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Oct
31
Star lazy about political endorsements?
October 31, 2008 | 15 Comments
Lance Weber, Libertarian party candidate for the Missouri House 39th district, recently posted this on Facebook. It seems that the Star endorsed his opponent, the incumbent Democrat Beth Low, even though she didn’t fill out the newspaper’s questionnaire. The real kicker is that despite Weber returning the survey, the Star refused to meet with him. They almost always endorse incumbents, but usually they will at least go through the motions. It’s fine if the newspaper wants to endorse a specific candidate, but can’t they at least pretend to be objective about it?
(The 39th District includes most of Midtown, Westport, Hyde Park, and the northern half of Brookside. )
Categories: Politics
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Beth Low does have a campaign website!
http://www.bethlow39.com/
Lance is a good guy and I admire almost anyone willing to run for office, but I think she’s kind of justified in relaxing just a tiny bit after Lance tallied 18 votes in the primary.
Dan,
Thank you for your kind words. I disagree that she is justified in relaxing to the point of ignoring, without explanation, a candidate questionnaire from the biggest newspaper in town. Even if she was unopposed, she owes a duty to her constituents to make her positions plain. Good representation cannot be had in the absence of communication. I deserve a Representative who is going to take the time to reach out to the constituency as a whole. At the end of the day, we’re all in this together.
Beth is nice enough and is a good progressive, but she hasn’t really done much as a legislator. She spent most of her first term out of state going to KU. She has a reputation for not being very responsive to constituents who aren’t in the Women’s Political Caucus clique.
The worst is her behavior in the 44th District primary, where she tried to strong-arm her preferred candidate into office – again because he wasn’t part of the WPC clique.
Regardless of your position on the two candidates for the 39th District, I think it completely undermines The Star’s credibility if they refused to speak with a candidate in a race for which they issued an endorsement.
Shame on the Editorial Board if this is true.
This is what happens when your only major newspaper tries to dig its way out of a financial hole by slashing staff and moving jobs to India – you get a newspaper that is dumbed down, mostly full of fluff, and doesn’t serve the public in a meaningful way.
But, let’s also ask ourselves this: Where is the REST of the local media? Do you see any of the local TV news stations dedicating airtime to discuss the issues or the candidates positions? What about local radio? (the only decent source: KCUR)
As bad as The Star has become, the rest of the media is just as bad or WORSE yet no one complains about the crappy election coverage on FOX 4 – because they EXPECT it to be awful.
People don’t want to support the newspaper, but they want to bitch when it doesn’t give them what they want.
But Chris, is it that people expect TV news to be crappy or they have different expectations from TV media and print media? The TV news doesn’t maintain an editorial staff to give opinions on things. Print media does.
Can you really blame the people for complaining about the paper not giving them what they want? Isn’t that the definition of a free market? The Star’s subscription numbers are falling and that’s the people’s fault? I fail to understand that logic.
I think the original point of this post is that the Star presents itself as the last bastion of journalistic integrity but then the editorial board goes off and makes a tainted endorsement by refusing to meet with one of the candidates. There’s some irony in that glass house downtown.
Dan, thanks for the link. Looks like she switched to a new domain for this election, but hasn’t printed it on any of her signs or other campaign material. Not even her Facebook profile.
Mark,
The Star didn’t interview one single state rep candidate, they almost never do. They make their endorsements based on a whim. They endorsed several challengers who also did not turn in surveys when the incument did. Absolutely pathetic.
Mark,
You are right that the TV networks don’t have editorial staffs, but they used to give editorial comments (Wayne Godsey, KMBC as an example).
My point is this:
Everyone continues to demand the same services from their local newspaper, but fewer and fewer people are subscribing to the paper. I guess you can get into a “chicken and egg” argument (did the paper get crappy and people left, or did people leave and the paper got crappy?) but the point is that the paper is never going to get better if people don’t support it. Also, the paper won’t get better if The Star keeps cutting staff and giving people inferior journalism.
My guess is that we all know what has happened: The death of The Kansas City Star. It might hang around for a few more years, or maybe longer. But The Star that we depended on for so many years is long gone, and it would be a good idea for everyone to STOP expecting the quality and substance you relied on in the past. The Star has cut around 20% of its staff and outsources jobs – why would you expect anything BUT incompetence from short-staffed and overworked employees? It’s dead.
But, with The Star gone, who do we turn to? The Pitch?
There is no good alternative. Even with 400 TV channels and endless websites and instant information on your phone, it doesn’t help since no one has the resources and staff to do investigations and/or real journalism, so therefore we get junk news.
The Star and the rest of the newspaper industry might have had this coming to them, but I’m afraid we will all suffer, and so will our democracy.
f that bulls*it. let the third parties in!
lazy is an understatement. this would likely done on purpose.
A letter in support of my campaign was published in today’s “Opinion” section of the Star. The author wrote separately to me and said that the Star conditioned its publication on an edit removing one sentence criticizing Low for her failure to respond to their Candidate Questionnaire. Amazing.
If the Star is simply dead on its feet, as ChrisM70 seems to suggest it should be attacked until it revives itself or disappears. I think I tend to agree with stephanie that their actions are purposeful.
By pretending to be objective and informed the Star is committing a fraud upon its readers and everyone else who lives in range of its influence.
Lance, I think you took away the exact OPPOSITE message from my comments.
My comment was this: Newspapers (including The Star) are effectively DEAD. So why are you still depending on them? Why are so invested in their opinions or anything they have to say? You can’t trust them. Just like you can’t get any useful information out of local TV news. It’s all junk news – it’s either fluff (USA Today), wrong (The Star), or bias (Fox News).
As for the idea that The Star should be “attacked” until they are “revived” – I think we all know that continued attacking of The Star will only make disappear faster. Lance, once The Star truly disappears, then where will you get your political news? From the internet? Which sites? Blog KC? Tony’s KC? They get most of their stories from The Star!
The death of the newspaper is a sad thing to see, but what will we do without them? What will fill the hole?
“…but can’t they at least pretend to be objective about it?”
That would be even more insulting.
It’s known as the KC (red) Star for a reason. Everyone knows their bias. It’s a leftist mouthpiece, and has been for most of its existence.
That’s also a big reason for its slow demise (along with all the other dead tree dinosaurs which only make left turns).
Another is the ostrich management of my former employer was more focused on building a glass palace to store barrels of ink than joining the 21st century, 24/7 digital revolution of the ‘pajamas media’.
Nature abhors a vacuum and so does news.
Strong, smart, and agile trumps big, dumb, and lumbering any day. And avoids glass palaces.
Just ask any dinosaur.
As Stephen Colbert says, “The truth has a liberal bias”.