Doug Davis, Lamar Democrat publisher for the past 30 years and owner of the newspaper for the past 26, was inducted into the Missouri Press Association Newspaper Hall of Fame Saturday.
For those who are too young to remember, Davis came to Lamar at a time when the Democrat was just about to go out of business thanks to mishandling by the previous publisher and his editor. Were it not for the decisions Davis made during those first few months in Lamar, the city would not have had a newspaper go help it get through the bleak days after the closing of the city's biggest employer, O'Sullivan Industries.
Even more importantly, it would not have a source to read about the staples of community journalism- deaths, births, weddings, engagementts,anniversaries, and news of how the taxpayers' money is being spent.
In my 2009 book, Newspaper Days, I wrote the following about Doug Davis' early days at the Democrat:
The Lamar Democrat I returned to in November 1982 was a far cry from the newspaper I remembered from three years earlier when I was still working for the company at the Lockwood Luminary-Golden City Herald.
It took me a while to get filled in on what had happened during the three years I was gone,but there was no doubt the best thing that could have happened to me was losing out to Dave Farnham for the editor position. (Actually, Tommy Wilson never even considered me for it.)
The Wilson-Farnham team was a nightmare for the Democrat and for the city of Lamar. Almost immediately after he was hired, Farnham began to take on city government and the establishment in Lamar.Not that there was anything wrong with that. The Lamar Democrat had a rich history of going after the truth dating back to the era from 1900 to 1972 when Arthur Aull and his daughter, Madeleine Aull VanHafften, had published the newspaper.
Farnham, with Wilson's blessing, however, was relentlessly negative, to the point of not offering coverage of the many positive things that were going on in the city.
Things got so bad that a group of businessmen, led by Dan Arnold, owner of the Lamar Supermarket, the Democrat's biggest advertiser, convinced a man named Jim Peters from Arnold's home town, Butler, to start a shopper, similar to the XChanger, one he started in that town which eventually drove the Butler newspaper out of business.
That was not the intent of the Lamar businessmen, who realized the need fora newspaper in a thriving community, but the fortunes of the Lamar Democrat sunk immediately after Jim Peters started XChanger 2.
All of the Lamar Supermarket advertising, which had taken up two to four full pages in the Democrat each week, was relocated to the shopper. Other businesses followed suit and soon, revenues were plummeting for the Democrat.
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In some corners, the Lamar Democrat has come to be taken for granted over the years, but as other towns that have lost their newspapers have discovered, a community newspaper that is truly serving the community is an irreplaceable treasure.
Thanks to Doug Davis, Lamar is not one of those communities that no longer has that valuable resource. Congratulations to Doug on a richly deserved honor.
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