Ink's hatchet job on Nick Wright simply wrong

I'm no fan of Nick Wright but the hatchet job done by Kansas City Star writer dugan arnett on the 610 Radio sports talker is unconscionable.

No wonder the Star casts dugan arnett's byline in lower case.

That, of course, is supposed to make it look hip. It has to look hip because it runs in the Star's transparently feeble attempt to look hip called Ink magazine. Any parent and most teachers know you don't reach young people by trying to talk or look like them.

If you reach them at all, it is because you find out what they want to know, and what they need to know, and you provide it to them honestly. You don't reach them by condensation, pandering, or all lower case bylines.

The theory today is that you reach the Internet generation by writing very brief, no-holds-barred, crude and rude copy. Now, if that is not an insulting idea, I don't know what is. arnett's piece fulfills all of those criteria except brevity. Tom Wolfe would be proud.

Well, maybe not.

Are there no editors left at the Star?

At some point after the Star directed readers to the Ink link, they decided to include an explicit language warning. That's appropriate, but it doesn't identify what is actually offensive about this story. It is, in fact, offensive because it is needlessly small minded, mean spirited, and shallow, and because it is a transparent attempt to look hip. Hipper than hip, quoth Tower of Power.

Good for the goose; good for the gander, you say?

Not necessarily. Good journalists strive to be better than the people they sometimes write about. It's called class.

--Lofflin