Tuesday, February 03, 2009

The Star (editorial)

Last August I'd written about my frustration with the paper of record in Kansas City, The Star, and their lack of coverage of the Wizards. When Hillcrest Road responded to my post with information on who to email about my complaints, I sent emails asking why the lack of coverage and links to other cities team blogs as proof of how far behind the Star was in covering the team. As I expected, my email was basically blown off, and I was given a stereotypical response about the Star's coverage of the team and what they do. So in the end, I gave up on the Star, and focused solely on my writing, figuring if the Star wasn't going to give the coverage that somebody needed to. Working with Thad over at The Back Post, and AG and OG over at the KC Soccer Review, I think we've done a good job of helping to fill the gap that the Star leaves when covering the team.

But onto my recent frustration with the Star. Recently at work I walked by another person's desk and noticed the KC Star sports page, and up on the top part was a mention of the Wizards and the schedule release. For a minute I thought to myself "Cool, the Wizards above the fold, even if it is just a mention and the main article is inside, maybe this is a turn around." Then I looked again and realized that the Star had put the Wizards old "rainbow logo" next to the little blurb. I was a little shocked considering the team hadn't been using that logo as their primary logo in almost 2 years, and also because all last season they'd gotten the correct logo up. I decided to chalk that one up to just a mistake by someone with the Star and to let it slide.

Then, this past Sunday I was over at my parents house and happened to hear that yet again the Star had used the old logo in a short writeup about the team's first preseason win over the US Under 17 team. The fact that it's happened a second time shows me the lack of interest the Star has in covering this team and getting the information that they report correct. As the paper of record in this town, the Star reaches far more people in KC than my blog ever could. And one would hope that they feel a need to report the news properly. Still, it's distrubing that the Star for two consecutive articles about the team has put the team's old logo up instead of the current one. To me it shows that the Star knows little about the Wizards, and has little interest in the team at all.

It's shoddy journalism that they can't get something as simple as the right logo in an article.

1 comment:

Reepicheep said...

shoddy journalism is absolutely synonymous with the Star. It's a worthless paper.