Remember this one?
Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
That’s what’s wrong with today’s Kansas City Star. Make no mistake, they still face the same obstacles other newspapers are struggling with like disappearing print profits and readership. They can rack up millions in online ads, but what keeps the lights on are those plastic condom encased thingamajigs oldsters fish out of their driveways every morning.
You know, think they still call ’em “newspapers.”
And they can run all the ads they want promising readers new directions, expanded coverage and other changes – despite a staff that’s been reduced by 90 percent the past 10 years – but until they pull their heads out of the sand editorially, it’s going to remain a death march.
Seriously.
We live in a fairly conservative part of the country where midwestern values don’t always line up across the board with liberal, left coast, politically correct leanings.
So why continue to try and jam those philosophies down readers throats?
Even a token effort at “fair and balanced” reporting and editorializing could go a long way.
What’s so hard about that?
For starters, lighten up a little with the flagrantly biased, preachy editorials. Nobody wants to be lectured and brainwashed day in and day out.
Try being a little more even handed.
The folks who already see eye-to-eye with you don’t need the saturation and those who disagree are tired of being scolded and brow beaten.
There’s a reason Fox News has double the viewership CNN does.
And that gap would likely be even wider if CNN wasn’t benefiting daily by dragging all things Trump thru the mud.
I’m not coming out in favor of anyone politically, but I meet and talk with a pretty fair cross section of locals – people who buy new and used cars in every price category – and while they may not wear MAGA ball caps, but they’re comparatively conservative.
And the few who can even vaguely remember reading or subscribing to the Star almost all say they quit taking the newspaper because of its single-sided editorial slant.
In the good old days – pre Internet – when the Star had a virtual local news monopoly – locals had little choice if they wanted to keep up with halfway comprehensive area news.
And dumbed down editorials like Sunday’s trying to let doubler-talking Claire McCaskill off the hook after she got majorly busted for being two-faced with voters doesn’t help things.
Nobody gives a hoot about the Star’s printed (but lightly observed) “ethics policies.”
Even they don’t…
KC’s newspaper of record picks and chooses how it decides to be fair or not these days (ask Westport businessman Bill Nigro to explain how they ignored his request for a correction of clarification after the newspaper threw him under the bus by taking his quotes completely out of context and leaving out large portions of his interview).
We live in a world where people use any number of investigative techniques to uncover truths.
And the Star’s offering up vague excuses and smarmy insinuations as to whether McCaskill’s opponent was behind her unmasking hardly passes as investigation journalism.
Instead, the “editorial” reads like something a coterie of catty high school kids threw together in a weak attempt to distract from a highly embarrassing peek at why McCaskill’s political peers used to call her Blonde Ambition.
“So why continue to try and jam those philosophies down readers throats?”
Because Progressives are sure they ALWAYS have the high ground in ANY argument or political and policy disagreement. Liberalism is a secular religion that brooks no dissent. Hence, attacks on free speech, redefined, arbitrarily and capriciously described as “Hate” speech. The justification of mob violence. The suspension of “Due Process”. The marginalization “Bad Thinkers” by “Good Whites” and most of all, the “Ends justify the means” approach to all problems standing in the way of Fascist-Progressives who blindly seek the Socialist Seppuku now enjoyed by all in Venezuela.
Chuck, they are saying on TKC that you are dead. Tony would not respond when I asked him about it. I’m glad to see that it wasn’t true. You might consider making a comment there to squelch the rumor. Take care.
C’mon, Byron…
You actually believe what’s written and said on TKC?
I will Byron, I am surprised anyone missed me. Take care.
Today’s “liberalism” isn’t truly being a liberal. Being a Liberal is John Stuart Mill. Today’s neo-liberals have so bastardized the name “liberal” that I can’t even recognize it. Mill would be disgusted with today’s neo-liberals.
I see that the Boston Globe, that perspicasciously Progressive publication is making use of the towering intellect of Jenee Osterheldt.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/2018/10/18/white-feminism-isn-feminism-and-don-forgive-you/EM5IcyQT7rv10lvSUwYmCL/story.html
The hierarchy in the Progressive cathedral is clearly defined by way of genetics and percentage points, based on melanin. Bette Midler, that’s right, Bette Midler, who is so far left Trotsky wouldn’t return her calls if she was providing a ride to Vldimir Ilyich Lenin’s birthday party, was ‘Osterheldtsized’ by J.O., because she said, and I quote here, in fear of using the “N” word, more specifically typing the “N” word (Quelle horreur!!!!!), in vain—“Women is the nigger of the world”.
John Houseman, in a famous line in a movie, commenting on the Byzantine machinations of late 20th century undercover agencies, in the movie, “Three Days Of The Condor”, said, “I long for clarity”. #metoo.
Rules and regulations, for we melanin deprived hoi polloi are crucial and thank the Progressive gods, we have them by way of J.Osterheldt, who, hilariously is half fuckin white (A fact not readily apparent when perusing her oeuvre.).
This particular article, refuses to “Forgive” a Jewish woman, for accidentally accusing a black boy or sexually harASSing her, even though, the white (?) Jewish chick apologized after seeing the video. OFF WITH HER HEAD!!!
The “Committee Of Public Safety” never employed a more ardent member than that of the person of Jenee, who, reminds us, under penalty of Osterization, that the hierarchy is exact and just as racist as you thought it was.
Here is your, “23 And Me” list. By the way, I would like to see Jenee’s .
1)Black chicks. Metaphysically unassailable, their words, actions and deeds, now fall into the realm of Pope like infallibility.
2)Black dudes. Er…, slavery.
3)Various and Sundry people of color (Women first), including those Asian folks who suffer so grievously every day on plantations all over America.
4)Jewish people, who, after working for them for years, in houses all over the metro area, like, say, for instance in Hallbrook, Mission Hills and just recently in Loch Lloyd, I have come to understand, their suffering. Gawd, the stories, the pain, the sacrifice. It is so horrible, I can’t bring myself to even describe it.
5)White women, who, as we all know, even now, are being beaten and raped (Or, at least being forced to make sandwhiches.) by any and every evil white guy not busy committing white on black hate crimes.
Write this shit down and, you’re welcome.
She’s a peach!
Hearne, do you really think that a change to the editorial page is going to get the Star out of the mess it’s in? It’s amazing how prescient Egon Spangler was back in 1984 when he uttered his most famous quote in Ghostbusters, “Print is dead.” I just can’t believe they didn’t lock the doors years ago and still continue to throw good money after bad.
Guess this makes me the land that knows too little, but…
Clearly the handwriting is on the wall. But the Star is hastening its demise by shooting itself in the food with its slanted-to-a-fault news and editorial slanted approach.
For one thing, they could do a much better job of news gathering and making it harder for readers to quit by spending the dollars they’re arguably wasting on the gigantic editorial board of “losers” and putting a few more troops in the trenches and coming up with news you can’t get anywhere else.
Not that tuff to do in a town of mostly watered down TV and radio news and (mostly) hip shooter bloggers with little to no sense of fact checking and verifying.
If you want first-class journalism in KC, here’s the place to go: https://jimmycsays.com/2018/10/29/heres-how-to-vote-on-jackson-county-charter-amendments-no/ (for example)
Well put, Hearne. My own experience is the same; any love for the Kansas City Star was plucked out bit by bit as they became more and more of a lefty rag during 2000-2010. My parents were far more loyal than myself but enough Osterizing and Abouhalking can drive any logical human to nausea at opening another issue, and a few years ago they finally pulled the plug on the noxious news. I knew the leaders of the KC Star were left-leaning in the pre-2000 era of course, but the utter abandonment of any pretense to journalistic fairness seems to have accelerated during the early 2000s, like the New York Times (who even declared on their front page in 2016 that they were to no longer be considered objective in any way!) So, goodbye and good riddance to the dull democrat mouthpiece that remains. As you state, if they would simply focus on great coverage of local news and events it would be hard NOT to subscribe, especially if they reduced or deleted their inane socialist commentary. But no, they have a higher calling and the paper will be sacrificed on this altar.
And the inmates that are running the asylum are so blinded by their partisanship that they can’t see the forest for the trees…
Which is – in a way – understandable. However, that the suits in charge don’t either see it and/or if they do, step in and restore some kind of balance (order?) is difficult to understand.
Oh well, from the editorial point of view looks like they’re more than happy to go down with the ship
It never ceases to amaze me how a business (especially one which is publicly traded) chucks 50% of its prospective customers to the ditch – so that they can continue with their political ideology – which in reality is now “preaching to the choir”. It’s not just newspapers, it’s all forms of media, from TV shows to movies. Case in point – what ABC did with the show Last Man Standing. One of the higher watched shows. Now Fox has it and it is doing nicely. Ideology over profits – that’s fine if the employees don’t mind to watch their ranks decline.
It’s mind boggling to me too, Tony…
But not to geniuses like Star editor Mike Fanin and McClatchy higher up Mark Zieman.
The latter was born in an era where there were no shades of gray, only right and wrong. And the profits were such that they lived inside an impenetrable bubble.
It will be a cold day in hell when journalists like that come to work with a halfway open mind.
To think outside that box you;ld be blasphemy