By JUSTIN KENDALL
Finally, we know the real reason for the Kansas City Star's decline.
The Star's financial woes apparently aren't due to the bad economy, much less the industry-wide loss of revenue as advertisers migrated to the Internet over the last two decades, or the changing habits of readers who get more of their news online. Instead, the Star's dying from good ol' liberal bias, according to Kansas' new "fair and factual" news site.
Monday's purge of 50 Star employees was just the latest round of layoffs. It led to a Kansas Liberty story boldly proclaiming, "It may also be the last year in Star history if [publisher Mark] Zieman is unsuccessful in turning around the failing newspaper."
For months, Kansas Liberty has written critical stories of the Star, the Wichita Eagle and parent company McClatchy. The stories always cite unnamed critics who claim the papers' problems are due to their liberal bent. None of the stories run with bylines.
However,
papers filed with the Kansas Secretary of State's Office reveal that newly elected Kansas state Sen. Mary Pilcher Cook owns a 42.5 percent interest in the publication, which appears to have launched around March 2008. The ownership of the remaining 57.5 percent is unclear. Phone calls to Pilcher Cook and Kansas Liberty's offices were not returned.The site claims that Kansas Liberty "can be your trusted source for information."
"Best of all, the news you’ll get here is missing only one thing –- the bias that traditional media are bringing to just about every major news story in and around Kansas," Kansas Liberty's welcome page boasts. "Our fresh information comes from exclusive interviews and sources that the mainstream media either won’t touch or doesn’t have access to."
Which must be true, because Kansas Liberty appears to know more about the Star than the Star knows about itself.
On October 23, Kansas Liberty ran a story titled "Star publisher takes yet another hit," recapping a decline in ad revenues. Then this paragraph inexplicably appears:
One of the few exciting developments for the Star has been the reaction to the paper's recent assertion that anyone who calls Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama's a "socialist" is a racist. Last week, Obama promised to "spread the wealth around."
Another story, "KC Star cuts more jobs," made its way into the October edition of Metro Voice, a local Christian newspaper.
The story mirrors a September 16 Kansas Liberty article titled "Eagle, KC Star publisher hammered again" on the McClatchy-wide layoffs.
Many critics say the papers have alienated at least half their potential readership because of their strident partisan tone and their failure to connect with the concerns of Midwestern readers. Many conservative Republicans now consider the Eagle and the Star to be adversaries and wish the papers ill. News commentators have noted that the vice-presidential campaign of Sarah Palin seems to gather momentum every time the press attempts to ridicule her.
Unnamed critics also appear in an August 20 Kansas Liberty story, "Wichita Eagle, KC Star publisher stumbles again."
Critics say the editorial stance and the news coverage at the Star and Eagle are also out of touch and extremist, alienating many readers and advertisers by blindly supporting liberal causes and candidates.
And this, in a June 29 story titled "Kansas City Star publisher's stock hits all-time low."
Some conservatives have noted that as the Star's editorials have grown increasingly shrill, the paper has lost thousands of readers. Once, the paper reached more than a quarter-million people in the metro area. Now its circulation is down to just over 150,000. The paper recently announced it was cutting its delivery area, so further circulation declines are expected.
A March 3 opinion might provide a clue as to who some of those unnamed critics might be. The piece did have a byline. Denis Boyles, author of Superior, Nebraska -- a conservative's answer to Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas? -- highlighted a Zogby poll saying a majority of Americans get their news online and laments the quality of journalism. The piece is titled "A Dying Star":
The new business of the Star and other papers is to provide reassurance to its community of mostly liberal readers who share the paper’s assumptions about the world and how it works. No wonder most people think it's out of touch. Like all mainstream American newspapers, from The New York Times on down to the Wichita Eagle, the Star has decided to create a product of huge interest to a shrinking market but of no interest at all to a growing one.
All of which was news to us.
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It's sad that the Rethuglicans started a cultural war.
The good news is that they're losing it.
They know it, and the sane people know it, too.
THE STAR TOLD 10 OF ITS FINANCE EMPLOYEES LAST WEDNEDSAY THAT THEIR JOBS WOULD BE OUTSOURCED TO INDIA TO INFOSYS AND THEIR LAST DAY WOULD BE ON/ABOUT FEB 2009. MEANWHILE THEY ARE FORCED TO TRAIN THEIR REPLACEMENTS.
The Star and the Sun have set themselves up as personal procecutors of Phill Kline and anyone else that has the guts to stand up to the liberals. Mike Hendricks is one good example of someone who writes pieces that are so obviously biased toward the left that oftern the story gets lost.
The Star has never seen a liberal cause it didn't like. I didn't realize they were in competition with Pravda.
I have cancelled my subscription and will not ever renew it again until the paper ceases to the the voice of the liberals.
The real story is that they don't cover the news that's relevant to people. I read the PITCH to find out what's going on, because unless its crime or a horrific car wreck, it won't be in the Star.
you ever notice how the quality of comments nosedives when ever pitch links to a local wingnut page?
I have to confess I do still read the star or as I sometimes say, The KC Scar.
Years ago I stopped reading any of the news in that rag. And years before that I stopped reading the opinion blather.
Now I hit the funnies, the horroroscope and the food section which lately I see has been combined with the funnies.
That is all I read.
Needless to say my type of patronage will not take the paper very far. Why?
I never buy the paper. I read whatever is laying around. On sunday I collect abandon papers left on tables.
The fact is I have not bought a Scar in years. Nor do I have any intention of changing the pattern.
Totally damning of the paper is I don't even look at it online. I don't have to.
Over the years I have collected links to hundreds of papers all over the world. I read what I want to read, when I want to read it. I read newspapers that are close to where the "action" is.
Personally, I couldn't care if the Scar comes or goes and their employees with it.
To me it is a non issue. Moreover I suspect there are millions of others with a like mind who feel the same way.
Then again, if you have fish to clean a paper newspaper might be of some use.
The point of this story is that Kansas Liberty criticizes the Star for its supposed bias, while displaying an astonishing and far more egregious lack of balance and professionalism itself.
Evidence that ultra conservatives don't want unbiased news. They want a right-wing echo chamber.
And then there is the entire Major Mayor Funk thing. Painted into a corner by current events, they are face full of egg no matter which way the editorial board repositions itself.
On the reactionary right, the slightly right of Hilter [and community cheer leader of Tucson Federal Felon, and Missou grad Congress Crook 'Puke' Cunningham of ritzy Del Mar [California] ] the San Diego Padres owners and Union Tribune continues to be chipped away by former employees of rather sophomoric Wednesday Rag throw aways.
Over the years, the Star has even managed to turn its legitimate news stories into an extension of their editorial board and just hoped that nobody would notice their liberal slant.
People in KC are smarter than the parent company thinks. We aren't fooled by the garbage (disguised as legitimate news) they have put out, no matter how often they replay the same, tired themes.
Do they really wonder why their readership is declining or more & more respectable companies (see: ad revenues) are choosing to distance themselves from them? My guess is that they are so far removed from the viewpoints of the average Kansas Citian, they actually do not have a clue why they are the joke of the town -- and why they may soon be out of business. Hey, maybe they can ask our socialist-leaning government to bail out our socialist-leaning, race baiting, morally-bankrupt joke of a paper?
No surprise at all about this except that you used the term conservative, but I feel that moderate to plain traditional Americans are targets of the Star and in many cases, plain ole European Americans. With haters and bigots such as Louis "Farrahkan" Duiguid, Mary Sanchez, and a host of other veil reporters, the KC Star is one disgusting anti-America rag. But they are in good company, with say the Orlando "Slantinal", the ST. Louis Post Dick-scratch, ot the Atlanta Constitution Urinal. All far left loon hate mongers, who wish bad things upon America or anyone who disagrees with their idology.
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