Reflecting on the Further Decline of The KC Star

I'm not sure why opening my Sunday Kansas City Star today and learning that it would be the last time I would read The Kansas City Star Magazine filled me with...dread.

Part of the feeling was personal. I had been proud to have three freelance pieces used as cover stories for The Star Magazine. One of them, on Linda Hall Library, reintroduced that little appreciated Kansas City gem to readers. It took me six months of work and I received a princely sum of $200 for it. But one value for me was that I felt my name had joined the list of so many writers who contributed to the magazine and represented some of the best in reporting and writing talent the Star has had to offer since 1970. Too many of them have and are drifting away and being cast away.

Part of the deep sadness was the demise of the magazine after a life of only 45 years was one more sign that my local newspaper is becoming, well, not MY local newspaper anymore. I like sports. I listen to sports radio every day. The Royals success last year was like a drink of cool water for this fan who had been wondering in the desert for so many years. But sports is sports and the front page of the paper is the front page. Rarely should the two meet. Certainly not take up three-quarters of that valuable press real estate for a story on Yordano Ventura, love though I did the story and how well it was written by Vahe Gregorian. I read every word. But I would have read every word had it been in its proper section—the sports section or, imagine this, placed in The Star Magazine.

The state of the Arts and Entertainment section is in deep question. Folks, art writer Alice Thorson provided really good and knowledgeable pieces about the art scene in our city. More downsizing, I understand, means more stories by outside freelancers. That will cost the Star less, but will it give readers more? I was particularly offended there was no note from The Star's publisher, Mi-Ai Parrish, nor its editor, Mike Fannin, on why the magazine was being killed off, nor what their vision is for the future of The Star. It could well be there is only one vision: survive.

Last Sunday, my paper lacked the color comics section. I realized this greatly bothered me and then I was disturbed even more by how greatly I missed it. It made me question: why DO I take the Star?

The answer I came up with is the one that is at rock bottom: I want a reliable source about local news: government, police, courts, business, politics—the working necessary guts of our society.

Good newspapers do this while providing an environment where the best writing and photography can thrive.

Ready for that dread part?

I am not the reader the Star wants. It wants young eyes that poke at that phone/tablet thing, not these old ones that read print while sipping morning coffee.

Release Dates Set for First Two Phillip McGuire Mystery/Suspense Books

The first two novels in my Phillip McGuire mystery/suspense series now have release dates by my publisher Curiosity Quills, which published Blow Up the Roses last November. Phillip is a cynical, burnt-out foreign correspondent with a dark history who leaves journalism to buy and run a bar in his old university town of Lawrence, KS. Mysteries and adventures come his way as he tries to move beyond what has happened to him in his past and embrace his future, whatever that's going to be.

The team at Curiosity Quills has been wonderful to work with. Eugene Teplitsky, the publisher, has assembled a great team of acquisition folk, editors, designers and promoters. Tortured Truths will be released Oct. 22. Heart Chants comes out Dec. 20. More about these books later.

If you'd like to be notified when these are available, just subscribe to the mailing list up on top. If you're a reviewer and would be interested in an advanced reader copy, just leave a comment here with information how I can contact you.

Here are the cover reveals for the Phillip McGuire books.

Great Shouts, Whole New Linguistic Category

Came across a column I did from my old newspaper days and really liked. Hope you do too. If you have some Great Shouts to add, put them in the comments field.

At a newspaper where I once worked, I had the occasion to run into the press room and yell “Stop the presses!” The effect was immediate. Ink-smudged men, who before barely had grunted an acknowledgment of my existence as night editor, scrambled. Buttons were pushed. The roaring noise of the press subsided. The run of papers through the Goss machinery had just begun, so we did not lose too much money by pulling one of the plates to correct a gross error (mine) in a headline that would have made us  the laughing stock of the town.

I ruminated on the event, remembering how the phrase “Stop the presses!” had, by itself, bellowed with magnificent authority from my own terrified lungs, galvanized pressmen into immediate action. I realized they reacted not because of any authority I possessed, though in editorial control I was, but rather from the authority of the shout itself. There was no doubt about it. “Stop the presses!” was a Great Shout. I had discovered a new linguistic category.

Regular shouts like “Ouch!” or “Stop it!” are mere visceral reactions. A Great Shout is a specific phrase voiced for a particular situation that demands it be shouted so that the moment is not only described but requisite reaction understood: “Stop the presses!”

“Fire in the hole!” is perhaps the greatest of the Great Shouts. It relates the essence of the situation and leaves it to you to decide within the next second or three, how you should react.

“Timberrr!” is likewise a Great Shout. If you are in the woods and hear it with enough volume to know it may affect your actions in the next few seconds, you will cast your glance rapidly around you. “Timberrr!” shows the economy with words Great Shouts possess. A kind of genius, really. It’s pretty easy to imagine how “Stop the presses!” originated. Two editors probably looked at each other and said, with shock showing in their eyes, “My God, Fred, we’ve got to stop the presses.” They probably marched back to the press room, found the foreman, and -- with presses roaring in the background -- each issue coming off adding to their sweat -- said to the foreman who bent his ear close so as to understand what they were saying, “Bob, we’ve got to stop the presses.” Bob probably said, “What?” At which point one or both of the editors yelled at the top of their lungs, “Stop the presses!”

How did “Timberrr!” arise? “Tree about to fall!” must have died an early death. “Falling tree!” is beneath the dignity of any lumberjack. Some spark of insight realized that the act of cutting the tree, its falling to earth, was making it into timber and so a new Great Shout rang forth in the forests.

“Timberrr!” is in the warning category of Great Shouts. I don’t think “Heads up!” is a Great Shout, although when yelled by a gym teacher will bring attention from his young charges. War, however, has given us some forceful warning Great Shouts. “Hit the deck!” for example. But since economy of words is the hallmark of a Great Shout, “Incoming!” from the Vietnam War is a beaut. It really says it all. You can’t beat “Dive! Dive!” when accompanied by klaxons for romance, although “Bogey at three o’clock!” isn’t bad. Perhaps the oldest Great Shout from war is simply “Charge!” And it will still give order and direction to a gang of boys in a snowball fight. “Hey Rube!” accomplished the same thing for circus workers.

I can’t think of any Great Shouts from the entire arena of sports, which is filled with yelling. Baseball has many Great Silences, for example when you wait to see if a ball will make it out of the park. “Going...(silence)...Going...(silence)...Gone!”

Great Shouts cut through to the essence of communication. If you were on board a ship and heard “Man overboard!” you would help pass the cry forward to the helm without correcting to “Person overboard!” “Thar she blows!” culminated days and weeks of searching for whales. After months on the water, “Land ho!” must have been a beautiful Great Shout to hear.

Yes, the publisher the next day at that newspaper had some of his shouts of his own for me for having to stop those presses, but none of which I judged to be great.