Owner(s) | Institute for Nonprofit News [1] |
---|---|
Founder(s) | Ryan Sorrell |
Publisher | Ryan Sorrell |
Founded | July 2021 [2] |
City | Kansas City metropolitan area |
Country | United States |
Website | kansascitydefender |
The Kansas City Defender is a news outlet primarily by and for African-American youth, especially in the Kansas City metropolitan area and the Midwestern United States more generally. [1] They won the 2022 Community Engagement Award from Local Independent Online News (LION) Publishers for "engaging Black youth both in digital spaces, and real-life community events. Their stories on racism in schools sparked national coverage and conversations. [3] Among other things, they work to understand the differences between the different audiences on different social media platforms and how to tailor their content to maximize the engagement of those different audiences. [4]
Kansas City Defender founder and publisher, Ryan Sorrell, insists, "young people are not unreachable. They are very interested in news. It just has to be produced and packaged the right way for them to be interested in consuming it". [5] Defender community engagement efforts have included basketball park takeovers [2] and grocery buyouts. [6] Among other things, they speak directly to high school age youth, writing about them and their concerns and inviting them to contribute content. [7]
On September 23 (Friday), 2022, The Kansas City Defender published a video on TikTok claiming that Black women had been disappearing off Prospect Avenue (Kansas City, Missouri), and nothing was being done about it. [4] The following Monday the Kansas City, Missouri, Police Department said they had heard nothing about this. News outlets in Kansas City [8] and across the nation, including Newsweek [9] and the Atlanta Black Star , [10] chastised The Kansas City Defender for irresponsible journalism.
Two weeks later, before 8 AM October 7 (also a Friday), 2022, a woman began running around Excelsior Springs, Missouri, knocking on doors and crying for help. She said she had been held against her will, beaten, and sexually assaulted. She also said there had been other victims. [11] Police found the house in which the woman said she had been confined and staked out the place. An hour later, the owner, Timothy Haslett, Jr., returned and was arrested and subsequently charged with first-degree rape, first-degree kidnapping, and second-degree assault. [12]
Kansas City is the third-largest city in the U.S. state of Kansas, and the county seat of Wyandotte County. It is an inner suburb of the older and more populous Kansas City, Missouri, after which it is named. As of the 2020 census, the population of the city was 156,607, making it one of four principal cities in the Kansas City metropolitan area. It is situated at Kaw Point, the junction of the Missouri and Kansas rivers. It is part of a consolidated city-county government known as the "Unified Government". It is the location of the University of Kansas Medical Center and Kansas City Kansas Community College.
Dennis Lynn Rader is an American serial killer known as BTK, the BTK Strangler or the BTK Killer. Between 1974 and 1991, he killed ten people in Wichita and Park City, Kansas, and sent taunting letters to police and media outlets describing the details of his crimes. After a decade-long hiatus, Rader resumed sending letters in 2004, leading to his 2005 arrest and subsequent guilty plea. He is currently serving 10 consecutive life sentences at the El Dorado Correctional Facility.
Joseph Paul Franklin was an American neo-Nazi and serial killer who engaged in a murder spree spanning the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Robert Andrew Berdella Jr. was an American serial killer who kidnapped, raped, tortured, and murdered at least six young men after having forced his victims to endure periods of up to six weeks of captivity. His crimes took place in Kansas City, Missouri, between 1984 and 1987.
KSHB-TV is a television station in Kansas City, Missouri, United States, affiliated with NBC. It is owned by the E. W. Scripps Company alongside Lawrence, Kansas–licensed independent station KMCI-TV. Both stations share studios on Oak Street in southern Kansas City, Missouri, while KSHB-TV's transmitter is located at the Blue River Greenway in the city's Hillcrest section.
Lorenzo Jerome Gilyard, Jr., known as the Kansas City Strangler, is an American serial killer. A former trash-company supervisor, Gilyard is believed to have raped and murdered at least 13 women and girls from 1977 to 1993. He was convicted of six counts of murder on March 16, 2007.
Terry Anthony Blair is an American serial killer who was convicted of killing seven women of various ages in Kansas City, Missouri, though investigators believe he may have additional unidentified victims.
Chris Hernandez is an American former reporter for KSHB-TV in the Kansas City, Missouri metropolitan area and a current municipal official in Kansas City's Civil Rights and Equal Opportunity department.
The Kansas City Police Department (KCPD) is the principal law enforcement agency serving Kansas City, Missouri. Jackson County 16th Circuit Court Circuit Court Judge Jen Phillips swore in Stacey Graves as the 46th chief of police of the KCPD on December 15, 2022. Graves, who served as head of the KCPD's Shoal Creek Patrol Division, became the city's 46th police chief on December 15, 2022.
Leon Mercer Jordan was an African-American civil rights leader who served in the Missouri House of Representatives. Jordan was "one of the most influential African Americans in Kansas City's history" and, at the time of his assassination in 1970, the "state's most powerful black politician".
Stop The Killing KC is a community improvement organization in Kansas City, Missouri patterned after "stop the violence/stop the killing" movements in other large American cities, urged since 1985 by Minister Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam movement, and drawing on lessons learned in past decades by many other community improvement organizations such as urban development programs in various U.S. Cities and evangelical or social outreach programs of various churches, religions or groups.
Shawn Michael Grate is an American convicted serial killer, rapist, and former drifter who murdered five young women from 2006 to September 2016 in and around northern Ohio. Grate was convicted on two counts of aggravated murder on May 7, 2018, in Ashland County, pleaded guilty to two additional murders on March 1, 2019, in Richland County, and pleaded guilty to an additional murder on September 11, 2019, in Marion County.
The 2019 Kansas City mayoral election took place on June 18, 2019, to elect the next mayor of Kansas City, Missouri. The election was held concurrently with various other local elections, and was officially nonpartisan.
Quinton Donald Lucas is an American politician serving as the 55th mayor of Kansas City, Missouri. He was elected in 2019. He is affiliated with the Democratic party and is the city's third African-American mayor. Before his election, he was a law school professor, community leader, and city council member.
Tony Luetkemeyer is an attorney and the state senator for the 34th Senatorial District of the Missouri Senate, representing Buchanan and Platte Counties in Northwest Missouri. He is a member of the Republican Party.
This is a list of George Floyd protests in the U.S. state of Missouri.
The Beacon is a non-profit online news outlet in the Kansas City metropolitan area focusing on public-interest journalism. It is Kansas City’s first regional nonprofit news outlet that is not a public television or radio station.
On May 27, 2022, Leonna Hale, a 26-year old black woman, was shot five times by the Kansas City Police Department at a Family Dollar parking lot, in response to a suspected carjacking. She told officers she was pregnant before being shot.
Richard Anthony Grissom Jr. is an American serial killer who, over eight days in June 1989, murdered three young women in Johnson County, Kansas. Grissom, who years earlier had been imprisoned for killing his neighbor, was convicted of the three murders and sentenced to life in prison. The bodies of the women have never been found.