for switching over to an online product, there again the TV news organizations have the upper hand. Where The Star is an annoying world of pop up ads and demands to subscribe, the TV websites are clean and free of any major annoyance. And the more the Star tries to milk their online content, it will become even more restrictive and annoying.
Finally, there are two other major, self-inflicted wounds the Star has to deal with. The first is that McClatchy is milking it for every dime they can get to cover their losses elsewhere. Absent that bloodletting, The Star is capable of putting out a decent, and profitable, product.
The second wound is their internal structure. Everyone I’ve talked to describes an inverted pyramid of way too many chiefs for far too few Indians. Adding to that is the absolute stupidity of maintaining the dead wood in editorial while firing quality journalists.
Even if the editorial bunch were respected in the community, and they’re not, any local blogger can compete with them. They offer nothing that cannot be replicated by anyone with access to a computer and a google account.
However, most bloggers do not have the time, or the resources, to do original reporting, certainly not on a daily basis. So why The Star commits suicide as a news gathering operation by killing off their institutional memory and reporting staff while retaining a pack of duds few respect and most ignore is beyond comprehension.
Lipstick on a pig was Obama’s line (a not-so-veiled reference) to Palin, as I recall. Palin didn’t say it. She was too busy spying the Soviet Union from her Alaska backyard shithouse. Or at least I saw that on SNL.
Not quite. Here is the full Obama quote in context:
“John McCain says he’s about change too, and so I guess his whole angle is, ‘Watch out George Bush — except for economic policy, health care policy, tax policy, education policy, foreign policy and Karl Rove-style politics — we’re really going to shake things up in Washington.’
“That’s not change. That’s just calling something the same thing something different. You know you can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig. You know you can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change, it’s still going to stink after eight years. We’ve had enough of the same old thing.”
And no, Hearne, “Lipstick on a pig” is not a Sarah Palin saying. She famously said that during her convention speech that the only difference between a hockey mom and pit bull was lipstick.
And you wonder why the Star fired your lazy ass?
re: “the absolute stupidity of maintaining the dead wood in editorial while firing quality journalists.” No question about it. Why does the Star retain Lewis Diuguid or Jenee Osterholt, neither of whom contribute anything of substance? Could race have something to do with it? Absolutely. The Star is an empty shell with only a few bright spots (Steve Rose, Steve Kraski, Dave Helling, Tim Finn). Otherwise, it’s mostly a waste of time. And their movie critics are awful, especially Robert Butler who is clueless about what the public likes. What a shame. What a waste.
Wait, Tim Finn? Just another mail it in, out of date, self appointed hipster, whose main gauge of music talent requires every band to have a “girl” artist/bass player.