10-30-2009 STEVE ROSE: TIME FOR MEDIA TO SHOW RESPECT TO JOCO Steve Rose, Sun Publications publisher, has written an interesting column (10/28) that says maybe it is about time that the news media starts to focus on the growing area of Johnson County (KS) and not spend an inordinate amount of time examining the declining areas of KCMO and Jackson County. As one might expect, the column is a bit self-serving since his publication focuses almost solely on covering Johnson County. However, on the other hand, he points legitimate facts that the Kansas City Star is seemingly obsessed with KCMO. Rose notes some interesting facts to support his position: * If Johnson County continues its recent pace of job creation it will soon surpass Jackson County as the employment center of the metro area. * Jackson County had 304,000 jobs in 2008 while Johnson County was at 284,000; Johnson County is growing while Jackson is almost stagnant. * Johnson County's population of 550,000 far exceeds the 450,000 in KCMO; by 2020 Johnson is projected to surpass all of Jackson County. * The news media is obsessed with covering KCMO and Mayor Mark Funkhouser while virtually ignoring Overland Park Mayor Carl Gerlach (who is actually taller than Funk!). * Schools? Rose notes that the student population of KCMO is 17,000, which is dwarfed by Shawnee Mission or Olathe school systems, which both have about 27,000 students each. It is hard to dispute the information that Rose lays out in his column. Maybe the reason the Star continues to lose circulation is that the paper is focusing it coverage on declining areas where many subscribers have little or no interest rather than growing areas.
10-30-2009 STAR OUT OF TOUCH The base story behind Rose's article and yours, is the Star has been seriously out of touch with its readers for many years now. The liberal/left leaning stance has alienated a lot of area folks for a long time now. With the exception of Tom McClanahan, the staff who write for the Star are generally hostile to the values and philosophies of right-of-center readers. This includes a lot of JOCO folks. The days when they could get away with this because they were the only horse in the stall are over. There are too many alternatives for news to make the Star relevant or needed. I am one of those recent wave of subscription-canceling customers. The customer service/saleslady who called me later warned that I would miss getting the paper. You know what? I found to my surprise that I didn't. Then again, I really was not surprised. No longer was I paying for the irksome opinions of Kraske, Aboulhalka, Rhonda Chris Lokeman, Hendricks, Steve Penn, Mary Sanchez. I woke up one morning and hey! I felt better! No more masochistic subscription to a journalistic fraud. And yes, it is highly noticeable that Joco is neglected in its coverage. What do you expect when they assign Hendricks for the Joco column? --------Gary Foster Mission KS
TYPICAL ROSE
"It is so typical of Steve Rose that he compares Apples to Oranges and thinks he has made his point. Kansas City, MO is not a county. If he wants to compare Jackson County to Johnson County, then let's see how his comparison stand up.....Let me venture a guess.....They don't stand up at all, Steve Rose has had a long history of creating Strawmen Arguments and then knocking down the straw man he created and he thinks he has proven something..... And John, I thought you would have been the first to challenge his argument."
READ IT "Did the “Typical Rose” person even read the excerpts? The first three bullets are comparisons of Jackson and Johnson counties."
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