Hearne: Candy Store Closed @ 18th & Grand

Posted on April 7, 2015 by Hearne Christopher Jr.

11276_lgI don’t always answer my phone…

If I don’t recognize the caller or it’s from a toll free number. I just don’t have the time or the energy to have to politely explain to some stranger that I’m not interested in the latest  Harry & David offering – nothing personal.

I did roll the dice and answer yesterday on an 816 number I didn’t recognize.

Good thing, too, because as it turns out it was from the Kansas City Star.

My Subaru Mastercard was converted into a Rewards Visa a few months back and the bank finally got around to cutting off users of the old card. Which included my $27 and change monthly Star subscription.

A very nice, polite woman at the newspaper called to get my new credit card number and lo and behold, she was an actual a local newspaper employee. Not some farmed out, English as a second language person in the Philippines, like Jack Poessiger gets when he calls in to complain about not getting his newspaper.

Seems the Star has figured out that if they want to retain subscribers intending to cancel their subscriptions, they’d best field somebody with some skin in the local newspaper game.

Then a funny thing happened. Continue reading →

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Steele: Is KC City Council Being Paid by Kansas?

Posted on April 7, 2015 by Rich Steele

jermaine2Dang!

I was hoping to vote against Jermaine Reed for KC City Council, but as he is an in-district candidate in the 3rd District, I won’t get the chance. Maybe I’ll just show up over there and vote anyhow.

I’ll call “racism” if anyone asks for my ID.

I should add that I have never met Reed, and I have no reason to suspect impropriety other than that he is a KC City Councilman, a job that for many of his predecessors was as tempting as Eve’s apple.

Yes, “Ye shall be as gods.”

What bugs me about Reed is that he is championing a “living wage” for all workers in Kansas City. The wage would start at $10 an hour and escalate to $15 in five years.

The problems with Reed’s proposal are many, and they start with the generally fascist overreach of the city government into private business. Continue reading →

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Hearne: USA Today the Future of Local Newspapers?

Posted on April 6, 2015 by Hearne Christopher Jr.

de_frie_danskeThe sky isn’t quite falling yet, but we may be getting close…

There’s little doubt that rapidly advancing technology is taking a huge toll on any number of old school industries. Take the greeting card biz, with Hallmark shuttering its Topeka operation not two years ago and looking to lop off 200 more heads in KC as we speak.

The Kansas City Star and The Pitch are embroiled in frightening free falls with no end in sight. Free falls costing hundreds, if not thousands of jobs, but that also results in turmoil among business advertisers that have traditionally relied on print publications to reach their customer bases.

I’m sure somebody out there still buys greeting cards, but with rare exception I can’t tell you who – certainly not my 18 year-old daughters or me.

So as we await the death knell of The Pitch and wonder aloud how long some of us will continue picking up plastic wrapped newspapers with day old and syndicated stories from larger publications like the New York Times, where’re we actually headed?

The addition of a daily USA Today section in the Lawrence Journal World and dozens of other newspapers across the country might just hint at the solution. Continue reading →

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Glazer: Wisconsin vs. Duke, Who Will Win?

Posted on April 6, 2015 by Craig Glazer

ncaaWill Coach K win No. 5 for Duke?

Can Bo Ryan bring Wisconsin their second NCAA tourney title ever? This is as close a call as you can get. In fact, it’s a lot like this year’s Super Bowl. Two evenly matched teams with two great coaches and a truck load of name players.

And remember, that one came down to the last play. This one could do the same.

Many feel, as do I, that the Badgers have a very slight edge. Their two bigs, Frank Kaminsky and Sam Decker face up to the one monster on the Blue Devils, Jahlil Okafor. That right there gives Wisconsin a bit of a better chance.

Kentucky could not get the two 7 footers in foul trouble, can coach K?

Don’t forget this, Duke played Wisconsin on December 3rd and beat them at the Badgers home court 80-70. I think that matters a ton. Doubt on the part of the Badgers. Continue reading →

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Glazer: The Scribe Flashes Back With HBO Sinatra Special

Posted on April 6, 2015 by Craig Glazer

sinatra-all-or-nothing-at-all-poster-hboAnybody else watch HBO’s Frank Sinatra story last yesterday?

It was a documentary about the life of one of the most famous and controversial entertainment figures in American history. I was glued to the television watching, listening, learning, laughing – even crying. In many ways, Sinatra was all us wrapped into one man – one way, one time.

Frank’s big career began as a teen idol and top of the charts singer, which was quite a bit before my time. However I grew up listening to Sinatra on KMBZ radio because that’s the station my dad listened to.

Probably like some of you guys I was not a fan, at least not at first.

In time though, who wasn’t a fan?  I played 45 records of Sinatra’s “World on A String” almost as much as I did the Beatles‘ “I Want To Hold Your Hand.”

It’s almost impossible to watch this HBO special without thinking about the other entertainment giants of the 20th Century. Continue reading →

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Paul Wilson: Indiana, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act & Poe’s Law

Posted on April 5, 2015 by admin

indiana-rfra-typical-gay-wedding-receptionOn Thursday, Indiana lawmakers made changes to RFRA to calm the national tsunami of gay discontent flooding the state…

This isn’t new, Indiana joined 20 other states in giving businesses the right to not provide services to the gay community if that conflicts with their religious views.

Or, as Seinfeld’s Soup Nazi said, “No SOUP for you [GAYS]!”

“The change in the RFRA law will hopefully put an end to the greatest misperception of all: that Indiana’s people discriminate, which couldn’t be further from the truth,” said Senate President Pro Tempore, David Long.

This came after a host of organizations and groups from the band Wilco to 10 states and municipalities announced they were pulling out of conferences and events as a result of the law’s backlash.

Jesus himself never said anything about homosexuality. Continue reading →

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Lefsetz: Indiana No Kent State

Posted on April 5, 2015 by Bob Lefsetz

R-52LedZep_GruenAren’t we supposed to hate corporations?

But Apple CEO Tim Cook wrote a piece in the Washington Post and the governor blinked, it was techies and WALMART that stopped Indiana in its tracks. Isn’t this what musicians used to do?

But musicians are afraid of offending people, afraid of being “Dixie-Chicked,” busy complaining that they just can’t make enough money in this new connected world as they charge three digits for tickets and make deals with any corporation that will have them. Because, you know, musicians need to eat too.

Hogwash.

One of the defining attributes of Led Zeppelin was they just did not give a fuck. Continue reading →

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Glazer: Get Rich Quick on Tonight’s Final Four Showdowns

Posted on April 4, 2015 by Craig Glazer

Buff Craig & Lotus(1)Well, it’s been a really great tournament…

Not so much for Big 12 fans. But even though it appears that Kentucky may go 40-0, there hasn’t been a big drop off in interest with their two likely challengers, Duke and Wisconsin.

Michigan State seems like a very good team led by a great tournament coach in Tom Izzo. They’re the only party crasher to the Final Four with the Spartans a 7 seed vs. Duke a No. 1 seed.

Duke with a super star NBA first round pick in Jahill Okafor appears to have just too much talent for Izzo’s boys tonight. You have to think that Michigan State is just kinda happy to be there at all. Hey, but look what Notre Dame nearly did to Kentucky’s team of future NBA stars like Karl Anthony Towns. Notre Dame outplayed the Wildcats until the very end. However if Kentucky coach John Calipari goes undefeated that game will be merely a footnote.

What about the tough Wisconsin Badgers? Continue reading →

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Leftridge: Crap for Sale on Craigslist, Opening Day Edition

Posted on April 4, 2015 by Brandon Leftridge

openingdayCLOpening Day is upon us, but you already knew that. If you’re going, congratulations and I hate you. Most of us ham-and-eggers will be at work listening discreetly through a solitary ear bud, our faces quietly showcasing a roller coaster of emotions.

In any case, we all need some new Royals stuff, right? Oh, sure, maybe we bought an irregular, discounted shirt at Hy-Vee during the height of last fall’s madness, but can you ever have too much stuff when it comes to celebrating your favorite team? In short, no.

But instead of busting our wallet by getting that cheaply made shit from Honduras when it’s brand new, let’s see what Craigslist has to offer first, shall we? Continue reading →

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New Jack City:  ‘FURIOUS 7’ On Super-Charged Easter Egg Roll

Posted on April 3, 2015 by Jack Poessiger

Fast & Furious 7FURIOUS 7 is kicking butt and taking numbers…

Don’t believe it? Look at last night’s pre-opening late show ticket sales.

F7’s Thursday evening domestic box office take was $15.8 million.

How does that compare to FAST AND FURIOUS 6? This latest edition of the franchise?More than double it! (# 6 pre-opened to $6.5 million.)

And which movie beat F7 in recent times? That would be HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY PART 1 which pre-opened to $17million.

Just like 50 SHADES OF GREY, industry researchers are predicting for F7 to be heavily front-loaded. So a big drop off is predicted for the film’s second weekend. Continue reading →

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Hearne: KU Must Play Wichita State Now, Forget Emporia State, Washburn

Posted on April 3, 2015 by Hearne Christopher Jr.

ku chickenThose die hard KU basketball fans are something else…

Look, I’m no tenderfoot, I grew up in good, old KCMO and have lived most of my life in Johnson County (and speaking of college basketball hotbeds, throw in Kentucky and Arizona for good measure).

Yet after living in Lawrence the past two years I gotta tell you, there’s really nothing quite like this place and the devotees of all things Jayhawk.

I sometimes jokingly refer to the way folks here treat KU as a cult, but why joke about it? It’s true. The only thing missing really are outlandish sex and pagan ceremonies.

When KU played in the Big 12 and NCAA tourneys, successful, down-to-earth businessmen thought nothing of fleeing their offices and holing up at dive bars like the Yacht Club or attending faux business gatherings that involved plenty alcohol and the basketball games on TV.

Nobody blinks an eye when the entire town screeches to a halt for basketball.

And logical thinking and rational reasoning are out the window.

Which accounts for why KU foolishly refuses to admit it’s a major mistake not to play Wichita State and Missouri.

“Well, Missouri dumped us and left us for dead to go to the SEC,” they say. “And those hicks in Wichita have everything to gain and nothing to lose by playing KU. We’re already are playing the toughest schedule in college basketball, playing those knuckle draggers would be good for their program and maybe bad for ours.”

Here’s what doesn’t add up:

Those so-called hicks in Wichita are downright Ivy Leaguers compared to the rednecks KU plays in Topeka and Emporia – they just don’t happen to be patsies. Continue reading →

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Jack Goes Confidential: ‘Furious 7’ Ueber Delivers For Fan Base

Posted on April 2, 2015 by Jack Poessiger

Fast-and-Furious-7-Pic-1940x891Make no mistake about it but FURIOUS 7 could very well become the biggest opening weekend box office winner so far this year…

North American premier ticket sales for this seventh outing of the franchise are being projected at $125 million-PLUS!

That’s considerably larger than AMERICAN SNIPER and 50 SHADES OF GREY’s opening weekend numbers.

And F7 should be able to hang on to that early 2015 record for at least a month until AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON will surely blow it away on May 1st.

The movie-going public’s curiosity for this latest installment in THE FAST AND FURIOUS series, of course, lies with its co-star’s untimely death when Paul Walker died in a car crash in 2013. It halted production and moved the film’s original July 2014 release date back to April 3, 2015. Continue reading →

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Glazer: Belief in God Declining as Easter Approaches

Posted on April 2, 2015 by Craig Glazer

2543.bunny_5F00_Costume_5F00_465Now don’t get too upset…

Most Americans still believe in God.

In fact, according to recent Harris Poll 74% of the population believes in God. But that’s down from 82% in 2007. And 68% of people believe in heaven, which is down from 75% in 2007. Similarly, 68% of people believe Jesus is God or the son of God, again down from 75% in 2007.

Yet only 58% believe in the devil, down from 62% in 2007.

THowever, the number of Americans who believe in Darwin’s Theory of Evolution is 47%, up from 42% in 2007.

And here’s a surprise; 42% of Americans believe in ghosts, 36% in UFO’s and 26% in witches.

 

Go figure. Continue reading →

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Hearne: Editors Weigh Uncertain Future of The Kansas City Star

Posted on March 31, 2015 by Hearne Christopher Jr.

Marvin-1No two ways about it, the situation is grim at 18th and Grand…

That’s where the dedicated men and women of the Kansas City Star are hard at it, fighting the good fight on behalf of the written word. A handful of years back, that might have been referred to “the printed word.” But by all account, that war has already been lost.

There’s very little pretending going on in local journalism circles that the days of print newspapers (and tabloids like The Pitch) are anything but numbered. To some extent they may always be around, but in limited numbers like vinyl records.

This past year – despite a strong uptick in the overall economy – bodies have been flying out the Star’s door at a dizzying pace.

“Advertising revenue has hit rock bottom and the numbers are grim,” said one highly placed source at the newspaper.

Let me tell you how things used to work. Continue reading →

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Hearne: Shockers Abound in February Radio Ratings

Posted on March 31, 2015 by Hearne Christopher Jr.

shutterstock_10814839In the words of the immortal Scribe Craig Glazer, “Wow!”

In what might otherwise be expected to be a sleepy month in the wide world of radio ratings, surprises abound. Oh sure, classic rocker KCFX FM is again on top. However perennial hit radio powerhouse Mix 93.3 muscled its way up to the No. 2 slot.

And The Buzz finally achieved its lifelong ambition and slipped past Johnny Dare‘s 98.9 The Rock. I can almost guarantee you there was some celebrating going on there.

News/talker KMBZ FM is almost back up to where it was before spinning off weak sister KMBZ 980 AM. And the wheels appear to be coming off at Q104 FM as the country station has fallen to 14th place – by far its lowest ranking in recent memory.

Of course, when it comes to last place, nobody does it better than Jon Hart and The Bridge, which continues to bump along with an 0.3 share and the lowest listener cume (20,400) in the marketplace among chartable stations.

Now on to the ratings for listeners 6 and older, 6 a.m. to midnight, Monday thru Sunday. Continue reading →

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Paul Wilson: The Weak in Review

Posted on March 30, 2015 by admin

top1Shooting Your Junk – The Unintended Consequences of Concealed Carry

Kansas gave final approval last week to a bill allowing residents to carry concealed firearms without a permit…

However, some lawmakers voiced concerns about inadequate training under the new law, and I have to agree. This week the Internet brought us the story of a security guard in Trinidad who accidentally shot his manhood with a .38 firearm. I”m going to give you men a moment. Now, put both hands back on the keyboard and continue reading.

If you’re keeping score, it’s not the first time this has happened. Three years ago Michael Smeriglio, 18, shot a bullet through his penis and left testicle while cleaning his pistol.

And in 2012,Tavares Colbert, 36, admitted to the cops that he’d had intentions of selling his gun to a man outside a 7-Eleven in Oklahoma. Unfortunately when he test fired the gun in his car, he sot himself in the nads.

In 2011 Joshua Seto, was walking into the store with his girlfriend when she asked, “Is that a pistol in your pants or are you just happy to see me?”  The pistol went off causing a junkectomy. Adding insult to injury, it was a pink pistol.

An unidentified teenager, in Vallejo, California, was spotted holding his wounded crotch while walking into the emergency room. The kid wouldn’t admit what happened, but it was hard to hide the evidence Continue reading →

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Hearne: A Call for Less Butt Kissing & More Tough Talk @ KU

Posted on March 30, 2015 by admin

kissing-assSay what you will, half a loaf’s almost always better than no loaf at all…

And to his credit, in the case of Star sports scribe Sam Mellinger it’s usually a very tasty half. What goes missing often unfortunately is much in the way of a perspective on how out of proportion with the universe our obsession with sports has become – college sports especially.

Case in point, Mellinger’s column, “Criticism of KU is Faulty.”

One need look no further than the University of Kansas athletics department to find the perfect poster child for criticism. Yet in a lengthy column defending the downward slide of KU’s basketball program, Mellinger points to the athletics department’s excesses in lauding its success.

Long as you win Big 12 championships, why sweat the ethical stuff?
Continue reading →

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Leftridge: The One Where You All Act as My Furniture Advisers

Posted on March 29, 2015 by Brandon Leftridge

couchOnce, before I was sucked into the suburbs and my subsequent slow-crawl to death, I lived downtown in a magnificent loft with impossibly high ceilings, tastefully polished concrete floors and exposed brick…

And for this beautiful loft, I purchased an equally stunning couch.

It was irrationally large and seafoam green and spacious, its vast, pleasant fabric stretching for as far as the eye could see. It was a sectional, actually, massive enough to sit 6-7 grown adults, or probably an entire Korean baseball team. The chaise lounge was bigger than some beds, and from it sprung a ridiculously long couch, and from that, parallel to the chaise, an average-sized couch.

It was a object to behold, a thing of unparalleled beauty, a piece of furniture capable of drawing strong men to their knees after witnessing the magnitude of its beauty.

And then, like a fucking idiot, I bought a small, old house in Johnson County. Continue reading →

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Leftridge: March Madness Infographic

Posted on March 29, 2015 by Brandon Leftridge

MarchMadnessGraph

Posted in Brandon Leftridge, Sports | Tagged , , , | 13 Comments

Hearne: Another Head Rolls as Scramble for Ad Revenue Continues @18th & Grand

Posted on March 27, 2015 by Hearne Christopher Jr.
Julie Terry

Julie Terry

It was only a small news item in today’s newspaper…

Word that the Kansas City Star had replaced its vice president of advertising Julie Terry by a far younger, 30-something dude named Tony Berg from its sister publication in Wichita.

“Tony is a strong digital leader who focuses on getting positive results in partnership with great people,” said Star publisher . “He’s a fantastic problem solver who is very engaged in the community.”

The between the lines on that brief statement:

First it’s an obvious admission that the newspaper needs to focus more on online sales with print ad dollars disappearing at an alarming rate. And second, that it needs to find a way to reconnect with the community, something that’s been missing since publisher’s Art Brisbane and Mac Tully ruled the roost several years back.

“I think advertising revenue has hit rock bottom and the numbers are grim,” says a source at 18th & Grand. “And why wouldn’t they be? Look at the product. What local news are we covering anymore? It’s minimal at best. How can you sell ad space for a product that’s not delivering?” Continue reading →

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