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It’s time for a little roundup of items that lie outside my normal purview in the newsroom. Jumping right on in:
I confess: I’m a coward when it comes to writing about the lineup of comic strips that run in The Kansas City Star. It’s really not that I’m afraid to wade into topics that get readers worked up (and trust me, the funnies do). I simply know there’s no chance I can represent the unfathomably wide variety of opinions fairly.
It’s a basic tenet of journalism to present all sides in any argument as fairly and objectively as possible. It’s an imperative pursuit, but it has obvious practical limitations. Writing a news story is vastly different from listing bullet points in chart form. The overwhelming consensus I heard about The Kansas City Star’s news coverage of the killing of late-term abortion provider George Tiller was that readers found the news stories even-handed and equitable. I find it especially notable that the compliments came most often from abortion opponents, who have been generally critical of how The Star has covered Tiller over the years.
About a week ago, a caller made a comment about The Kansas City Star’s organization that I’ve heard many times: “I just don’t get this ‘Today’s Top 5’ list.”
Readers’ No. 1 debate about The Kansas City Star’s news judgment is consistent: Which stories deserve a place on Page A-1, and which should have run inside — or not at all.
Readers’ reactions to the new format of The Kansas City Star have been all over the map in the past two weeks. I’ve received enough suggestions to fill dozens of columns with the best critiques alone.
Readers have been all over the map with their critiques of how The Kansas City Star covers the news in recent days. That’s good, because some of the most insightful comments can come from a single voice, and some of the less persuasive are commonplace.
On last Thursday’s “Tonight Show,” President Barack Obama sat down with Jay Leno for the first visit to the program by a sitting president. The next morning, some readers asked why The Kansas City Star didn’t mention the most noteworthy part of the appearance.
I've had a rolling discussion for weeks now with several readers who criticize how The Kansas City Star has been covering the ups and mostly downs of the world economy. The common complaint: The blame game isn’t consistent — or even possible to assess accurately.
“Why don’t you ever write about all the bad grammar in the newspaper?” asked a caller last week. “The Kansas City Star is a perfect example of how not to write English.”
“Sports is not news!” read the subject line of an e-mail I received from a reader in mid-January, reacting to The Kansas City Star’s Page A-1 coverage of new Chiefs general manager Scott Pioli. That got my attention.
A reader, counting himself among the “old ink-stained wretches” who have worked in journalism, noted that a story a few weeks ago about Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich didn’t mention up high that he is a Democrat.
Politics fans, I have some bad news: A lot of very nasty people claim they speak for you when they scream and curse about how The Kansas City Star covers the news.
One of my most important jobs at The Kansas City Star is tracking the corrections that run on Page A-2, and I was recently reminded how vital a role readers play in that process.
For years, readers have been vexed by the commenting system on The Kansas City Star’s Web site, KansasCity.com. A reader put it succinctly last summer: “What is wrong with people?”
Readers look to newspapers for the big stories: politics, technology and all the other forces that move the world in big ways. But journalists also need to catalog the minutiae that often have the most immediate impact on how we live.
Throughout the 2008 campaign season, I kept careful tally of readers’ impressions of bias in The Kansas City Star’s election news. The response was almost universal: The paper was pro-Barack Obama, anti-John McCain.
Digital photography’s triumph over film has been a hugely mixed blessing for photojournalism. Saying goodbye to the darkroom has made it possible to overcome the obstacles of tight deadlines and geographic distances that have given newspapers headaches for generations.
Sadly, most newspapers write about crime every day. An Oct. 2 story in The Kansas City Star drew praise from some readers, but others found its tone problematic.
Not everyone has a computer and Internet connection. TV cable boxes with on-screen program guides are common, but hardly universal. And some people just prefer the printed word on paper, thank you very much.
I’ve said it so many times that I’ve lost count: Counting words and measuring column inches are lousy measures of a newspaper’s fairness and balance. Numbers aren’t words, and cold calculation hardly reflects what readers perceive in The Kansas City Star.
This just in: Norway and Poland used to be part of the Soviet Union. Or at least it seemed that way, judging by Page A-1 of the Aug. 21 Kansas City Star. With a story about Russia’s recent actions in Eastern Europe, a graphic noted the reaction from five countries nearby: Norway, Poland, Moldova, Ukraine and Georgia.
So far in 2008, The Kansas City Star has published 262 corrections. That’s versus 315 this time last year.
The conventions aren’t even here yet, but chatter about how The Kansas City Star covers the presidential campaign is heating up at my lines. No two readers agree fully, but common themes are emerging.
The Kansas City Star first reported that Kansas City park board member Frances Semler is a member of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps on June 12. Since then I’ve heard a consistent stream of reader comment about the controversy.
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