After laying off staffers and basically abandoning its coverage of the entire Johnson County area, the Kansas City Star had one of its leading columnists breathlessly announce that the newspaper will now have a special area on its Web site devoted strictly to Johnson County. The initial offering featured a photo of an animal rights activist holding the head of a deer. Star JOCO columnist Mike Hendricks, who was relegated to part-time status last year at the paper, was given the unenviable task of announcing "GoJoCo" in a story headlined "WE'RE NOT GOING LOCO, WE'RE GOING LOCAL." "We hope you like our new online offering, a Web destination (if you don’t mind me getting all techy on you) that focuses keenly on news and happenings within the metro area’s most affluent and second most populous county," wrote Hendricks. "Think of it as your one-stop info shop for all things Johnson County within the larger KansasCity.com site." Several years ago the Star opened a major news bureau in Overland Park to cover the Johnson County area. Over time the bureau was reduced to a handful of staffers as its competitors at Sun Publications expanded. And now the Star hopes an area on its Web site will show its latest commitment to Johnson County. Good luck.
02-18-2010 AGREE ON THIS ONE "I dont always agree with what you say and sometimes think you are way off base...but I totally agree with the new joco website..they have always had a joco "section" on their site but having this "new" area is pretty lame. "As you said in your post they had their joco offices, but closed it down and moved their offices into The Olathe News building and rearranged everyone in there. They cut their staff on both sides (Star & O.N.) and expect to still be a prominent news source. "The respective staffs used to try and scoop each other while helping out as well at times but now they are one staff putting out the same material for the Star's neighborhood news and The Olathe News edition while the readers have suffered."
SUN HAS EXPANDED? "Where is the evidence that Sun Publications has "expanded"? It has gone from twice a week to once a week, and offers fewer articles than it did before Rose sold it."
MISSED MARK "You're way off on your comment about The Star cutting back "as its competitors at Sun Publications expanded." Like everyone else, you know why the cutbacks occurred: The bottom (line) fell out of the newspaper business."
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