Search Results for: mike fannin

In what feels like just a few short years (but is actually closer to a lifetime) Major League Baseball‘s gone from No. 1 on my list to not even on my list….

And I suspect I’m not alone.

If my mother hadn’t given away my baseball card collection, I probably wouldn’t be sitting here now writing this. I’d be jet skiing with Mitt Romney or wind surfing with John Kerry in Nantucket.

I was that into baseball…despite how bad the team here was. I even liked that silly mascot mule.

When the Royals got good – like pretty much everybody else – I hopped on the bandwagon. However the passion was really never the same. And after the team fell out of bed, I completed the process of moving on in life.

Without baseball.

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Remember that Rip Van Winkle dude?

In a manner of speaking that’s been me the past week. I had a bit of surgery Wednesday and have been an absentee ballot ever since. Lame, huh?

Well, I’m back.

And mercifully, the ever-thoughtful souls in the comments section rose to the occasion and pounded poor Craig like there was no tomorrow.  Which was entertaining, right?

Anyway, let’s get this show back on the road with a call for writers and other cutting edge marketing or advertising types to come hook up with KC Confidential. You know, now.

You guys know who you are, what you have to bring to the table, so bring it.

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This one’s personal…

It’s Valentine’s Day and I’m out of town and flying low, so I don’t have the time to give this one a lot of thought right now – other than to do the basic reporting.

Which is…

My old boss Mary Lou Nolan announced today that she will retire on Friday February 24th.

I’ll "revisit" this, as Mary Lou might say in the near future.

But I will say here and now that she will be missed. Maybe not universally, but by and large Mary Lou did a good job during some very difficult times. She certainly was never what one would call cutting edge, but hey, she put up with me for 10 or more years.

And largely was very supportive.

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This is not good…

At the exact time of year when it should be cashing in and getting well, what’s left of alternative newsweekly the Pitch is hanging on by the skin of its teeth. Even in its hazy, early days when I ran the show, we’d turn out 56 page issues during the all-important fourth quarter. Now, instead of flirting with 80 to 100 pages issues, it’s barely choking out 40.

This during the time of the year retailers and media count on to make ends meet.

And while good things have been said about the Pitch Web site, print is where the paychecks come from.

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There’s something to be said for being in the exact right place at the exact right time…

Such appears to be the case with Star publisher Mark Zieman. The Star announced yesterday Zieman is being promoted to VP at the newspaper’s embattled parent company, McClatchy.

Some newsies say they’re surprised at the promotion, given Zieman’s lack of business experience.

Zieman has only three years working the business end of the newspaper. He was appointed publisher in 2008.  And as for the Rockhurst "Executive MBA" the newspaper is touting, Zieman picked that up on the night school plan a handful of years back.

Second, there’s a reason the Star has fared better than many newspapers in the current catastrophic three-year downturn, insiders note:

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A few highlights and the between the lines on Joe Posnanski’s farewell ode…

It was a nice gesture for the Star to choke out a handful of hundred bucks to driveway deliver Joe’s farewell to KC column (he’s moving to North Carolina). That said, it would have been even nicer had the newspaper addeda little  reporting to the mix. That way – in theory – readers wouldn’t be left with quite so many unanswered questions.

Like why’s Joe leaving KC and what exactly awaits him in NC.

Left to his own, Posnanski merely says he’s bailing "for many reasons, personal and professional."

What was that again?

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In a world of Don’t Let The Door Hit You On The Butt, it’s hard to top the Star‘s Everything Must Go sale on Jason Whitlock…

Because, quite literally, everything that hasn’t gone – i.e. Whitlcock himself – with Big Sexy’s name on it is now streaking out the door at 18th and Grand at fire sale prices. Everything!

Take the newspaper’s however many year-old stockpile of Jason Whitlock bobbleheads. Got yours yet?

If not, hurry down to your closest Kansas City Star store because they’re going cheap, cheap, cheap.

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True or false? The dude KU named its journalism school after nearly murdered the mayor of Kansas City..

 Answer: Who the F knows? Revered journalist William Allen White may have cast a big shadow in his day, but when it comes to the reporting of this alleged incident, he clearly dropped the ball. Every KU journalism freshmen knows you’re supposed to cover the 5 W’s when reporting a story.

Who, followed by What, Where, When & Why.

But when White sat down to pen his autobiography prior to his death in 1944, he spit out up a silly sounding story about rescuing Kansas City Star publisher William Rockhill Nelson by throwing a mayor down a flight of stairs.

That’s right, a flight of stairs.

The question is, which mayor.  Celebrated journalist that he was, White messed up and left out the mayor’s name. Along with what city he was mayor of. Oh and the date it happened.

And they named a journalism school after him?

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