Hearne: Alms for the Journalistically Poor?

Tis the season, right?

And what better time to lay a little positivity on our new friends at The Pitch. Guess what? They deserve it!

I’m not going to nitpick last month’s “Best of Kansas City” issue. By now pretty much everyone has figured out that these deals are money grabs by small pubs wanting to garner the attention of new readers and prospective advertisers.

For the most part they’re bogus, because nobody really thinks in terms of stuff like best laundromat or convenience stop. But they’re informative for folks who don’t get out much.

More to the point is The Pitch’s relatively stellar November issue…

Seriously, given the obvious state of the mag’s financial affairs, that they’re still publishing is a minor miracle. Yet the Pitch delivers some relatively high quality goods.

For example, in “The Scooter Chase” we get a behind the scenes peek at locals cashing in on those ubiquitous, rentable, about-town scooters dotting KC’s urban landscape.

People grab ’em on the go, pay a buck then 15 cents a minute to ride them, then abandon them wherever. I coulda swore I saw Ivan leaving one off at Casey’s General Store the other day. The story’s about the people who make a few bucks by wandering around, picking them up, taking them home and charging them, then dropping them back off to their so-called nests.

And with 23 pages 0f ads – three short of a profitable number – the Pitch is doing better.

Trouble is, running a freebie pub is a losing battle…hence the following plea:

“A word to our readers:

For nearly 40 years, The Pitch has served as the independent voice of Kansas City — a source of investigative reporting, unflinching political commentary, and street-level arts and culture coverage. We have always been free, whether in print or online, and we intend to remain so. Unfortunately, online advertising alone cannot sustain the kind of independent local journalism to which Pitch readers have been accustomed for the better part of the last four decades.

If you appreciate what we do, we hope you will consider making a financial contribution, which you can do by clicking the “Support Us” button in the bottom-right-hand corner of your screen. It takes less than a minute, and your generosity will help us continue to produce vital, progressive, and honest journalism in the city we all love. Thank you.”

Unsaid is that the print profits that make up the bulk of Pitch revenues remain well below survivable levels and it’s likely a matter of time until somebody tosses in the towel.

Too bad because the younger couple who bought the mag last January mean well.

“When I saw their picture, I was like, you know what they remind me of?” muses one Pitch reader. “Cat people who go into the antique business with the philosophy of, ‘I don’t know anything about it, but it just sounds like such a fun business.’ ”

The Pitch isn’t the only big city rag panhandling for profits.

Atop the Kansas City Star’s website is the following:

READ LOCAL Journalism that makes a difference; your support makes it possible. Subscribe today.

With an aging readership, a circulation a fraction of what it was 10 years ago when I last wrote for the Star and a staff of less than 10 percent of what it was then, all bets are off as to what the future holds for KC’s politically-correct, editorially-out-of-it, former 800 pound news gorilla.