Remaining KC Star staff now homeless
How low can they go?
As a kid, there was a popular dance called “the limbo.” The object was for dancers to pass under a progressively lower bar while still on their feet, leaning backward. As a midget at the time, I was pretty good at it.
These days that question is more like asking, how many cards are you can deal off the bottom of the deck or what transgressions are you willing to undertake in order to win.
In the case of the Kansas City Star, it’s more a question of how much longer it can survive. To what further depths might it sink before the dude with the checkbook pulls the plug. Not that long ago it was the area’s largest news organization, now people are wondering how much longer it will be around.
Many have predicted its demise and the handwriting’s been on the wall for a decade or more.
Then again, isn’t this how most institutions bite the dust?
For example, consider iconic companies like Woolworth’s, Montgomery Wards, the Wishbone restaurant near the Plaza, the Glenwood Manor, King Louie and Emery Bird Thayer downtown.
The Star outlasted them all.
Around the time I left the newspaper in late 2008, it had more than 2,000 employees. Think of it; an on site nurse, a staff of cooks for its cafeteria, janitors, technicians, advertising design and sales people, plus every stripe of writer, reporter, editor and photographer imaginable – to borrow a phrase – to infinity and beyond!
They even had actual offices to work out of.
Go figure.
The illustrious Bob Cronkelton Long live the Cronk’s paycheck!
In fact, the newspaper owned a myriad of buildings and properties in downtown KC and scattered around the what used to be called the metroplex. They had staffers of every stripe hustling everything from special editions to paperback books about cats and dogs by former Star scribe C.W. Gusewelle and bobbleheads of Jason Whitlock.
That was then.
Today, early in this 21st Century, the Star has none of any of that.
“I don’t think they have 60 people still working there,” says a recently departed Star higher up. “I don’t even recognize most of the bylines anymore. Like I recognized Bob Cronkleton the other day. But most of the stories seem to be provided by Bloomberg, the Associated Press and McClatchy writers at other newspapers. Anyway, it doesn’t matter, it’s going down.”
Why then- given his track (and criminal) record – is editor Mike Fannin still standing?
“Well, who’s going to take his place? Who else is out there? Who are they going to bring in? All their other newspapers are next to nothing. Are they going to talk to Bob Cronkleton who has never been in a management situation? All they have are a bunch of 20 and 30 year-olds out there. Who are they gonna promote?”
And, given the Star’s desperate financial straits and diminished readership, to what end?
The Times they were a-changin’ to The Kansas City Star, in 1990…could the Star be a changin’ century 21 – not to category defunct, but rather to publication some other?
Am mostly kidding, of course. Reference said only because yellowed copies (not to be confused journalism KC Star and Times, yesteryear) I retain going back to the 1960’s, remain ensconced crevices a sentimental heart. Same place old Chiefs, Athletics, and Municipal Stadium as KC Sportscaster and Town Squire memories go: not to die, but live on.
They may not have nine lives, but does the Star have a second act? Am talkin’ stories of true grit – not a John Wayne flick – rather a newspaper the same name become an magazine: Grit.
Who would’ve thunk half a century ago that Grit (early precursor USA Today) would still exist in some form, today? I used to see it as more of a joke – never knew anyone back in the day was a subscriber… obviously, somebody(s) were. Don’t know anyone 2022 who’s a subscriber either – yet, there they are, still Wheeling and dealing out of West Virginia, the baggage of Topeka/Williamsport still in tow.
Errant wish, dream within a dream to borrow Ed Poe, or food for thought an rainy, tornado-driven midnight dreary, Midwest? Only this, and nothing more… to quoth T̶h̶e̶ ̶R̶a̶v̶e̶n̶ (oddsmaker) – nevermore.
The Star….a lesson in how to really fuck something up.
Well, it wasn’t easy and it took plenty of time, but they weren’t alone.
So probably it was all but a given that they were destined to fail.
That said, I think many of the choices they made along the way were so poorly thought out and executed, they turned achieving failure into an art.
Which is obviously pretty weird and I’m not so sure I could have done that much better. Although I think I can. And I’m pretty sure Art Brisbane would have done far better because his instincts are way above and beyond those of Mark Zeiman and a trillion times that of Mike Fannin, who had Art not gone to corporate after resisting going for quite some time, would never have been elevated to the position he now holds.
Too bad, because Kansas City is the worse off for their poorly thought out decisions.
Even the lowly Arizona Daily Star is (somewhat) better off than our KC Star.
Not much, but some.
Hey, but why lament the fact that any number of once powerful and successful organizations didn’t make the cut. to too much further down the road, who is gonna care?
Not so sure that many people do now; it’s just that we haven’t really had much in the way of viable, alternative replacements.
Nobody thinks KCC, Tony’s or other blogs are going to step in meaningfully to providing measured, reasonably unbiased news reporting.
Maybe those days are history.
I mean, it’s not like people are left in the dark…and I’m talking local news, not national.
Although, once upon a time the Star provided both.
Guess we’ll see, but alienating half or more of the readership and not being very quick on their feet or deft don’t help much.