Categories: OLD Media Moves

Kansas City paper trims stock listings

The Kansas City Star has cut its stock listings once again, writes Chris Lester, assistant managing editor for business.

Lester wrote, “Most notably, our main stock and mutual fund tables are being trimmed from 1,000 stocks and 1,000 mutual funds to 500 stocks and 500 mutual funds. Weâ€™ve also compressed some fields in our regional stock table, our main stock tables and our commodity report.

“This is not the first time weâ€™ve changed our financial tables, and almost certainly not the last. For the better part of a decade now, weâ€™ve adjusted our tables intermittently to respond to declining readership of printed tables as growing numbers of readers track their investments online, and as the newspaper industry sought to save money on increasingly expensive newsprint.

“Sophisticated readers of business news understand the need to listen when market forces speak. That doesnâ€™t make change any easier.

“If I had my druthers, Iâ€™d be happy to print every stock, mutual fund and exchange traded fund under the sun. But the simple realities of declining readership of printed tables dictate that I donâ€™t.”

Read more here. Lester does note that readership of the business section is up.

The Star cuts its stock listings from 3,000 to 1,000 in 2006, and then changed the listed stocks last year.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.

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View Comments

Bernie Kohn says:
January 25, 2008 at 10:20 am
Chris's notes have always been a model of how to be straight with readers, and more of us should follow suit. He has never resorted to the discredited pablum that "we'll offer you better stocks information on our own web site," nor has he insulted readers by telling them that stocks information is no longer important to the printed product. If we want our best readers to stay with us through our painful changes, not trying to convince them this is good for them is a fine place to start.