Kraske - Hacktastic again
Steve Kraske, the Star's political news columnist, offers up this gem in today's paper:
It’s official: Mayor Mark Funkhouser admits he, too, has heard the talk of a mayoral recall stemming from the Frances Semler appointment.I swear that's the entire segment. Go ahead, follow the link and see if he explains why the fact that Funkhouser has heard of something that has been discussed in political circles, on blogs, and even in Kraske's freaking paper is news. (He doesn't.) Go ahead, follow the link and see if he explains why he's devoting space to a recall drive that he acknowledges doesn't even exist outside the imagination of a few crackpots, blowhards and joke bloggers. (He doesn't.)
No leader of such an effort is emerging, but reporters are on watch.
I have a scoop for Kraske. Political observers are talking about how worthless his column is, and wondering whether the Star ought to just get rid of it. Someone, someday, might circulate a petition asking that they ditch it. Nobody's actually doing it, but now that he's heard about it, it's worth putting in his column, isn't it?
Labels: blogging, journalism
posted by Dan at 10/14/2007 09:25:00 AM
5 Comments:
Well said, well said.
I remember a day when Kraske was a main player for the REAL scoop on what others were only speculating about....not so now.
Unfortunately the posse of reporters we have at The Star now are either trigger happy and shooting blanks OR they look for smoking guns from the "bad guys" so they can take a body count--any body count.
As someone who knows Mark, I can tell you that he gets wind of every little tittle of "crap" that is out there. But I can also say that he does not waste his valuable energy on "what ifs"---he is more of a "but for" person.
Quite frankly, I was shocked to read Kraske's official gem in the paper this a.m. I imagine he IS watching, as are the other reporters, for some little tabloidish tid-bit from some little gadfly buzzing in his ear. It becomes truth to minds easily titillated.
This is another example of media trying to create news that isn't there.
Somebody get Nutter on the Kraske Recall Petition, stat!
Well put indeed. There really are some big gaps at the Star. In the same paper, you have good scribes like Blair Kerkhoff, Rick Alm, and Mike Hendricks. Then you have slackers like Whitlock, DeAnne Smith and Osterholder. Once journalists get a taste of either radio or tv, it can definitely turn them into Tony Kornheiser.
I canceled my subscription last spring when they started stepping all over Greg Gordon's DoJ reporting to keep the spotlight of fecklessness off the MOGOP.
In fact, in my household, we started referring to the watering down of investigative journalism by the hacks at the star as "the full Kraske."
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