Help The Star redesign our coverage of Kansas City, Johnson and Wyandotte counties
The Kansas City Star is taking a new approach to covering Kansas City and surrounding communities. We are redesigning our coverage of the local governments and institutions that serve Kansas City, Wyandotte and Johnson counties to put residents’ needs at the center. And we want your help.
In recent years, we’ve had three reporters assigned to cover local government news in Kansas City, Wyandotte County and Johnson County. Often that coverage has been heavily focused on covering what happens at meetings or what politicians prioritize.
Those reporting positions are open, and we see this as an opportunity to shift our approach to how we share stories and information about how local government affects our lives. Rather than focusing our stories on what politicians decide is important, we want our reporters to start with what residents think is most important.
“We’re excited to hear from you what topics and issues and people you want to see us cover,” said Greg Farmer, The Star’s managing editor. “Doing the best work we can do requires that we know what is most important to you. We hope this one step we’re taking now, with more to come, will start a conversation that results in us better serving you.”
Kansas Citians regularly tell us that they want The Star to hold local governments accountable to residents’ concerns. We also know that you look for coverage to offer solutions to big issues that help residents understand how to live smarter, healthier and more equitable lives.
We want you to feel like you see yourself and your neighbors in The Star.
More specifically, we want to focus more on lifting up your concerns if you feel like you’re not being served by local government as well as you’d like — everyone from the homeowners who are having a hard time keeping up with rising property taxes, parents who want a sidewalk so their kids can walk to school safely and tenants who are doubling up with family members or moving out of the Kansas City area because of rising rent.
You’re the ones who have to live with the effects of the decisions that are made in city halls and county commissions, and you should have a say in how The Star reports on these issues.
We’ve already started some of this work. Last fall we hired our Service Journalism Desk. They’ve covered issues with housing, transportation and public utilities. They’ve developed guides to neighborhoods, voting and life in Kansas City. We want to build on that success.
Following the publication of “The Truth in Black and White,” we formed a community advisory group to meet regularly with our editors to discuss opportunities for The Star to improve. From more detailed conversations with members of the advisory group, it is clear that the next step is to expand upon those efforts and have our journalists participate in intentional conversations with Kansas Citians in their neighborhoods about what matters to them.
“News media is creating our collective history and residents should have a say in what is preserved for our history books. This is a step towards more equitable, community centered reporting that will allow more stories that matter to us to be told,” said Stacy Shaw, a member of The Star’s advisory board. “It’s a testament to the continued work of the Kansas City Star Advisory Board, community organizers and activists, and the public to improve news media for all of us.”
We will use the final months of 2022 to listen and understand what you want to see in The Star and where you’d like to see our journalists focus their efforts.
How it will work
A small team of reporters and editors is involved in this community listening project. We are specifically focusing on redesigning coverage of the local governments and institutions that serve Kansas City, Wyandotte and Johnson counties.
We will use a mix of open feedback forms, guided interviews, small focus groups, digital readership data and experimenting to gain a better understanding of what matters to Kansas Citians and how The Star can meet your needs.
Your feedback will directly inform the decisions we are making about who, what and how we cover what’s happening in our region, and how The Star should be present in our community.
We know that folks are busy and that life has a way of being unpredictable. Participants are invited to be as involved as they wish to be and may bow out at any time.
Our commitment to you
The goal of this listening project is for you, our community, to have a seat at the table as we work together to create essential, sustainable and impactful coverage of Kansas City, Wyandotte and Johnson counties.
That may mean changing how many reporters are assigned to cover particular communities in our coverage area, what issues or topics our reporters are covering, whose voices are prioritized in our reporting, or the types of events and partnerships we help facilitate.
We’re committed to sharing our progress along the way. You’ll hear about what we are learning from the community, and you’ll start to see our coverage shift and change as we go through this process. We’ll continue to listen to your feedback as we make changes, which means you’ll probably see our coverage continue to change over time.
Our community is growing and changing, and we want our coverage of the metro to reflect that.
Who do we want to hear from?
We want to hear from as many Kansas City area residents as possible — it is important that the diversity of our community be reflected in the residents involved in this community listening project.
We will focus our efforts on reaching out to and listening to area residents who have needs that are not being served by the governments, institutions and organizations in our region.
We will pay special attention to individual residents, business owners, and the organizations trying to fill in the gaps left by city officials and government agencies.
As this project progresses, we’ll share more information about who has contributed.
How you can get involved
We’ve included a short form at the bottom of this article with some questions. Please indicate on the form if you’d be open to participating in an interview or a focus group for this listening project there. Please include your contact information so we can follow up with you.
If you have questions about this project, please reach out to Hannah Wise, our audience development editor, by email at hwise@kcstar.com.
This story was originally published October 27, 2022 at 6:00 AM.
