Month: October 2015

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opinion column

by Murrel Bland

The advertised speaker at the Friday, Sept. 18, meeting of the Congressional Forum was supposed to be Mi-Ai Parrish, the president and publisher of The Kansas City Star. But because of an “emergency,” she sent her vice president of advertising, Tony Berg. He read from a prepared text that Parrish had written.

Fast-forward to a week later to Friday, Sept. 25, when The Star announced that Parrish was leaving to become publisher of The Arizona Republic in Phoenix. Parrish, who is of Korean descent, was the first woman publisher of The Star.

Her first day on her new job will be Monday, Oct. 12. That announcement set off all sorts of comments on the various Internet sites about why Parrish left The Star. The larger issue concerns the future of The Star and print journalism.

I couldn’t help but recall my days at The Star in the mid-1960s. I was a kid just out of journalism school who was hired along with several other rookies who believed we were all God’s gift to the newspaper business. (We weren’t.) But it was an excellent place to learn the news business and the larger character of the Kansas City community. The old heads there were great mentors, despite some of those who had serious character flaws, mostly due to alcoholism.

The top management of The Star didn’t perch in lofty third-story offices; they all had desks (not isolated offices) along the south wall on the second floor adjacent to the large newsroom. The Star had a Kansas City, Kan., bureau with about 20 staff members, mostly reporters and editors.

The Star was a dominant force in the Kansas City (and Midwest) market during the 1960s. Its ad salesmen bragged that it had more than a 90 percent share of the market. My best guess today is that its daily print product probably doesn’t have more than about 30 percent of that market.

Berg, in Parrish’s prepared remarks, said that The Star, through its various platforms, reaches some 500,000 people. He told of the plans to expand the Internet products including those on mobile devices.

After the prepared remarks, Berg fielded various complaints from the audience about The Star’s lack of coverage. Bob Kimball, a retired business owner, said he missed the box scores on the sports page.

Wendell Maddox, the president of United Way, said the agency receives no coverage. And I complained about the lack of governmental coverage in Wyandotte County. I mentioned that without that objective, independent newspaper voice, government officials tend to follow the path of least resistance. And that is not healthy in a democracy.

The Internet has changed the newspaper business. Two of the most expensive aspects of the newspaper business are printing and delivery. With the Internet, that cost is zero. However, publishers are scrambling to find a way to make money by putting their news product on line. There is lots of discussion about this change in the newspaper industry — but few successful models.

The “official” line about why Parrish left is that she had ties to The Arizona Republic. This is where she met her husband; they were married in the Grand Canyon. But I would submit that the “real” reason for her leaving could be found in open records concerning public companies. The Star is owned by the McClatchy Company. Its stock was trading at 96 cents a share as of Oct. 2. Likewise, The Republic is owned by Gannett that was trading at $15.42. Heck, I could buy a single share of McClatchy stock for less than what I would pay for a single copy of The Star.

So what is next for The Star? One media observer said he wouldn’t be surprised if Mike Fannin, the editor of The Star, would become the new publisher. And this observer also said it wouldn’t be too surprising if The Star sold because McClatchy is so strapped for cash.

Murrel Bland is the former editor of The Wyandotte West and The Piper Press. He is the executive director of Business West.