Sutherland: Death Star II – The Newspaper of Record’s New Editorial Board

One of the best expositions of the way political journalism can be misdirected towards base ends is George Orwell’s essay, “Politics and The English Language.” It contains the following gems:

“Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful . . . and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

“But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”

“There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them.”

I often thought of these apothegms during last year’s shuck and jive session at the Plaza Branch of the Kansas City Public Library with the newly named Kansas City Star editorial board.

As we all know, the Star, like every print newspaper, is struggling to survive.

The newspaper’s total number of employees has fallen from around 2,000 (spread out over five offices) to 240 in one location at the last count. Advertising revenues have plummeted, along with paid circulation, which fell 33% in just two years.

The average number of pages in the daily paper has shrunk from 40 to 50 pages in its prime to 15 or 20 today. Like grade schoolers trying to pad an assigned essay, the Star has increased the size of the print and the number of pictures in each edition of the paper, all framed by increasingly generous margins.

So desperate is the paper’s management that they sold off both the company’s expensive new printing plant (“The Press Pavilion” in typical pretentious “Star speak”) and the historic Star building  for a fraction of what they were valued at a few years ago.

The purpose of the event was to introduce new members of the editorial board to the community. The director of the library, R. Crosby (“Cris”) Kemper, III, was the moderator.

Kemper started by introducing new editorial page editor Colleen Nelson; new editorial writer Melinda Henneberger;  recently axed, longtime Star cartoonist Lee Judge; political reporter David Helling; freelance opinion columnist Steve Kraske; community outreach editor Derek Donovan; and columnist Mary Sanchez.

Nelson came to the Star from the Wall Street Journal, Henneberger from the Washington Post. The others are longtime Star veterans.

Kemper asked each to give a little of their personal history.

He opened by saying the editorial board had “gone away for a while,” which is a euphemism for the laying off of all the Star people who had previously constituted the board. These include Barbara (“Fake Laugh”) Shelly, Yael (“Abracadabra”) Aboulhalka, Lewis (“Buck Tooth”)  Diuguid, and Steve (“Mean Drunk”) Paul.

McClatchy’s apparent solution to the death spiral was to hire two new expensive out-of-town journalists, both relatively young and inexperienced, both with problematic backgrounds.

Henneberger is a 40-something political reporter, who comes to Kansas City with her husband, who will be a Star reporter. She headed the Washington blog Roll Call before being fired after running off most of the staff. One source described Henneberger as “disengaged” and “constantly absent.”

Colleen Nelson’s background was also as a political reporter, in her case with the WSJ, but she was most recently herself in the news as a result of the WikiLeaks scandal.

Nelson was one of the members of the media exposed for sucking up to the Hillary Clinton campaign. Her e-mail thank-you note to campaign manager John Podesta after an intimate little dinner party at his home to introduce members of the press to the campaign team was a model of fawning obsequiousness.

Nelson was also called on by name by President Obama at her last White House press conference for the Journal, allowed to ask the first question, and given a warm send off to KC (No doubt this was because of the respect she’d earned as a member of the White House press corps who asked tough but fair questions of the administration’s spokespeople!)

After Kemper had the members of the editorial board give a little of their backgrounds, he asked the group a series of questions. Frankly, I thought he showed super-human, Billy Budd-like, degrees of restraint in the questions he asked, both in their tone and substance, given the Star’s hostility to him over the years. (For daring to oppose the Star’s pet project of a new downtown hotel to be financed by tax abatements – at the direct expense of the public library and other public institutions – he was excoriated as “greedy” and “selfish”!)

Kemper began with a relative soft-ball, i.e. how much control of editorial policy is left up to the board? Nelson answered: “Absolute local control! I wouldn’t even know who at McClatchy would try to assert any control over editorial decisions.”

Just a few months later, Star editor Mike Fannin told someone who criticized an editorial decision that it was dictated from on high by McClatchy corporate and that he had no control over the matter. Plus the Wichita paper, The Eagle, is also owned by McClatchy and it frequently runs editorials identical to the Star’s.

Someone is being less than candid here.

The next question Kemper posed to the assembled board was about the obvious lack of racial diversity among the new members. He was very apologetic in the way he asked this but all the Star people on stage seemed embarrassed that it had even come up. What was even more interesting was the audience reaction. You could have heard a pin drop because all the liberals-the vast majority of those present- were clearly uncertain as to how their brethren up front were going to weasel out of this one.

Previously I used “shuck and jive” to describe their comments, because that is black slang widely understood as joking banter intended to avoid having to give a straight answer to an awkward question. In this instance the best they could come up with to excuse their lack of racial diversity was that they still had one more position to fill on the board. Lee Judge, who has since left the paper, joked, “I’m Irish and I have a drinking problem. Does that count?”

Hardy- har-har! (The joke is on Judge, because he was let go and his place on the editorial board filled by a newly hired young African-American journalist, Doriano Porter.)

In her response Mary Sanchez, our local “(un)wise Latina” (to paraphrase Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotamayor’s self-description), inadvertently exposed the Catch 22 of all affirmative action.

Explaining why she did not accept past job offers at other newspapers, Sanchez said, to her credit, that she did not want to be stigmatized as a “token” Hispanic, relegated to speaking for minorities only, on minority issues. However, if you are hired because of your race or ethnicity, even if it’s done in furtherance of a worthy goal like “diversity” and “inclusion”, people will view you as a token and treat you accordingly.

Sanchez, at least,  is a competent journalist. While her views are as wrongheaded as you would expect from someone so angrily defensive, they at least are her views.

This is not true of Lewis Diuguid, who Star insiders tell me had to have help in writing his column.

The next question Kemper posed was asked with equal delicacy.

Without actually accusing the new members of partisan bias, Kemper asked what could be done to insure diversity of opinion on the board. He noted that the past editorial board was not exactly weighted in a conservative direction and that it had in fact, seemed to have a decidedly left/liberal point of view. He noted their obvious deep hostility towards Kansas Governor Sam Brownback.

Again, there was tentativeness in the board members’ response to Kemper’s questions. While Nelson did say her charge from Star publisher Tony Berg was to make sure there was a range of opinion and different points of view, neither Nelson nor anyone else on the board claimed that they represented different opinions and points of view.

Instead we hear a very glib, very polished set of sophistries as to why diversity of opinion, as it’s commonly understood, doesn’t really matter anymore. After all, “It’s not like we’re all pulling for our team to win!” (Henneberger)

As Derek Donovan put it; “We need to get beyond this false right-left dichotomy.”

Added Henneberger, “I have diversity of opinion just within myself!” (Whatever that means!) I should note that I heard a version of this argument from both President Obama (in an interview with Prince Harry, a fellow public intellectual) and Robert Reich, progressive author and activist and Bernie Sanders supporter.

By denying that people have sets of beliefs that fall on recognizable points on the political spectrum, they avoid having to place themselves on that spectrum.

If they don’t have to admit that they have a political viewpoint that influences their journalism, there is no need to address the need for a balance of opinion in the publications they write for. 

Instead, we get a bunch of double talk about how it’s more important to recognize that we “all share common ground.” Guess who gets to determine what that “common ground” is, which defines the range of acceptable public opinion? “The responsible press”, which in Kansas City means the KC Star editorial board.

“We don’t look at the news from a partisan basis but only based on a particular issue and the recognized, relevant facts.” (Henneberger) Who defines which facts are “recognized” and “relevant” and which are “fake news”? The “responsible press” i.e. the KC Star.

Last summer I got into an argument with a New York Times writer at a dinner party.

She stood up and stormed out into the night, screaming, “You can’t be so reactionary! That’s totally unacceptable!” (I’d laughed at Bernie Sanders, which is a thought crime apparently.) Again, why do people who write for newspapers get to dictate to the rest of us what is and is not acceptable political discussion? How is it that they are allowed to pretend that they personally have no political biases or prejudices?

Dave Helling unwittingly had the last word on the topic when he said, “You’d be surprised at the diversity of opinion on  —the Star editorial board!”

Dave, I’d not only be surprised but astounded to find anyone on the board who’d voted Republican for president at any time over the last 20 years.

Of course, they’re completely objective and disinterested in their approach to politics, unlike the rest of us.

The Star people pulled another bait and switch when talking about the issue of diversity of opinion. Helling and Sanchez used it to go back on an extended “inclusion” riff, saying “We have to be extra careful to listen to people who don’t look like us,” or “who live in the inner city” or “who lack resources and education.”

The Star editorial board is indeed seeking out “Other Voices,” but only other voices who agree with them and will support their ideological goals.

The Star people then went on to say they wanted to start a “robust discussion” within the community. They claimed to welcome input from readers, not just letters to the editor, but in guest columns, op-ed pieces, and other submissions.

This is hilarious to those of us who have submitted a number of letters to the editor on a variety of topics (all carefully edited for length and clarity) and had none published. I would note that James Hodgkinson, the Bernie Bro who shot Congressman Scalise, had twenty-nine letters published in one year in his hometown paper, the Star’s sister McClatchy publication, the Belleville (Illinois) News Democrat. (So much for Donovan’s claim that only one in every 25 or 30 letters to the editor is ever published!)

I also recalled a time I contacted the Star about submitting a book review of an historical novel with interesting antecedents. I made the mistake of mentioning to Steve Paul (Lee Judge’s predecessor as resident mean drunk on the editorial board) that the book’s editor was my brother-in-law.

Paul brusquely told me that they would not even consider publishing such a review because of “a conflict of interest.” I then sent the book, with an article from the New York Times about the book’s author and how he’d come up with the idea for the book, to Paul.

This was in case the paper would consider someone else, on staff or otherwise, doing a review. I heard nothing,of course, so you can imagine my surprise when I saw a favorable mention in the Star of Paul’s own book, Hemingway at Eighteen, a few months ago.

Now wait for it…it was written by…. Steve Paul!

I then remembered how Paul would write glowing reviews of his friend, crime writer James Ellroy’s books when that author lived in Kansas City. Paul was so proprietary of his relationship with Ellroy that he wouldn’t let other Star writers mention him! So much for “conflicts of interest” by the writer preluding anything appearing in the Star.

(Editor’s insert: Paul got in trouble with the FYI editor for publicly dissing me in front of Ellroy when I was interviewing him at the Uptown Theater for my column in the Star.)

I have described in past posts how the Star reacts with explosive, screaming rage to any criticism of their breach of journalistic ethics (if that phrase is not an oxymoron). Not only do they flatly refuse to investigate any unethical behavior by Star journalists- as Derek Donovan has twice- they even went so far as to try to get me fired from my job by contacting my employer. I’ve even received anonymous taunting messages at my work place, which the law firm’s in house investigator traced back to Star writer Judy Thomas. She later bragged that she hoped her articles had destroyed my political career. So much for welcoming a “robust debate!”

The panelists concluded the discussion portion of the panel by saying they wanted Star editorial policy to be unpredictable so that the readers would often be surprised by the positions taken.

Kemper then let the audience ask questions.

This was actually the most fun part of the evening for me as a conservative because the true believers who show up for these events show what The Left is really thinking. (They are not sophisticated enough to hide their actual beliefs, like most liberal politicians and journalists.)

I should add that like most such left wing events at the library and elsewhere the audience was overwhelmingly elderly (I was one of a handful under 70) and white ( a dozen or so people of color in a crowd of four hundred). This always amuses me because the standard liberal taunt, directed at me and other conservatives , is that we are demographic dinosaurs, soon to be swept away by the “Coalition of the Ascendant”, i.e. minorities and the young. (I may be in the Green Room, but there are a lot of gray pony tail, Birkenstock wearing boomers ahead of me in line. One such audience member announced proudly, “I’m a seventy-one year old Baby-Boomer!”)

The first woman to be called on by Kemper to ask a question displayed another characteristic typical of such audiences, i.e. the long-winded, pompous, editorial comment passing as a question.

After saying her father had been a Star photographer (was she aware of the paper’s long standing practice of not running photographs of local African-Americans?) she said she’d gone to college on a Roy Roberts scholarship, named after the Star’s long time publisher. She then eagerly assailed the Board as follows:

“When I got back from taking a hiking trip in Europe last October, “(Thanks for sharing!) “I learned that the Star had endorsed Roy Blunt for reelection to the U.S. Senate. I felt like I’d been kicked in the stomach! HOW did that happen? WHO was responsible for this? I’m SO, SO disappointed! A part of me will ALWAYS hate the Star because of this!”

Do you think this reader wants to be “surprised” by Star endorsements in the future?

The fact that she reacted with such shock and dismay to the endorsement of a conservative Republican shows how utterly predictable the Star’s editorial policy has become. If the applause from the audience to this lady’s remarks is any indication, no one else in that auditorium wants any change from a predictably left-wing slant either.

The other questions from the audience were equally revealing. If they are at all representative of the Star’s readership’s attitudes, they reflect the same inability to recognize the difference between opinion and fact displayed throughout by the board:

“I look to the Star to be objective, in the way the more responsible electronic media are, like NPR, PBS, and the BBC.”

“Where are the columnists like Paul Krugman, Leonard Pitts and Maureen Dowd?”

“I love my Kansas City Star. I see you as lawyers,” ( did he mean “advocates”?)  “fighting for me. Not my point of view, but fighting for truth, fighting for facts.”

These comments are troubling in two ways.

First of all, no one can be a lawyer or advocate and, at the same time, a disinterested, objective observer, which is what independent professional journalists are supposed to be. This distinction seems to have eluded the audience member and the board.

The other glaring flaw in such a remark is that no side in any debate has all the facts in its favor. Some facts, for instance, may be cited which can be both undeniable and irrelevant!

Others may be offset by countervailing facts, e.g., Motorist A hits Pedestrian B when A’s blood alcohol level is over the legal limit. End of story, right? Not necessarily!

What if B was much more intoxicated than A, so intoxicated that B ran in front of A’s car? What if it was late at night, in a heavy rain, so that even an alert, sober driver would have very limited visibility and thus trouble stopping?

To say that my side has all the facts in my favor in any public debate is so simplistic as to be delusional. I recently heard a boomer woman walking through Mission Hills screaming into her cell phone; “You can tell these right wingers The Facts all you want! They just won’t listen!”

Sorry, what “The Facts” are is not always obvious. That is what makes political and legal disputes so challenging!

The final laugh-out-loud line of the evening was Colleen Nelson’s solemn vow to “make issues that hit home for local readers our top priority.”

I think of this promise when I see Star offerings like “I am : They”, a 10,000 word, six page feature about three young Kansas Citians who see themselves as “ non binary with regard to gender.”

Who can forget the sympathetic coverage by the Star of the KU Library policy of giving all patrons stick-on labels to show their preferred gender pronoun, including ones of the wearers’ own invention?

Is this what people are talking about in the African-American community on the East side? In the Hispanic community on the West side? Among the white folks in ‘Friendly North Town’? In Shawnee and Merriam? I don’t think so!

Aside from guilty, rich, liberals in Mission Hills and angry, poor, progressives in Westport, the two neighborhoods the Star seems increasingly to be written for, who cares about this stuff? Especially at such length!

The Star needs to wake up to the fact that urban though much of Kansas City may be in look and feel, it’s readership is squarely planted in two Red States. (Of the 15 counties in Missouri and Kansas that comprise the Kanas City Metropolitan Area, only two- Jackson County, Mo and Wyandotte County, KS-voted for Hillary Clinton. The rest voted for Trump.)

It may be too late to save the newspaper in present form because of technological and cultural changes.

I can tell you, though, that the editorial board’s approach, to aim the paper at a narrower and narrower readership, will only accelerate the decline. A friend who is a lifetime subscriber recently cancelled the Star. A representative of the paper called and asked him, “Is it because of the paper’s political stance?” The Star thus obviously knows what the problem is but doesn’t care.

I can already anticipate how someone might react.

You can argue that this public forum at the Plaza Library occurred a year ago and my take is based on the old Star editorial board. Surely things have happened since to show whether my criticisms were premature?

Actually things have gotten worse since that time. I realized only later that the library event last March was a form of group therapy for local liberals. The evening was actually promoted by a group calling itself “Liberal Boomers of Greater Kansas City.” (“We are a fun, friendly, open-minded, progressive-thinking group of Baby Boomers.”)

The purpose was to offer reassurance to the local Left that the Star would be there for them, despite Trump’s election. Helling threw out, “I’m telling you, Donald Trump has got to get his act together!” (This six weeks after the Inauguration!)  He was joined in the ridicule by Kraske and Kemper, in an obvious play to the audience. (So much for not taking partisan sides.)

Any doubt in this regard was resolved a month later when the Star ringingly endorsed in five separate articles and editorials and online videos the National White Privilege Conference held here in April. A festival of political correctness, the WPC stands for the proposition that “America’s socio-political order is founded on racism, patriarchy, genocidal imperialism, as well as economic exploitation.” Angelo Codevilla, “The Rise of Political Correctness”, Claremont Review of Books, Fall, 2016.

I know I speak for many ex-subscribers to the Kansas City Star when I say that there is no common ground between me and those who hold such views. By embracing such a hateful attitude towards this country, its history, and its institutions the Kansas City Star seems intent on self-destruction by alienating a majority of its readership.