This was way overdue…
Kansas City Star columnist Jeneé Osterheldt has been living on borrowed time.
Don’t get me wrong, she’s a very nice person, but some seriously top notch journalists have bitten the dust during her 16 year tenure at the newspaper.
That said, Jeneé was hardly deserving of the jealous scorn former Pitch editor Scott Wilson heaped upon her.
“She the cluck up, Jeneé, ” Wilson seethed following Osterheldt’s innocuous column celebrating Chick-fil-A coming to KC.
“Sometimes I feel sorry for Jeneé Osterheldt,” Wilson wrote, tongue-firmly in cheek. “The Kansas City Star’s longest-serving intern knows that every time she posts one of her commerce-friendly, minimally reasoned columns on the paper’s website, she’s going to get trolled. Commenters don’t question her preschool logic or call her to account for her sub-Kardashian shallowness. That might be amusing. No, they instead see her byline and go, “Yeah, this is the perfect place to parrot a Libertarian talking point, go full Fox-tard or maybe try out a little light hate speech.”
Talk about an angry white dude rant!
Wilson’s redresses of Osterheldt transcended anything approaching measured analysis.
Which is understandable.
After all, Wilson’s journalistic labors of love were largely thankless. And scraping by at the Pitch on the cheap with the grim reaper at the door, while fantasizing about Jeneé cashing real paychecks, reaching far more readers and with something approaching job security must have been tough.
That was the year 2012.
Ah, but that whimsical little girl Osterheldt herself alluded to in her farewell to KC column Tuesday documented her falling under the spell of the “hands up, don’t shoot” crowd. Which resulted in her rejiggered muse serving up a healthy diet of guilt tripping about all things race to the Star’s mostly older, white readers..
Nothing wrong with that, of course, except that there’s a time and a place for everything.
And given that the Star has zero news columnists these days – and its massive news cutbacks in general – the newspaper’s readers were stuck with just Jeneé. When what they really wanted was actual news and less preachy views.
Unfortunately, no way was Jeneé interested (or capable) of delivering anything in the way edgy, fun stories about what’s going on in and around town.
So readers that had once upon a time had columnists the likes of Art Brisbane were stuck with a steady diet of lightweight puff pieces and white guilt.
In the end, somebody at 18th and Grand came up with the bright idea of calling Jeneé a “culture columnist.”
That’s funny, at one point in time former Star publisher Jim Hale labeled me a “cafe society” columnist. Go figure.
And now there’s nobody.
Here is a great commentary from a well known blog here in KC, with respect to Mrs. Osterheldt.
http://www.kcconfidential.com/2014/08/18/hearne-same-old-predictable-rush-to-judgment-by-osterheldt-star/
And here is the coup de grace from Jack Cashill, that indicts, prosecutes and convicts Osterheldt and the K.C. Star of Journalistic malfeasance and the divisive, hate driven agenda that keeps Progressives in power.
oops.
Here again- I will try to post Jack.
https://sentinelksmo.org/star-trayvon-martin-killed-someone-feared-blackness/
I haven’t read a star in probably 9 years…guys…ya know there’s computers now….
you don’t have to wait to get scores or analysis (that’s real unlike that from glazo)
you can instantly get news and opinion pieces from people much more distinguised
and well spoken than those at the kc star.
Let’s see, Boom…
If you halfway want to have a clue about what’s going on in KC, you’re looking at the Star online at the very least.
Then again, given that you don’t appear to have even half a clue more often than not, that may explain things.
Oh, and FYI…
My Kate Spade connections are still intact. Which doesn’t mean I have to be indiscreet.
boom boom knows everything!
you just would never let me put it on kcc.
I’d make those google numbers skyrocket!
Right up there with your skyrocketing IQ, I suppose
There should be a HUGE party in KC for the exit of one of the biggest racists in the area.
She honestly means well, guys…
I just think she’s preaching to the wrong choir. The Star needs writers who are seeking out, reporting and commenting on actual news – of every sort – not ones who are traveling ultra light and looking for race cards to play. Not to that degree, anyway.
Hey, when race is an issue and there’s a reason to make a local connection, full speed ahead. Whitlock did a nice job of balancing his sports coverage with racial overlaps from time to time. But he was also less predictable.
It’s said that Boston is the most racist city in the USA. She’s gonna be loved there.
https://jp.mosaicboston.com/new-blog/2018/1/13/42dzfiqw45vp75h65vnbe17waw90y2
Jenee is the personification of the term, “Hack columnist.”
And yes she was preaching to the wrong choir. Race bait columns in a mid-size, mid western city linked by two red states. Who most of the readers, even online are older men who don’t want to read how their the problem with the country.
So of course half of her columns are shallow SJW talking points. While the other half is Jenee dealing with her bi-racial confusion.
Before you go to Boston Jenee let me give you some advise that most minorities should hear. GROW UP!
Well, Word…
That’s kinda cold…not that there isn’t some truth in there.
I don’t see her as a hack, more of a lightweight. Not without writing skills after 16 years but her choice of topics other than race were kinda soft. Frankly, truth be told, I doubt that myself or Jason Whitlock or even Steve Penn would have lasted long had we followed in Jenee’s footsteps.
Your point about the readership is valid though, if a bit harshly put.
If one is writing for a church newsletter, you don’t focus on evolving trends in modern sexual awareness.
If you’re writing for Mad magazine, you don’t submit Mary Sanchez style columns.
And while it’s important for the Star to be diverse, eliminating every single other non editorial column and sticking readers with Osterheldt and ONLY Osterheldt was just plain bad for business.
That however is but one example of Star editors and writers being way too preachy about liberal concepts. Not that I want to read preachy conservative columnists with.
How about cutting edge, interesting, fun at times, edgy, newsy columns that let readers in on interesting people, places and things going on in the area.
How hard is that to figure out?
Instead we get Jenee, Sanchez and the editorial department’s nail-Greitens-to-the-cross collective.
Surely someone in McClatchy must have a bit of common sense?
Hey she had a long run.
“…eliminating every single other non editorial column and sticking readers with Osterheldt and ONLY Osterheldt was just plain bad for business.”
My guess is she was cheap. Making less then the other columnist. But still, that doesn’t mean she earned her pay.
It was said at the time of his firing, here and in other formats, Yael Abouhalkah should of gave back every cent he made in the last three years at the Star after nothing but Sam Brownback columns.
Personally I think Osterheldt should give back all all the money she made for the past year at the Star. Race baiting column, after race baiting column, after race baiting column. Then sprinkle in her, “I’m confused, the world is against me because I’m bi racial.” columns and that’s her career at the Star the past year.
Egads, guys…
She came in cheap, I’m sure. And given that the company has been hemorrhaging money, I doubt she got much in the way of significant raises.
She does mean well…just arguably a little naive in some respects.
With all due respect, I think everyone is missing the point, even you Hearne, who, wrote the first article I posted.
It isn’t just the fact, that she metronomically wrote otiose, purblind, jeremiads that were low brow orgies of racial exploitation, she was a fuckin, premeditated, categorical liar who endorsed again and again, a false narrative designed to manipulate and confuse people in order to maintain power, sinecure and money.
The articles I posted above, are a not just evidence of her “journalistic malfeasance” for tow of her columns, they are a condemnation of her oeuvre in it’s entirety.
I dunno, wild man…
That’s a little harsh. And don’t forget, I know her.
“two” sorry, in a hurry
As long as I am still yappin, lemme be crystal clear.
Osterheldt, is a liar, a shill, an agent of chaos that is tool of a Progressive publication that is driven by an agenda and cares not a whit for objective facts or reality, but the ascendance of ideology which discourages open conversation and dialogue in favor of demagoguery that includes defacto permission for violence and the suppression of the 1st, 2nd and 4th Amendments for starters. This is in conjunction with her butt buddy Mary Sanchez whose endorsement of Progressive, irredentist, Imperialistic immigration policies, is a declaration of war on the middle class, that we plebes are all supposed to accept in the new, Politically Correct America.
The both of them, are liars, not just on occasion, not just by accident, but, in thought, word and deed, with premeditation.
+1
If you took Osterheldt’s lightweight intellect into account, her articles were fine.
She was writing, after all, for the local moderate/left’s equivalent of the president*’s base – not a lot of searching IQs in either cohort.
Boston is a brutal town; be interesting to see how (long) she fares there.
Well, if I were Jenee…
Given the fact that they apparently looked at her body of work and still wanted her, I’d tell everybody here to take a flying leap!
I suspect she’ll write to the same audience in Boston as she did here; they’re ever with us.
Yes, yes, paper newspapers are becoming extinct, BUT I know many people who would still enjoy that form of subscription IF the Star would do a good job of delivering. We are ruining our valuable eyesight reading the computer version. The paper version is adaptable to fast moving bodies. You can read it anywhere without strain or plug-in. You don’t have to endure more time with that odd head bent-over position and one hand holding. Hello chiropractor! The paper is like a box of candy, page after page of delicious reports, ideas. Every am I get a little of that Christmas am feeling retrieving the paper out in the fresh air, opening it like a treasure box and seeing what photo is on the front page. I am still amazed at how they cover what I had just seen a few hours before with lots of details. Be it or not, it feels personal. Don’t tell me the paper is ecologically wrong. Computers and copiers, etc. actually waste more paper. I get two papers and one online. I delete the online unread. It is absolutely true: life can be lived too fast. Today’s trends are tomorrow’s jokes. With evolution, hopefully the best version of iPhones , surgical robots, plastic copiers, drones, space settlement will be affordable for all of us. For me, the words printed on paper have more feeling than the very same words flashed on blue light, heated screen. And hand-written words even top that.
No point in quarreling, Emily…
Unfortunately for the Star and the times, fewer and fewer people fully share your opinion