Hard to imagine things getting much worse at the Kansas City Star…
Then again, between coronavirus, bankruptcy, declining readership and revenue, an over-the-hill readership, and finally, a new hedge fund owner almost certain to lay waste to what’s left of its already diminished news staff – how could it not?
Make no mistake, the past 10 or 12 years have been brutal on newspapers and the Star.
Somewhere in the neighborhood of 90 percent of the 2,000 plus bodies that worked at the newspaper prior to publisher Art Brisbane bailing for the corporate wilds of California in 2006, are long gone.
But to paraphrase the band Bachman Turner Overdrive, they ain’t seen nothing yet.
Take a look at what’s been happening at the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
Steve Vockrodt
In an April Fool’s surprise, it “notified 22 journalists – reporters, photographers and managers alike – that their positions had been eliminated, due to the ongoing financial challenges in the newspaper business,” it’s editor lamented.
“We have been down this road before, and despite this loss, The Plain Dealer’s commitment to you, and to everyone who cares about Northeast Ohio, is that Cleveland will continue to be a leader in local journalism…Despite the challenges that newspapers face in this digital era, The Plain Dealer will continue to work hard to produce a newspaper that keeps our community informed and connected.”
Not so fast…
Courtesy of endless layoffs – several this year alone -“a careful reader can detect the gaps, the stories not told, the voices not heard,” writes Cleveland Magazine writer Sheehan Hannan. “There is no one regularly examining the effect of money in city and county politics, writing daily obituaries, or covering the science and religion beats. The city where the river once caught fire has not one environmental reporter.”
Layoffs have rendered the Plain Dealer a shadow of what it was 20 years back.
Journalism may still be happening in Cleveland, but the handwriting’s on the wall for KC.
I remember talking to Star investigative reporter Steve Vockrodt a handful of years back, post his time at the Kansas City Business Journal and Pitch.
At the time Vockrodt was in the crosshairs of deciding to stay in KC and raise a family or returning to Colorado, where he’s from, and getting a “real job.”
The Star rescued Vockrodt and he’s established himself as pretty much its top reporter.
But for how much longer?
Hearne you said at one time the KC Star had 2000+ employees..my question was were all those 2000+ bodies actually needed and busy? Was the sales force huge? I am having a hard time wrapping my head around what 2000+ would do to put out a daily paper. Maybe unneeded middle management? KC needs strong journalism and investigative reporting, just not sure where it will come from in the future…
Yes, was talking about it a while back with Art Brisbane and at the peak it was just under 2,100…
Return with me now to those bygone days when they had a full-time, in-house nurse, a cafeteria staff, what used to be called “custodians,” gardeners, inside and outside security, branch offices in Overland Park, north, east and Jeff City – as I recall – and tons of marketing, support, sales, editors…not tom mention an overkill number of beat reporters, many of whom barely wrote…a switchboard staff…a full complement of staff photographers, including a full time darkroom staff, a layout department and on-and-on.
They were making so much money they almost couldn’t count it, which is why they published all those books that seldom sold much and rarely if ever made money, the Star stores, both in-house and around town.
These days, they ran ads out the wazoo for like two m month trying to raise $200 grand (tax free no less) and were only able to scrape up like $26,000 and change. Trust me, that’s a far cry from the kinda money that they used to be able to light their imaginary cigars with.
The $64 million dollar question if and when the new ownership takes over: How much more can they cut?
Dwight has hopes that someone up above will notice that they’re turning off half their potential readership and rein things in, but I’m not so sure
Wow, that is a mind boggling picture of what journalism used to be. However I seem to remember large editions and Sunday editions that weighed in the pounds….thanks for that description Hearne…it would have been a fun ride back then!!
It really was, Dee…
The flip side of that fun was that if you wanted to be a little – shall we say, “cutting edge” – which was one of my goals, you had to run a pretty fierce gauntlet of heavy-handed editors, who liked to keep a lid lof things.
As opposed to now, where from appearances anyway, the inmates are running the asylum.
If I had to guess, I’d say that anyone with a halfway more conservative outlook would be the one running the gauntlet these days.
Kinda like what we’ve been seeing at the New York Times
Having delivered the Times & The Star newspapers certainly have changed.
I would say being tone-deaf to your readers is not a good idea if you want to continue to sell papers. The Kansas City Star sitting right in the middle of two states that President Trump won, continues to lean to the left. Just look at their political cartoons.
Not that they should not be critical of the President, but when many of your likely readers are Republican you better dedicate at least half of the news to positive stories. I actually have the Star delivered to an apartment complex in Downtown KC and guess what? I have the only delivery subscription. Not a good sign.
The shame is, they used to be a far more balanced paper that presented both sides of issues. They used to do far more in-depth stories that got to the meat of an issue. As far as I am concerned The Pitch does a better job of this now.
The saddest part is the written word is far more powerful than a 30 second sound bite, but I guess that is the world we live in, short attention spans. How they have not figured out how to monetize on the internet after decades of its existence is mindboggling.
I truly hate to see the destruction of newspapers but look at the NYT, they have done it to themselves. If you want to be the Nations Newspaper you better speak to the nation and not your echo chamber. The lesson will not be learned there or here, I am afraid.
The Pitch? Ouch!
Unfortunately, that paper is a dead-man-walking with a monthly print edition in an arena where there are precious few alt weekly survivors.
The New York Times is prospering, because they have become what amounts to “the nation’s” newspaper, given the drop off in local dailies.
So they can – for now anyway – get away with being ridiculously, over-the-topo left wing
Perhaps if the KC Star had retained at least one pro-life, pro-second amendment person on their ed board, I wouldn’t have dropped it. Monocultures are particularly susceptible to extinction and this is proof.
Have to agree, Jim…
The Star was always a left leaning pub and for the 16 years I worked there basically undercover – while voting for Ross Perrot, Ralph Nader and Obama (twice) – I was a different breed of cat, but got along well with pretty much everyone.
Back then, they were very concerned about not letting those biases show – not overtly, anyway – and they did attempt to have some diversity of opinion.
No mas.
The part I don’t get is how editor Mike Fannin – with twin DUIs, an assault conviction, an affair with a subordinate married woman in the sports department and the least liberal seeming values imaginable – allows not-just-the editorial department run rampant to the extreme left.
Like that’s not going to turn of, say, half the potential readership?
Just re-name the thing The Kansas City Shopper…
Maybe, but they hardly have any Sunday coupon ads left to justify even that
Downstairs, I’ve got the July 20, 1969 edition. If you look at the quality and depth of the writing then, and compare it with the Star since, say, 2010 or so, the difference is stunning. People get their news and analysis from the Internets because it’s *there*. The Star just doesn’t have it at all. They may be full of pasty-faced liberals – but go take a look at the Nation sometime. They do lefty journalism, and they’ve got a definite left bias, but it’s still journalism. The Star doesn’t have even that. I’d suggest they drop the online version, go back to print, and hire some hard-working non-Maoist younger people – and they might have a product that people might want to read once again.
I think Dwight night agree with you, but…
They’ve lost so many subscribers and alienated so many locals – plus the print readership that they dearly needed to hang on to for as long as possible – have moved on
I interned for the Star in the early 2000’s. one of my friends interned for the Examiner when Dale Brendal was the editor at the same time. Both companies seemed like good places to work. So many people at The Star you thought you were working at Cerner or Wadell and Reed. The building was an compound filled with people. Being from Lee’s Summit, I remember seeing a Star office on I-70 in Independence and one north of the river by Zona Rosa. The Examiner had a second office in Blue Springs.
Now, those days are LONG GONE. All those offices are closed.
I remember a while ago people were in an uproar when it was rumored when the Koch Brothers were buying the Star. Now looking back at it, it could of been the best thing for them.
Interesting takes, Brian…
Just one problem with your Koch brothers hypothetical…about 70 to 80 percent (being generous) of the current staff would likely be working at Target while trying to catch on with Costco
A little reality check for Dee on the estimated “..2,000 + number of reporters…”, staffers and employees at the Kansas City Star.
I was a broadcast journalist in KC for some 25-years. About 1989, I covered the late Editor Joe McGuff’s news conference for KCMO News/Talk Radio when he announced the afternoon STAR was going away and the morning TIMES would be re branded the STAR with just one paper a day.
When asked about the total number of reporters at BOTH papers in 1989, Joe McGuff replied 387 people. This total would have been 17-years before Art Brisbane’s departure. and would have been for TWO newspapers.
There NEVER were more than the information provided by McGuff.
Joe Vaughan former broadcast journalist for:
KCKN AM & FM, 61 Country WDAF-AM and KCMO News/Talk 81
Maybe back then, wildman…
But I have a feeling the publisher of the newspaper might be a pretty good source.
387 reporters are a lot of reporters.
Ah, reporters…
My number – or Art’s number if you will – was employees, not reporters.
People like Nurse Sally…remember her The cafeteria staff, the landscaping and parking guard dudes.
No way were there ever anything approaching that many reporters. Not while anybody was awake, that is.