The Star shares progress, acknowledges more to do since ‘Truth in Black and White’

After publishing the project “The Truth in Black and

White,” The Kansas City Star made a commitment: To fully engage with and better cover our city’s Black communities.

The goal was to take that December 2020 apology acknowledging decades of failed coverage and turn it into real, measurable action.

We promised internal and external changes. Our hope was — and is — that we could build a more honest and trusting relationship with Black Kansas Citians and other historically underrepresented residents in time.

Three years later, we want to share our progress, while acknowledging there’s much more work to do, particularly with news coverage and community engagement.

For the first time in the history of The Star, in the summer of 2023, we hired Black journalists into two of the top three newsroom management positions. Executive Editor Greg Farmer made the appointments with the purpose of building an experienced leadership team that reflects the diversity of all of Kansas City and can help The Star expand its reach.

Andale Gross was named managing editor to lead the day-to-day news operations for our team of nearly 70 journalists. It was a full-circle moment for Gross, a Moberly, Missouri, native whose first job after graduating from the University of Missouri-Columbia was with

The Star as an education reporter.

Yvette Walker was named vice president and editorial page editor. She had been assistant dean at the Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Oklahoma and a director of news and custom publications for The Oklahoman and newsok.com. She, too, returned to The Star, where she had been a news editor and a former readers’ representative before she left for Oklahoma City.

Two other Black journalists were elevated to key management roles. In January of 2023,