More Star Journos Gone

By The Pitch Staff

Just three days ago, on September 14, The Kansas City Star boasted about its Gold Cup award in the Missouri Press Association’s annual contest:

For the 14th time in the last 15 years, The Kansas City Star was the top finisher in the Missouri Press Association’s Better Newspaper Contest.

The Star won the Gold Cup sweepstakes award, which is given to the newspaper with the most points overall in the annual journalism contest.

The Star won first-place awards in 17 categories for the state’s largest newspapers, including the General Excellence award.

The awards were presented Saturday at the Missouri Press Association’s convention in Columbia…

The newspaper also won firsts for best news content, best special section and best page design, and the staff of FYI won first in the best news or feature series category for stories about the “stuff” that people collect.

The Star’s second-place awards included best local business coverage and best ad idea or promotion for the newspaper.

By the time those awards were announced, though, several of the reporters who’d contributed to that Gold Cup were already lost to the McClatchy Company’s cost-cutting efforts. Gone were Paul Wenske (first place for best business story), Melodee Blobaum (who shared her first place for best education story with Joe Robertson), Jeff Spivak (who won second place with Lynn Horsley for best coverage of government) and Kevin Murphy (honorable mention for news story).

Now, word is trickling in about today’s bloodbath. This round of layoffs is worse than the previous one. “It feels like a sniper’s inside the building,” one source says from inside 18th and Grand.