Why the KC Star shines

I wish I could, but the updating has been atrocious the last three years or so.

 

The Star would do well to hire an investigative stud to replace Wright Thompson. I think it's slipped in that department since Passan left.


By the way, this is a good thread. Maybe we could have a discussion/critique of a prominent sports section every week.

 

KC is a bigger city than St. Louis??

 

Believe it or not, yes. KC is about 450,000 people, which is about 120,000 more than St. Louis.

The entire MO population isn't even 5,000,000.

 

But the St. Louis metro area is much larger. White flight makes the population figure in the city limits deceptive

 

OK, but St. Louis is a bigger media market.  According to Nielsen, St. Louis is No. 21 while KC is No. 31

 

No doubt about it. I think KC's media market is very similar to Buffalo's ... it's definitely the among the 5-lowest in professional sports I believe.

 

That's an excellent notion, but I have it on fairly decent word they're trying to replace Wright with not one, but two feature guys.

 

I didn't love the Big 12 thing, but it was fairly creative. They did a good job of finding one major aspect of each school, then blowing it up to show what it means to the whole league, i.e. OSU and big money donors. It wasn't super, but I thought it was very solid.

Their baseball section at the start of this season really amazed me though. I'm sure it was discussed on here, though I never saw it, but man, looking through it I just couldn't imagine some of the topics they dreamed up, then wrote cool stories about.

 

The last time I saw the Star was in Nov. 2004, when Pats were in town for a Monday nighter. That's a good edition to check any sports section. How do you fill a big day without the home team's game to cover?
The Star provided an excellent lunchtime read in that situation. I know that sounds awfully general, but nobody should remember a newspaper they read two years ago unless it was the Dec.8., 1941 paper or somesuch.
What strikes me about the specific stories cited here is that the Star is willing to put energy, manpower, and time into IDEAS. If I lived in KC, I doubt I'd have read the entire Big 12 project, but I would have checked it out each day to see if it could grab me.
If this sounds vague, I apologize. If this sounds dismissive, I mean anything but. One of the main changes in my life in a year out of the business is that bit by bit I'm reading newspapers like a customer again instead of with an inside perspective.

 

I don't agree with the implication that a section needs to have X amount of pro teams to be considered big time. We don't have all four, but our pros and the pro-like major colleges more than keep us busy. Yes, Orlando works for awards with its one pro team, but (not us) San Diego doesn't cover its NFL and baseball teams as well as Kansas City. Good departments make good choices.

 

It's hard to diss a paper that has a columnist that writes something as entertaining as this story on Satchel Paige.

www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/sports/14949204.htm