I just opened an envelope from a reader containing a clip from Saturday's Olathe Neighborhood News. The story, about the new "Coming of Age" exhibit at the Johnson County Museum was "a nice report," according to the note written across the top of the paper -- but it was missing one crucial detail: The museum's address.
Whoops. For the record, it's at the Johnson County Museum of History, 6305 Lackman Road.
I like questions about word choice, and here's a good one I just heard.
An e-mailer pointed to a Page B-1 headline today: "Mother and infant passed after family refused to accept medical treatment." The reader wondered if the word "pass" has "now achieved parity with die when referring to the end of life?"
I don't think "parity" is exactly right, but The Star uses the Merriam-Webster dictionary, which says "pass" is an acceptable meaning -- though it's usually used with "on."
To my ears, it sounds a little informal
A caller just asked me if The Star could move the New York Times crossword puzzle to a page other than the second-to-last page of the section on days when Business and Classified are combined. That way, she could take the puzzle while her husband keeps the cover of the section.
I understand her frustration, and I'm not sure there's a perfect solution. Years of experience have taught me that crossworders are often fanatical about their puzzles. They have told me many times that they want to know exactly where to find the puzzle every day -- and they really want it to run in the exact same position on the page.
I just got wind of a story by Monica Davis credited to The Star at the Environmental Working Group's Website:
Something's Rotten in the Land of Cotton-and in the USDA Too
The person pointing me to it asks if this is a Star story, because he doesn't remember reading it in the paper. It's not his memory failing him -- it's that this isn't from The Star in any way. I've alerted the EWG and asked them to fix the credit.
UPDATE: Well, THAT was fast. EWG's already fixed the error. Thanks to them for a quick reply.
A reader called me recently because she was confused by a correction she read on Page A-2 of The Kansas City Star.
“I thought the whole idea was for the corrections column to make me understand what was wrong in a story,” she said. “But I’ve read this one over several times and I went back to the original article, and I don’t understand what the problem was you were supposed to be setting straight.”
The correction, in the Nov. 20 paper, read: “An Across the Metro item in some Nov. 20 editions misidentified professor Christopher M. Sorenson. He works at Kansas State University.”
Folks, the Earthlink/Mindspring spam blocker is the most infernally annoying thing I've ever seen on the Internet. If you write me or anyone else at The Star, make sure to add all kcstar.com and kansascity.com addresses to your whitelist. I'll fill out the stupid request form to reply to you once. But if I try and fail to enter the password text twice, I'm giving up. And please tell your ISP that it needs to come up with a more user-friendly way of controlling spam.
Yesterday's Local section carried an AP story about new rankings of the most-dangerous cities in the U.S. KC was 18, and St. Louis won (is that the right verb?) the #2 spot.
But who topped the list, a caller just asked. It's not in the story.
He's right. It's in the subheadline, though: "Out of 378 cities, Kansas City, Kan., comes in 25th as Detroit replaces St. Louis for top spot."
I absolutely get how anyone could overlook that. I often skim over headlines myself.
A caller just pointed out to me that the lead story on today's FYI cover doesn't include the usual contact information to get in touch with the reporter. The Star's usual policy is that phone numbers and e-mail addresses run with every staff-generated story. The only usual exception is briefs with multiple bylines, where just the e-mail address appears.
Sometimes copy editors and page designers are tempted to squeeze a few more lines out of a story by clipping the contact info at the end. I understand news hole is precious -- but that's a bad place to cut a corner.
A caller just asked me if Saturday's Page B-1 story about the ending of the American Royal was the only coverage in the paper that day. Other than Rhonda Chriss Lokeman's mention in her column on things she's thankful for, the story (with a photo inside) was it.
As the reader said, attendance at the Royal isn't what it used to be, and the event certainly doesn't occupy the center stage in Kansas City's civic life as it did in decades past. But sure, you can also argue that there's a bit of chicken and egg going on here. Is part of the declining interest because The Star and other media are covering different events instead?
I just got off the phone with a very nice reader who expressed his frustration at news of weekly attacks in Iraq falling to their lowest level since before the bombing of the shrine in Samarra.
"I've slogged through all the bad days of the past, reading about all the deaths. But now that things are turning around, I think you should be putting that out front too, to show some balance."
I hear this sort of comment a lot -- and of course I hear from the other side, too.
