Hearne: A Changing of the Guard @ 18th & Grand

Steve Vockrodt

The team’s in place, now let’s see what they got…

Four years back I had a power lunch at Lulu’s Thai Noodle with Kansas City Star editor Mike Fannin.

Think of it as a three hour catharsis confab.

I told Mike there were no hard feelings, but that I felt a little guilty about some of my harsher criticisms. He said the stuff about his DUIs and felony assault conviction had been hurtful because his daughter was getting older.

We never spoke of his alleged affair with a married subordinate and other prickly topics.

Instead I lobbied him to hire then Pitch top gun Steve Vockrodt who was hanging by the skin of his you-know-what at the beleaguered alt weekly.

Vockrodt could see the handwriting on the wall at the Pitch and was coming to terms with an approaching reality of having to slap a resume together and start looking for a “real” job.”

Fannin thanked me, said Steve was on his radar but he had to finish weeding out the Star’s old guard in order to assemble a team of younger, fresher faces (at lower wages) in order to pursue his vision for the newspaper.

Flash forward to the present: Mission accomplished (including Vockrodt).

And aside from the overwrought new editorial board (yawn), the overall product is greatly improved, especially given all the cutbacks. With the exception of a never ending stream of one and two day old news stories the Star uses as inexpensive filler to cater to it’s older, less tech savvy readers.

Take today’s Star…

Stories like “Allies quickly retaliate against US metal tarrifs, “US claims real progress toward Korean summit,” “Trump considers more cases after D’Souza pardon'” and “Comedian apologizes to Ivanka Trump” are sooo last Tuesday that it’s hard to imagine anybody halfway hip and tuned in not questioning the value proposition of paying as much as $80 a month for news rehashes.

Then again, relatively fresh faces such as Bryan Lowry, Jason Hancock, Max Londberg, Andy Marso, Hunter Woodall, Katie Bernard and Allison Kite bring optimism and plusses, via stories like an Overland Park chiropractor being accused of sexual assault, an Independence dude being convicted of murdering his wife while the kids hid and the old Kansas City Club downtown being converted into a luxury hotel.

Nothing wildly extraordinary, but promising.

At the same time the Star’s been blessed with a number of ongoing news gifts that they’ve been fully milking. For example the kid who lost his head on a water park ride in KCK; the Brookside lawyer that some suspect was gunned down on his front porch by a cranky senior citizen; and the celebrated rise and fall of the soon-to-be former governor of Missouri.

Dangerously, the Star’s once vaunted sports section – long a source of pride at 18th and Grand – is on the wane. A succession of the section’s most promising sportwriters have bailed for greener pastures the past 10 years. And twin tower columnists Jason Whitlock and Joe Posnanski are long gone. In their place Sam Mellinger and Vahe Gregorian are serviceable, but don’t come close to being the talk of the town (and not just because of the Star’s shrinking readership).

Meanwhile nobody at the newspaper last night even bothered to stay up late enough to get the results of the NBA finals in. Oh well, Star readers are used to two day-old news – they can catch up Saturday.

And praise be to Allah that they still have a full slate of colorless comics, oddball puzzles, horoscopes and  a weekly TV guide to fall back on.

So yeah, the beat goes on and in a number of ways it’s getting better.

So who knows? Maybe the Oracle of Omaha will buy it and chart a brave, new course.