Nelson, Hennberger: They came; they saw; they bailed
Big Bother works in mysterious ways…
Take Kansas City Star editorial page editor Melinda Henneberger‘s hasty exit and going away column last Sunday.
After five years of far-left editorials and watching KC’s newspaper of record morph from 600 pound gorilla to homeless person, Henneberger finally landed a gig with her former boss here Colleen McCain Nelson at the Sacramento Bee.
And give Henneberger credit for conning the Star into bending its rules.
“I’m told that we don’t do ‘goodbye’ columns here,” she writes. “Good call, because those are boring — (but) I can’t leave without saying thank you.”
What KCC politico Dwight Sutherland thinks of Henneberger’s parting shot?
“Not much,” he says. “She was brought in here to turn things around – she and that other girl in the editorial section (Nelson) – and she failed miserably.”
Speaking of liberal leanings, Henneberger gave a nod to Joe Biden’s kookie new Disinformation Czar in her going away missive:
“The Star is vital to this city, and at a time when Russian-level – and sometimes Russian-sponsored – disinformation is so prevalent, it’s no exaggeration to say that in subscribing to this newspaper, you are supporting democracy itself.”
“That’s rich,” Sutherland quips. “Russian disinformation, like the Hunter Biden laptop and the Trump pee tapes? Oh sorry, that was Hillary.”.
As for the rest of the story, Henneberger may have escaped the gravitational pull of a falling Star, but turns out the dead broke Bee is owned by the same asset management company that lords over the Star. So it too faces an uncertain future. At least the Bee has an actual office to work out of.
Equally curious is that, like the Star, the Bee has run off half of its readership by abandoning the pursuit of actual news, opting instead to parrot progressive Democratic party talking points.
As evidenced by reader comments in its local competitor’s farewell tribute to it being sold to a cold-blooded asset management company.
Comments like, “The newspaper might have done better to be less biased in its reporting,..” writes a commenter who goes by King. “Remember not reporting something is just as bad as reporting only one’s opinion.”
“Good riddance,” adds JCS. “Exactly when was it you lost your journalistic integrity? It might be hard to remember when you had any at all! I stopped my subscription 15 year ago, as a reference point.”
Speaking of unreported facts…
Henneberger’s farewell column in the Star is punctuated by numerous tribute and complimentary comments.
With few exceptions:
“Several earlier comments critical of (Henneberger) have disappeared and all positive comments remain,” one commenter sniped. “That’s why folks have such a low opinion of the Star.”
“What’s that saying about rats and sinking ships?” quips another.
As for Henneberger’s attempt to connect “Russian disinformation” to the Star’s editorial mission, “Every dictatorship has a propaganda arm a ‘Ministry of Truth,’ ” one commenter mused. “The Biden Administration has now formally joined the ranks of such dictatorships with their creation of the so-called ‘Disinformation Governance Board,’ (This) Star activist posing as a journalist can get a job anywhere.”
She failed so miserably she was awarded a Pulitzer Prize yesterday. So there’s that.
Didn’t the New York Times and or Washington Post win prizes for reporting Trump was a Russian agent?
Prizes such as these once were of consequence, today? Far less so.
Look at what she “won” it for.
Exposing police corruption and outright criminal behavior? That seems like a good thing. I still think there’s a role for investigative journalism; good writing and investigating should be rewarded. A Pulitzer Prize is an impressive accomplishment, full stop. It’s interesting what a hard turn this blog has taken into Trump-apologia-land. If you took a drink for every time the word “woke” appeared in your posts the last couple of years you’d be soused in no time.
Very funny…and borderline legitimate…
However, it’s more than equally clear that you have fallen prey to the obsession with all things Donald Trump.
Me? Uh, no. He was merely the lesser of evils in comparison to Hillary Clinton.
It’s also fairly funny how you have taken the term woke” – which you apparently are – and turned it into a negative.
Let’s be clear: The definition of woke is “alert to injustice in society, especially racism.”
My journalistic track record is replete with my alterness to injustices and to date, I’ve yet to hear of me being decried a racist.
My personal take on Hennberger is she was obsessed with tilting at one-sided, left-leaning news items in pursuit of trying to change the world into her own particular version of wokeness, which is not exactly a wildly popular point of view these days.
On top of which, it certainly did nothing to increase the readership or appeal of the Kansas City Star, by turning off approximately half the local readership and has hastened the newspaper’s demise.
Barack Obama won a Nobel Prize shortly after he took office for no discernible reason other than he was a black progressive. To put it another way, have you watched the Academy Awards recently? The most recent nominee to the Supreme Court was lauded as one of “the finest legal minds of her generation”. Based on what? In every field dominated by leftists all the awards and prizes go to leftists. Journalism,to put it mildly,is no exception. A “Crank” is defined as a person with strange or extreme views,by the way, and you clearly qualify!
I agree, Dwight…
I remember early on in my media coverage and reporting attending local radio industry meetings and lunches and noting that they basically took turns anointing one another with somewhat dubiously determined awards.
Like best morning show, best deejay of whatever stripe, etc.
Similarly, after I joined the Star and my readership was at very high levels there was a move to encourage me to join industry support groups so I could help bolster the brand by winning awards.
Take Bill Tammeus, a “faith columnist” at the Star who had taken over the daily Starbeams humnor column from legendary writer Bill Vaughan in 1977 and wrote it fort 27 years.
Tammeus wanted me to beomce a member of whatever columnist industry group and I heard him out, but decided to just do the best I could do and let the chips fall wherever they fell.
As such I went from three columns a week to five. And from $20 grand a year in salary to $100K, plus expense account, plus a month’s vacation.
Winning token award from like-minded thinking journalistic peers is definitely worth something. But it’s not worth EVERYTHING, which is how many groups like print journalists view them.
It is pretty obvious that the Star is financially hindered so they are now forced to produce a very cheap product that they dress up as cutting edge content. Just my guess, but I bet most of the esteemed editorial board take way less money voluntarily because they like their role as our local social conscience, and maybe they get recognized at the Brookside grocery store.
Clickbait editorials are the new tactic. Producing editorials can be really cheap. Paying a flat low salary to someone already on the payroll. High Quality reporting and column writing can be pricier. The Star made it very clear 15-18 years ago that they did not value “Star” talent.
You can tell they value industry recognition and awards. It looks like they work hard for that window dressing. I expect they spend a lot of time applying for awards and maybe craft their work around what gets awards, not what Joe and Jenny KC want to read.
Dear Rainbow;
That’s what I’ve basically been saying all along.
They’ve always worshiped at the altar of winning awards and recognition but they are hardly alone. Just like all those radio personalities like Tanna Guthrie who played out that same game to boost their egos and probably paychecks.
My take at the time – and still now – is the bottom line is readership, listenership and or viewership. That’s where the money is and that transcends the mortal coil of prize winning.
Hey, I wonder my share of ribbons as a school kid…actually won ’em…or didn’t.
I think to this day the Art Brisbane’s of the world are still quite proud of the awards writers and the newspaper won, and I won’t diminish those accomplishments here.
Much more than I already have, I guess.
Times have changed and they’re kidding themselves today while Rome essentially burns.
All one has to do today is read Jim Fitzpatrick’s essays and glare at the angry, self righteous comments they leave on social media to see how far they have fallen and how far removed from being allegedly unbiased they once claimed to be.
Truth is, they weren’t.
Fitz got totally busted and demoted by Brisbane for violating those lofty journalistic ideals and continued to violate them as a political partisan afterwards but never got busted. Today, he doesn’t have to hide or pretend, because nobody is pretending anymore and he only has himself to answer to.
And that is a way is kinda sad, because while it was somewhat of a charade, at least people were trying to walk some sort of line. All bets are off today though.
Mainstream media is embarrassingly bad. I don’t even know where to begin. The latest disaster is Taylor Lorenz at the Washington Post. You know, the paper whose slogan is “Democracy Dies in Darkness”. It should be “Journalism Dies in an Onslaught Of Leftist Lies”. Or how about the New York Times totally burying the Bret Kavanaugh assassination attempt? Even dyed in the wool Democrats like Bill Maher had to call them out over that one. I could go on and on, but why? These idiots just continue to do the same bullshit over and over, and then whine and cry when Americans don’t believe them and have turned to other sources for their news. The MSM is the LEAST self aware bunch of nitwits I’ve ever witnessed. And that dickbag Brian Stelter at CNN might be the worst of the lot.