Funny, this Woodstock crowd of 500,000 doesn’t look that much smaller than the Royals rally
The definition of pathetic?
“Miserably or contemptibly inadequate.” Which pretty well describes a recent front page of the floundering by Kansas City Star.
Check it.
Up top was a prominently placed pic of a dejected Bernie Sanders trudging out of the White House after getting called on the carpet by President Obama. “Democrats move closer to unity,” the headline read.
Snoozer.
Does anybody today really think it’s the place of a daily print newspaper to inform folks of day old news that already’s been covered ad nauseam online and by television and radio? How out of it can the local newspaper editors be?
Put another way, how out of it do editors think their readership is?
However, the piece de resistance came in the form a centerpiece story about last fall’s World Series celebration. You know, the one that supposedly drew 800,000 Kansas City Royals fans downtown and to Union Station.
“Whose count counts?” read the headline.
“Mayor Sly James put the (crowd) estimate at 800,000 for the parade and rally after the Royals won the title,” the subhead continues. “But Alexander Kollaritsch estimates the true number to be a third of that.”
Excuse me…
Alexander Kollaritsch?
Hold it right there.
It took the local newspaper of record seven months to cobble together a front page story penned by a lowly copy editor in the sports department to unravel a myth that we busted here last year?
“800,000 Royals Fans, Seriously?” read KCC’s headline.
Twice the size of Woodstock?
It was a “dazzling spectacle that prompted grown men – people like KC Mayor Sly James and Kansas City Star sports columnist Vahe Gregorian – to blather about completely ridiculous crowd numbers ranging from 500,000 to 800,000 people,” I wrote. “Straight faced, no less.
“Look, it’s one thing for a sports booster organization like the Kansas City Sports Commission to engage in laughable hyperbole with an estimate 0f 500,000 people. It’s the commission’s mission to engage in fact and truth bending in order to secure funding for athletic contests, sports stadiums and the like.
“It’s also equally obvious that they haven’t a clue about counting a crowd – they’re PR flacks by nature, not numbers crunchers. So wouldn’t it make sense for the Star and other quote/unquote ‘legitimate’ media to brush aside such silly estimates and play it safe by describing the gatherings in terms of ‘tens of thousands?’”
That’s what former Star editor Mark Zieman decided to do after I wrote local businessman Gary Evert and a task force of UMKC statistics students busting the Plaza and KCPL for falsely claiming an attendance of 300,000 for the annual lighting ceremony. Evert’s count counted the crowd at just over 30,000 attendees.
And the Plaza admitted it never counted the crowd and had no idea how big it was.
So when Kansas City’s mayor got into the crowd estimating game last November and national media started picking up on ridiculous claims by unnamed local “officials” that as many as 800,000 people had been involved, a reality check was in order.
Clever City Hall spokesman Chris Hernandez had falsely claimed Jacobs Method had been used to count the crowd.
However, “Jacobs would turn over in his grave if he heard that count,” Evert quipped. “I’d like Chris Hernandez to introduce me to the person who used Jacobs Method.”
“We used Jacobs Method – exactly as he laid it out – on the Plaza – we didn’t do it here because we would have needed two dozen people to do it properly,” Evert added. “And since that wasn’t available, I used Google Earth.”
So who actually did the World Series count, I asked Hernandez?
“Who did the count?” Hernandez gulped. “Oh, someone who works at City Hall, but it’s clearly just an estimate.”
Might I speak with him, I asked?
“No, because here’s the deal,” Hernandez tap danced. “It’s someone who works in my department and he just did it for us. He’s not an expert.”
Did the Star bother to look into the bogus numbers then? No.
That would have entailed actual reporting by a real reporter, not a night shift, sports section copy editor. It also would have made it’s new sports columnist from St. Louis look pretty silly.
Instead, seven months after the fact, using some event consulting dude out of Vienna, the Royals World Series number was magically reduced to 255,000 attendees.
Small world, last fall Evert pegged the crowd count at 216,000.
It didn’t take seven months and some dude in Vienna who doesn’t know the local landscape to crack the case.
The $64 million question: did the Star at least do the minimal journalistic due diligence and call the mayor’s office to get a comment on being called out as liars?
No way.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is known as Journalism Light.
Front page journalism light.
Dear Hearne.
if you had to write a retraction for every mistake made by your writers on kcc
it would take you 24/7 for that alone.
I point out the mistakes as do other commentators and believe me kcc
is about 10 times worse than any other paper in the journalistic world.
Glaza is the worst…calling comics “upcoming” when their careers are in a
death spiral.
And to be truthful who really cared how many people were at the
royals celebration. If it was 300,000 or 800,000 you’re the only one
who wasted time trying to prove it wrong. And this is the second time
you’ve done it.
What this makes you look like is a squirrel. You wrote many articles
im sure with attendance stats for events in kc that could have been statistically
wrong but WHO CARED?
Better you should focus on getting some real writers because the ones
now have zero credibility. Get sex from a dog named jr. hardly qualifies
this blog as a legitimate site….unless you’re searching google for “bestiality”.
I have proved almost every writer seriously wrong in thousands of facts
they’ve posted. Especially you and glaza and wislon.
Direct your energies to improving this blog.
Because that rally for the royals was great and the excitement and revelry was
unsurpassed in our cities history. I know you weren’t there but take Harleys
word for it…it was one of kc’s brightest moments (although they come far and
few).
And for the people who went and waited hours to celebrate and see the
team….it may never be relived again in our time.
And you may disagree on the crowd…but one thing remains…HARLEY REIGNS
ON KCC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
hearne…to this daythere is no scientifically analyzed numbers on the
exact and precise number of people at woostock.
It’s a freaking guess because people were spread out over a huge
area/
So why don’t you take your tape measure and $3 calculator and go to
max’s farm and produce a concise scientifically perfect total of the
audience over the several days of Woodstock.
That should keep you busy for several days and not writing some of the
most stupid stories on your own blog.
But speaking of numbers…here’s some to make you and southernman/
wislon/chucklets/glaza/cry like babies.
Dems moving up polls in florida and ohio and leading as Harley predicted dems
got boost after Hillary won the nomination but the big bump comes
after the battle in clevelnd and the dem convention.
Still waiting for some shmoe to get 10K together.
Til then enjoy your weekend in Lawrence.
Harley
I like how you reply to yourself on a frequent basis.
no dude…I just have so much verified information that makes many of these writers and comments look like
3rd grade research papers.
I write fast and I write accurately.
I could write a book on the subject hearne puts on here.
But I usually need lots of space since the writers on this blog are never right and just seem to be lost in outer
space.
Cutting edge. And just to think, you did it all yourself just a few months ago. That’s like saying you were the first to “twitter” some stupid thing some other stupid person stupidly “twitted”. “BUT I WAS FIRST!” Sound like a 10 year old.
That was far from a tweet, Richard…
It was a fully reported story with multiple sources and comments from the aggrieved parties.
You must have a really small cranium not to have noticed. Maybe you need to stick with Twitter!
I actually know how many people were in that crowd. I used
“The Delphi Method”.
The Delphi method (/ˈdɛlfaɪ/ DEL-fy) is a structured communication technique or method, originally developed as a systematic, interactive forecasting method which relies on a panel of experts.[1][2][3][4] The experts answer questionnaires in two or more rounds. After each round, a facilitator or change agent[5] provides an anonymous summary of the experts’ forecasts from the previous round as well as the reasons they provided for their judgments. Thus, experts are encouraged to revise their earlier answers in light of the replies of other members of their panel. It is believed that during this process the range of the answers will decrease and the group will converge towards the “correct” answer. Finally, the process is stopped after a predefined stop criterion (e.g. number of rounds, achievement of consensus, stability of results) and the mean or median scores of the final rounds determine the results.[6]
Delphi is based on the principle that forecasts (or decisions) from a structured group of individuals are more accurate than those from unstructured groups.[7] The technique can also be adapted for use in face-to-face meetings, and is then called mini-Delphi or Estimate-Talk-Estimate (ETE). Delphi has been widely used for business forecasting and has certain advantages over another structured forecasting approach, prediction markets.[8]
I asked everyone in the crowd, now many people were there.
The answer?
“Harley is an azzhole.”
Go figure.
Nice. I actually read the whole thing. By the way I finished my ditch. Tomorrow I’m digging one with several of the Chiefs and Royals players they all love me!!
I thought it was the Oracle.
Chuck just loch ness mostered/BelAired KCC this is a historic day people.
So historic everyone should have a rack of DR PEPPER(TM) RIBS at world famous Stanford’s yuk shack and watch Goober Burr, Bill Burr’s slightly less talented younger brother.
Tickets begin at tree fiddy
“Mayor Sly James put the (crowd) estimate at 800,000 for the parade and rally after the Royals won the title”
– maybe he was counting the same folks twice, once parade and again rally after (or perhaps be yet another example of the KC inferiority complex, no legit professional football or baseball Championship in the city’s history.)
GO SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS and DENVER BRONCOS!
🙂
Hey Kero, the mayor said that right after the parade, all those people rode the Streetcar!
Mayor Sly James seems to think, as a Marine, he was armed with an AR 15. One has to wonder where his M16 went, how much he got for it, and whether he really recognized the difference.
Go San Francisco Giants and Denver Broncos? Why would you root for a bunch of frauds?
Because, in a modern sports world rife with frauds, i.e. every team in every sport – still be superior frauds (GIANTS, BRONCOS) and the poorer, even more fraudulent ones (fraudroyals, example)…
🙂
Yeah, but did they see anything…
🙂
The back of the pasty, sweaty bald head of the rotund Midwestern sports fan that until the World Series didn’t consider himself a Royals fan.
So that’s what Hardly looks like…
🙂
Hardly …
I haven’t seen the Star in years, outside of what is thrown on my driveway every Sunday. Did they get the end of the World, as we know it, the British walking out of the EU, or was the paper “put to bed” before the results were in? Did Dewey win?
Well, actually, the world didn’t end, and the money you owe on your BMW, well, you still owe it.
The markets today will be a good indication of why the first line in politics remains, “It’s the economy stupid.” It’s going to take a while to sort it out, but banks are not going to demolish their bricks and mortar in London, just to open a branch in Seville, Spain. The EU has already watched bank account seizures in the Med, bailouts of several European countries, and the only advice I feel confident in giving is the French fry needs to get out of the Greece.
Long term, as Bill Murray said, after sweeping the pool in Caddyshack, “It’s no big deal.” The only thing we have to watch is the strength of the US dollar relative to the Euro and Pound Sterling. If the strength of the dollar grows enough to eclipse European trade, and knocks the growth of GDP into negative territory, Harley will see the return of the Bush recession, some seven years after Obama saved us. In this slow growth economy, it does not have far to go.
Shame on me for thinking the whole world revolves around investment. There are other things, like terrorism, Democrats in the House staging a sit in for a bill killed in a House Committee, that was also killed by the Senate this week. When think you have a winner, go for it. We also had some great Supreme Court news, first about immigration and then on affirmative action. One has to wonder if the claimant in the affirmative action case had only filed her “23 and Me” results instead of picking a race, whether the results would have been the same.
It’s great when the Star can add to our entertainment. They are getting better all the time, and in the near future, may even wow the crowd at a local comedy club. It must be a dry sense of humor, above my pay grade, but the, I am only the economics nerd.
Cowboy, you are a sharp guy and I know down deep you loved the Democrat’s sit-in. While the rest of us watch the markets tank today as a result of the Brexit vote, you celebrate as your retirement account is fully invested in Ruger, Smith & Wesson, Remington, and Sig Sauer. Of course, mere minutes after Hillary is sworn in next year, with the Senate in her hip pocket, her thought police will be knocking on doors and seizing everyone’s guns so gun sales are going through the roof right now. Well played.
I’ll give up my firearms,amunition first. Besides, if they do not have a warrant, Missouri’s Castle Doctrine will allow me to carry it in my car, or with a permit, carry one concealed. Do I have a permit, or not? Only my sheriff knows.
The British exit from the EU is like some douchebag saying, “let’s get divorced, but let’s still fuc*, and let’s still do it a lot because I really love your body, but damn it, let’s get divorced. I can’t stand you”
the final result…
Hillary wins…
no indictment…
could pick warren as vp but she might just be too aggressive for
America…but in focus groups she had the highest positive
points of any politician ever!!!!!! So maybe if Hillary really wants
to bring back the dem coalition she listens to warren and take
her as vp and then the rust belt goes all democratic.
Trump continues to run without gas and we see newt and
trumps kids pushinig his plane to gas station when it runs
out of fuel and trumps atm gets rejected at quik trip!
How fun it is to be alive today.
the laughs never stop.
And all hearne has to talk about is the size of crowd 8 months
ago…..how sad!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I imagine that day that Yale Abbadabbadoo was too busy dumpster divin’ behind Sam Brownback’s mansion to pay too much attention to such things as attendance counts at World Series celebrations. (Not to mention, no obvious political angle). So I give him a pass. But what about all the other advocates at the Star? I guess they all took the day off to attend the celebration.
That’s why the crowd was so HUGE
How many more times are you going to recycle the crowd measurement story????????
HEARNE…YOU WANT TO WAKE UP THESE PEOPLE…
UNLEASH HARLEY ON KCC….HE’S SURE TO RATTLE
THE CAGE LIKE NEVER BEFORE AND INCREASE
READERSHIP BY 100% (that takes the total to 24)!!!!!!!
Release Harley on KCC?
Like that hasn’t already long since happened!
til he finds out another “urgent” subjectto write about such as
what to do with the squirrel problem in belton or
the crowd estimate at sally meason’s grand opening of
her biscuit bakery.
I mean those are hot topics around hearne’s house or maybe
he’s ghostwriting glaza’s new you tube series about his dog jr
and their exploits with strippers from independence avenue.
I can appreciate the fact that this story has come back around and held up to the light, because in light of the Cav’s winning a championship for Cleveland, and they had the parade and all, and the crowd estimates came pouring in…. every g’dmn news bunny and biffey were out there talking about how KC’s parade drew 800K… aren’t we great with pretend smiles and faux smug on our face???
and, please, don’t forget to bundle up!! fkn idiots….