1972 and it
was my first day at work for the Kansas City Star. No,
I would
never be another cub reporter like Ernest Hemmingway.
But as I sat
in my car before making my grand entrance, Roger
Miller sang
on the radio, Kansas City star that’s what I are. Surely,
that must be
some kind of revelatory omen for me, I thought.
I certainly
did not qualify as a journalist of any kind, but I had
apparently
done well enough on my previous interview with
Dean Lanning
and Dick Sees to sell display advertising. I was
reminded of
a Wizard of Id cartoon I had seen in
the Sunday
paper—One
medieval gent asked another more shabby-looking
fellow, “What
are your qualifications for a job?” (Both were
standing in
front of a barn or stable.) The unkempt fellow re-
sponded: “I
worked in advertising sales.” The proprietor hand-
ed him a shovel
and said, “You’re hired.” Granted advertising
may be in
some ways be considered on a par with poop-scoop-
ing or even
shady used car sales, but I did get to wear a sport
coat and
tie, and it did pay the bills.
I was
assigned to the Eastern Zone advertising section of the paper
Which
published weekly in the Thursday edition of the paper. My
territory
covered all of Jackson County. I became very familiar with
Kansas City,
Independence, Raytown, Grandview and Lee’s Summit.
And as fate
would have it, my client base primarily consisted of area
car dealerships
which was akin to me selling ice cubes to Eskimos.
Most auto
dealerships, though, preferred radio and television adver-
tising where
they could show off their more tacky, self-aggrandizing
approach to
advertising.
Oh, there
were the mom and pop retail stores like Zeke’s Paint
and
Wallpaper, McHenry’s Appliance, Noah’s Pets, and too, a
smattering of
strip malls thrown in for good measure. But on
the whole, zone
advertising was a hard sell to businesses who
had very
little desire or budget for extravagances such as news-
paper display
ads. All the big boys like Hallmark Cards, Stuart
Hall
Stationary, Russell Stover Candies, Western Auto, Macy’s
and Commerce
Banks were assigned to Corporate Sales. Over
in that
department, they were more pick-up and delivery mi-
nions rather
than true-blue hardcore salespeople.
You may be
asking yourself what is this piece I have written all
about,
anyway? Do I have a point to make, or is this just another
flagrant way
of dropping famous Kansas City
names? A little of
both, I
suppose. Most everyone from our fair city likes to hear
those tried
and true names from the past. I can say this, my ad-
vertising
sales job for the Kansas City Star lasted all of six-months
before I
threw in the towel. I believe Ernest Hemmingway stuck
out his
cub-reporter job for about a year. At the time, newspapers
were all the
rage for information dissemination. The heyday con-
tinued to
some extent through my tenure in the 1970s. Today,
however,
newspaper sales and home deliveries are pretty much
a thing of
the past.
Roger Miller
and Ernest Hemingway are dead; and I feel compelled to
relate to
you that which Mark Twain once told a reporter, “And I’m not
feeling all
that well myself.”
Chris
Hanch 10-9-15
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