Layoffs at The Star

[KCtonic]

Royals beat writer Bob Dutton is leaving for Seattle.

The Sports department has been absolutely decimated in the last year or so. Kent Babb to DC, Brady McCullough to Pittsburgh, Mike DeArmond retiring, Adam Teicher to ESPN, now this. Terrible place to work? Peanuts for pay? Or just better opportunities?

I wonder how much longer the Star will survive. Very sad to watch.

[Highlander]

Royals beat writer Bob Dutton is leaving for Seattle.

The Sports department has been absolutely decimated in the last year or so. Kent Babb to DC, Brady McCullough to Pittsburgh, Mike DeArmond retiring, Adam Teicher to ESPN, now this. Terrible place to work? Peanuts for pay? Or just better opportunities?

I wonder how much longer the Star will survive. Very sad to watch.

I guess the Star will survive because it's the only show in town unless you consider the Pitch an option.

But it's par for the course in KC; local company gets bought by out of town concern and gets decimated, milked for all its worth and eventually moved elsewhere (the latter won't happen in the Star's case). That's why I am a bit worried about Boulevard Brewing.

[DiggityDawg]

The beer industry's in quite a bit better shape than the newpaper biz, though.

[GiveThisManABeer]

Royals beat writer Bob Dutton is leaving for Seattle.

The Sports department has been absolutely decimated in the last year or so. Kent Babb to DC, Brady McCullough to Pittsburgh, Mike DeArmond retiring, Adam Teicher to ESPN, now this. Terrible place to work? Peanuts for pay? Or just better opportunities?

I wonder how much longer the Star will survive. Very sad to watch.

I guess the Star will survive because it's the only show in town unless you consider the Pitch an option.

But it's par for the course in KC; local company gets bought by out of town concern and gets decimated, milked for all its worth and eventually moved elsewhere (the latter won't happen in the Star's case). That's why I am a bit worried about Boulevard Brewing.

I wouldn't worry about BLVD. My friends work there. They tried to find a buyer that cared of the product. Hopefully they found it. This as my first KC Pils of the day hits my lips. Here's to you KC, looking good!

[knucklehead]

Here is a good example of why the Star loses so many readers.

Yael "I hate Kansas City" Abouhalkah's latest (attempted) hatchet job on Mizzou. Does this op ed make any sense to anyone?

http://www.kansascity.com/2013/12/30/47 ... xpose.html

How in the heck does Yael keep his job?

[flyingember]

you just linked to a piece that earns them ad views

that's how

[chingon]

Here is a good example of why the Star loses so many readers.

Yael "I hate Kansas City" Abouhalkah's latest (attempted) hatchet job on Mizzou. Does this op ed make any sense to anyone?

http://www.kansascity.com/2013/12/30/47 ... xpose.html

How in the heck does Yael keep his job?

Apparently by writing obvious sports trolling articles. Something they haven't really done since Whitlock.

[Eon Blue]

He likes to tweak urban advocates, so why not tweak sports fans as well?

[chaglang]

Just argue with him on Twitter, like the rest of us do. Vent your anger and deny the Star the page views. Win-win.

[DaveKCMO]

i wish my job was to have opinions about everything.

[KCMax]

Dimming Star: Things just get less and less bright at the city's shrinking daily paper

On Monday, October 21, 2013, Greg Farmer, senior assistant managing editor of The Kansas City Star, placed a rare call to Karen Dillon. He wanted to know when Dillon would be in the office that day.

Good reporters are invariably compared with canines: "dogged," a "pit bull," a "bulldog." Dillon belongs to this breed; she's the kind of journalist whom other journalists admire. On the morning Farmer called, Dillon had been with the Star for 22 years, during which time she had earned a reputation as one of the city's best investigative reporters. In 1998, she won a George Polk Award for a series of stories on gender-equality violations at the NCAA. A report on controversial practices by Missouri police during drug-money seizures earned her the 2001 Goldsmith Prize for investigative reporting from Harvard University. More recently, Dillon had been patrolling Johnson County for the Star, uncovering stories about missing municipal money in Merriam, improper searches of homes in Leawood, and the fractious city government in Shawnee.

Dillon, in other words, possesses the sharp instincts that build up over the course of a career in bullshit detection. But even a rookie would have intuited something amiss about Farmer's call. Dillon paused, then asked Farmer if she was being fired.

"You know the drill, Karen," Farmer said, according to Dillon.

She did. Less than a year before, on December 10, 2012, Dillon had answered a similar call from Farmer. He asked her to meet him in the publisher's conference room — grim site of dozens of the layoffs that have decimated the Star's ranks over the past decade. There, she met the firing squad: Farmer; Steve Shirk, the Star's managing editor; Mike Fannin, Star editor and vice president; and Chris Piwowarek, human resources vice president. Also present in the room, curiously, was another Star reporter, Dawn Bormann.

"Fannin explained that he had been told to eliminate a position and he had selected either my job or Dawn's," Dillon tells The Pitch. "He said I had seniority, so if I decided to leave, Dawn would stay, and vice versa. Piwowarek talked about the process and said we had one week to decide."

Newspapers are struggling everywhere, of course. But McClatchy papers are facing a particularly scary future. In 2005, McClatchy stock traded at $75 a share. Today, the share price hovers around $6. And the company still carries a staggering amount of debt from the Knight Ridder purchase: $1.5 billion in consolidated debt, as of its 2013 SEC filing.

The article raises an interesting point. There are a lot of sports fans angsty about having a local owner buy the Royals to save them, but much more important would be finding a local owner to buy the Star to save it.

[grovester]

Not a layoff, but Collison moving to Burns and Mac.

https://twitter.com/kckansascity/status ... 4703583232

Tried to link to tkc but not friendly.

[chaglang]

Not a layoff, but Collison moving to Burns and Mac.

https://twitter.com/kckansascity/status ... 4703583232

Tried to link to tkc but not friendly.

There's really no reason to subscribe anymore.

[smh]

Not a layoff, but Collison moving to Burns and Mac.

https://twitter.com/kckansascity/status ... 4703583232

Tried to link to tkc but not friendly.

Any chance this is a joke? Doesn't appear he made an announcement himself. Maybe he was just being a dick to that person because they assume that he is going to B&M because he wrote about their new campus addition?

EDIT: Except that the Burns & Mac article was written by Mark Davis.

[loftguy]

Kevin Collison is a man of quality.

He represents the journalists of a hundred years ago, who wielded a wicked pen protecting the populace and creating an environment where public good could manifest.

Glad for him that the suffering days are over and I hope he makes a million bucks.

[KCMax]

Collison is gone. Bummer, he was a terrific advocate for downtown. I got the chance to hear him speak about it once and he was excellent.

http://jimmycsays.com/2014/06/26/ending ... e-hopeful/

Hopefully the Star hires a replacement for him, but I guess I wouldn't count on it.

[bobbyhawks]

Collison is gone. Bummer, he was a terrific advocate for downtown. I got the chance to hear him speak about it once and he was excellent.

http://jimmycsays.com/2014/06/26/ending ... e-hopeful/

Hopefully the Star hires a replacement for him, but I guess I wouldn't count on it.

MGSPORTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[grovester]

Steve Paul has written some decent urban-centric articles lately but not sure about his development knowledge.

[smh]

This really is one of those moments that makes me ask why even read the Star. Collison (and a couple of others, perhaps) is the main reason I read the Star. Won't be the same without him.

[KCMax]

Steve Paul has written some decent urban-centric articles lately but not sure about his development knowledge.

Steve Vockrodt (sp?) has been doing good work at the Pitch too.

Also, I noticed the paywall is back up at the Star.