03-16-2010/03-22-2010 STAR REPORTERS FIRING BACK AT HEARNE Former Kansas City Star gossip columnist Hearne Christopher recently decided to do a daily review of his former employer on his KCConfidential.com blog (LINK). Christopher was not particularly liked when he worked at the Star by his co-workers who felt he was not a real journalist. But his daily critique has made many of them furious with him. Even some folks who are employed by him as writers for his site question the logic of picking on his former employer. They feel he often comes across as petty and vindictive. His poking of Star TV critic Aaron Barnhart (3/16) for reportedly ignoring the recent death of radio icon Richard Fatherley (Link) drew a quick and sharp response (above) by Barnhart. In all fairness, at least Christopher ran Barnhart's remarks, which in the past would have quickly disappeared from his site. "Hey, Aaron such thin skin, dude, I’m not reading or reviewing TV Barn in case you forgot," replied Christopher, who quickly took a shot at Barnhart's TVBarn site. "Come to think of it, who is reading TV Barn?" "Hearne critiquing reporters' accuracy is like Tiger Woods saying he is going to follow Mother Teresa around to write down her sins," wrote one Star reporter recently to Bottom Line. Ironically, another Star staffer told Bottom Line that Christopher was the only reporter at the Star who had to attend a special class on reporting errors---twice. Although he made frequent errors, according to former co-workers, he would rarely do corrections as required by the newspaper. "Hearne didn't even do a correction when he quoted a woman saying she had been 'polishing silver for 9 months,'" noted another former Star co-worker. "Wouldn't you have at least asked a follow-up question?" "But Hearne printed it and what she really said was she had been 'clean and sober for 9 months.'" Another reporter pointed out the classic error where Christopher wrote in his column that Buck Buchanan was responsible for landscaping operations in Kansas City. That news stunned readers since the former KC Chief had been dead since 1992.
SUN DROPS HEARNE COLUMN Journalists were somewhat stunned when Christopher was hired to write a gossip column for Sun Publications. At first his column appeared on his site several days before the newspaper came out. That was then corrected, but then it was dropped from the Sun's Johnson County editions. And, now, his job as Sun columnist has officially ended. Steve Rose of the Sun said the official reason was due to "budget cuts."
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