Longtime Carthage Press employee Ron Graber continued his climb up the corporate ladder yesterday, I have been told. It was announced in the Tuesday Press that Ron, who has been with the newspaper since August 1992, has been promoted to general manager.
I have not seen the article, but I assume that he will continue to serve as the Press managing editor, similar to the dual position that Buzz Ball holds at the Neosho Daily News, another Liberty Group Publishing newspaper.
I had the pleasure of working with Ron for nearly seven years and watched him grow, through hard work, from a staff photographer (who won two of the three Missouri Press Association categories in his first year out of MU School of Journalism) to an award-winning investigative reporter (for his work on uncovering the sordid history of Lamar con artist Patrick Graham.
Ron's connection with the Graham story was interesting, in that before Graham brought his shell game to Lamar and ripped off hundreds of investors, including singer Pat Boone, and the owner of Silver Dollar City, in a fake AIDS vaccine scam, he fleeced investors in the small town of Freeman, S. D....Ron Graber's home town. Ron had the rare opportunity to become a hometown hero while working for a newspaper hundreds of miles away.
One underappreciated quality of Ron's has been the literate style he brought to the writing of headlines, an important, but mostly overlooked part of newspaper journalism. My favorite was an ice storm hit the Carthage area a few years back. Only Ron Grober could harken back to the late, great playwright Eugene O'Neill and come up with the headline, "Man, the ice cometh."
Congratulations, Ron.
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The Globe this morning reported on Cable One's move to put two new stations in the spots previously held by KODE and KSNF. Soapnet and the Hallmark Channel are on this week, to be followed by previews of other stations on Cable One's digital network.
If Cable One is smart, it will continue to keep the two that are presently on. One of the biggest groups affected by the removal of the Joplin stations from Cable One has been soap opera watchers. A quick check of Soapnet's schedule shows that the network shows same-day viewings of all three soop operas that KODE has, "All My Children," "One Life to Live," and "General Hospital," as well as the top-rated soap opera "Days of Our Lives" from NBC. This network would offer one more weapon in Cable One's arsenal.
In addition, the Hallmark Channel is a far more family-friendly station than ABC Family, which is offered on Cable One's programming list.
The Globe indicated that The Golf Channel will be given a preview. Maybe I am wrong, but I don't expect that to make much of a difference.
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Enesco Group has named a new CEO Cynthia Passmore-McLaughlin to try to get the company back on track. As reported this week in The Turner Report, sales of Enesco's top-brand, the Precious Moments collectibles has dropped 14 percent in the past three years. The collectibles have played a big part in the increase of tourism to the Carthage area, thanks to former Carthage resident Sam Butcher's creation of the Precious Moments Chapel and complex.
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State Representative Kevin Wilson, R-Neosho's latest article gives an idea of where his priorities lie. This quote was taken from the article:
"The key agenda items that are facing us immediately are tort teform, Worker’s Comp reform and coming up with a new formula for funding of our public schools. These are huge issues with far-reaching effects and it is vital that we attack these problems with a spirit of cooperation and bi-partisanship that must transcend party lines and geographical differences."
I would hope that Rep. Wilson would place education first, but it looks like Wilson, like many of his Republican colleagues, wants to put the interests of wealthy business owners first.
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A proposal for a new junior high will be on the agenda when the Carthage R-9 Board of Education meets 7 p.m. Monday, Jan. 17, at the Fairview Elementary School multi-purpose room. The board is also scheduled to discuss the capital improvement five-year plan.
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Lamarmo.com features information that several more O'Sullivan Industries employees with local connections have lost their jobs.
Posters on the website are saying that Stuart Schotte, Cindy Clements, David Pittman & Tom Tirdil were fired, while Tim Riegel and Jason Stansberry have resigned.
Every last vestige of Lamar is being removed from the company's upper echelon. It would be nice if The Lamar Democrat would recognize this and write about what has been the most important news story in the Lamar area for the past year. A great disservice has been done to the memory of O'Sullivan Industries founder Tom O'Sullivan, not only by the new management of O'Sullivan from its plush new corporate offices in Atlanta, but also by the local Lamar newspaper.