The now abandoned Kansas City Star Building at 18th and Grand, Kansas City, Missouri.
And then there were none…
The long, sad exodus of beleaguered, beat down journalists from the Kansas City Star‘s proud home at 18th and Grand is in the books. The last of the last checked out on July 19th for a makeshift news annex in the nearby press building (which by the by was never intended to serve as an office let alone a newsroom).
Good thing, because most of the 2,000 ink stained wretches already took a bullet, making squeezing the surviving 200 or so a more livable proposition.
But this just in, not only is there a far smaller body count these days, from the looks of it they’re also mailing it in. When I circled past around 9:30 pm Thursday the new newsroom was all but if not empty.
No wonder they no longer get any even halfway late sports scores in and are riddled with all those typos and incorrect verb tenses that come from migrating day-old news stories into the print edition sans much in the way of quality of editing.
In days gone by most of the news staff would gone by six p.m. or shortly thereafter, but there were always a dozen or so reporters and editors putting the newspaper to bed until between 10 p.m. and midnight.
No mas.
The security guard who’s worked at the main Star building for more than a decade told me the place is usually a ghost town by the time she gets in at 9 p.m.
And this just in…
Turns out the staff’s great escape was punctuated by a last minute freak out!
*******
“They panicked after the shooting last month in Maryland where five newspaper reporters were killed,” says a source. “Most of the Star staff including their credit union had already moved into the new building but they had zero security over there. So they raced out and hired an all new armed security staff.”
For some reason the Star’s longtime, unarmed security company got left in the dust but will continue to guard its run-down looking, empty, former home through the end of August.
Speaking of which, the stately, elegant grounds outside the newspaper’s abandoned home have fallen into disrepair. The beautiful front fountain is still covered by a tarp from last winter and the tulips and flowers that were planted each year are nowhere to be found.
Word is the new owners are going to tear out the fountain.
Now a brief personal aside…
When I first left the Pitch and New Times in the early ’90s to go to work for the enemy, I remember walking up the stairs and into the Star building that first day.
For all my many critiques of the newspaper, it was an exhilarating, proud moment to be joining a news organization with such a rich history. The grounds were so beautiful and well kept it was almost like stepping onto a movie set, a visage of another time.
Now here they are, hanging by a thread. For all the chatter about how the Star was going broke and would soon be extinct – 10-plus years worth of such talk and predictions – it really never hit home until yesterday that this indeed this could be the beginning of the end.
Because when powerful, rich organizations just up and close distinguished alt weeklies like the Boston Phoenix or dump out of national magazines like Newsweek for a single buck, we actually could be nearing a nightmarish end.
Further what seems likely to remain is a bit frightening.
Because even on the longtime liberal and Democratic party-leaning Star’s worst day – or CNNs – there were serious underpinnings of writers who felt obliged to try and choke out legitimate, balanced journalism and news coverage.
Instead what remains are icons like Wolf Blitzer selling out in the new Mission: Impossible and abandoning even the pretense of objectivity while reporting what passes for news.
Fasten your seatbelts, it’s a brave new world…
Two of Kansas City icons, DST Systems and The Star are glaring examples of what happens when you get stagnant, rest on your laurels, times & industry shift under your feet and you aren’t or refuse to be agile enough to change with the times. Change or die. The Star and DST both died. Good riddance to both relics, who had outlived their usefulness.
To quote Monty Python: “I’m not dead yet”, while the Star is in the midst of the radical media changes occurring throughout the entire media industry, Facebook lost 20% of it’s value yesterday, and as it’s young staff makes it’s way, they still command the overwrought hand wringing of it’s former staffers doing their best to kick a nearly dead horse, and an audience about the size of a mid pack radio station, it still is selling products for the advertisers. That is it’s purpose, provide a product that consumers will read and advertiser’s will use to move product, while not the monster it once was, The Star is moving product, and as long a it does within the scale of it’s audience, it deserves to be part of the media mix in KC.
No argument there, KK…
The $64 million question (and worry for those of us who wish it well), is how long and in what form can they hang on?
And it certainly seems they could use an infusion of new talent and ideas at the top. It’s not often that top execs get to keep their jobs after more than a decade of abysmal performance and a dearth of new ideas.
Obviously, we shall see.
Meanwhile charting the changes – there and at sister print pub the Pitch – is an interesting kind of car wreck to observe and chart…if a bit sad and worrisome at times.
My parents often told me to “put myself in the other guy’s shoes, before coming to an opinion”.
So, I am imagining the K.C. Star as a Conservative Bastion of Republican and conservative thought, which pillories, unabashedly, all Liberal/Progressive thought, words, deeds, legislation, intent in total, with no room for any deviation, upon pain of termination. Editors, opinion pieces, everything in lock step, or else…
Here is what comes, immediately to mind, at least for me, a hard core, red blooded, son of the American Empire, who believes in all things American, especially, American Exceptionalism.
It’s fuckin stupid
I would convene, immediately, at light fuckin speed, a company meeting and we would all come to Jesus pretty damn fast.
I would insist, command and bring all powers to bear, that divergent opinions in columns be there, available to the public, for all in the city to read and discuss. There would be all sides, every side, explained from every direction on any important issue, here in the city and Nationally.
Here is why.
Not because I think I am fuckin Ambrose Bierce, but because if we don’t have news and opinions expressed in our local paper, that stimulates discussion and presents diverse points of view, we WILL GO THE FUCK OUT OF BUSINESS.
God what dumb fucks.
Tough act to follow but I’ll try…
Here’s the deal; these people really believe that life is divided into two halves: the right and the wrong.
And for the most part they really don’t see shades of gray. Which makes it difficult to make points when you disagree.
It’s not so much that they totally enforce their strict points of view. For 16 years I was a round peg in their square hole and while it wasn’t always easy, I was able to have my way – my point of view – more often than not. I had to go over people’s heads at times and I was fortunate to have an editor / publisher like Art Brisbane who saw the advantages of differing opinions and vantage points.
Far as I can tell, that’s not so much the case today.
And again, it’s not so much that they rigidly enforce their like mindedness, rather they just mostly happen to see things mostly the same.
Our two choices, might be, as the sun sets on this group of narcissistic, politically myopic employees, managers and owners, that they are so dedicated, to the Progressive Agenda (While, of course, insisting that they are the soul of objectiviity.), that they gladly would fall on their swords, damn the money, or, they are sporting the intellect of a flipper baby.
Agenda driven newspapers in areas with a somewhat 50 – 50 bifurcation on the right and left, OBVIOUSLY, alienate 1/2 of their customer base.
They can all be way left of Mao, but, if they are at all interested in sustaining a working business model that supports and insures long term profitability in the mid west, they should feature all agendas, not just the myopic, vacuous, inane blatherings of third rate, high school scribes like Jenee Osterheldt and Mary Sanchez.
Money talks and bullshit walks, in this case, out the door at the KC Star and straight to a job at UPS, tossing packages on a conveyor belt from midnight to six.
Or, in HR, in some big company, torturing the devil out of white devils.
Unfortunately, the career options post journalism are not that far removed from some of those you mentioned.
The sad reality being that pretty much everyone in this game know that to be true.
Job like writing for the KC Star don’t grow on trees!
If you must conjure up tired old hippies like my parents in the form of Peter, Paul, and Mary song titles, please next time hit me with some Puff the Magic Dragon. Leastways then I might be so lucky as to take in some second-hand smoke.
Nice one…
But pop culture aside, remember I’m and English and history major. No telling where my muse might lead
Radical liberal ‘journalism’ has replaced what used to be news.
I watched more CNN and MSNBC this week than usual. I’m not sure how people use either of these as their main news source when the ‘news’ is 95% hate Trump. Every positive story of the week emphasized that it was not permanent …. ONLY 55 boxes of remains from North Korea, ONLY one quarter of 4.1% GNP … it’s just not going to last.
The Daily News in New York went negative and anti-American and look what it did for them. The KC Star, Facebook, and Twitter have done the same. They had a choice and decided to go down the agenda road … good riddance.
I’m with you J Springer…
I used to watch CNN mostly because it was mostly just news – not wildly opinion oriented.
I watched MSNBC to get the flavoring I liked when I was on the Obama Plan and dabbled with Fox just to see how the Bush backers were spinning ing things and the odd Bill O’Reilly rant.
But CNN’s ratings were so bad playing it more-or-less straight down the middle that the new head guy turned the channel into MSNBC, the anti Fox and Trump channel. Sheesh, Fox News actually is more fair and balanced now than CNN or MSNBC…never thought that would come about
Yes, Fox News is a sane one, lol.
I look forward to Special Report with Bret Baier — it really is fair and balanced … nothing like it on MSNBC or CNN.
Neither CNN or MSNBC has a regular news program without constant commentary.
The New York Daily News laid off half it editorial staff, most of its sports staff, and all of the photographers last week.
The New York Post is next.
Yes folks, this is THE END. Break out the snacks and enjoy!
The end of what the framer’s saw as a integral part of how this democracy/republic was to work. The progressive press, writing against our English oppressors, stirred the freedom movement that lead to the Revolution of 1776. Rejoice all you want but labeling the press as an enemy of the people is anti-American and just plain foolish and ignorant. Freedom of the press is what made America different in a world of dictators and despots, kings and queens whose power was granted by pulling a sword out of a stone. Being ignorant of where the middle ground is by calling anything in the center as liberal is the thinking of the uneducated, those who didn’t pay attention to history. When the press is impotent you will work 60 hours for nothing wages, you will not get health care, your children will not be educated just groomed for the shit job that killed you, you will die a pauper while the oligarchs live high on the hog. Be careful of what you wish for, your own ignorance will kill you and this country.
Got news for ya kk, the corporations own everything. Most Americans will die a pauper and yes, the 1 percenters live high on the hog. Oh, yeah, almost everybody is a complete fatass nowadays too.
We’re not in a democracy anymore, if we ever truly were.