As regular readers of The Turner Report know, one of the subjects to which I return time after time is the way our local newspapers treat the deaths of well-known people.
The Springfield News-Leader ran a fine article about the death of Joplin musician "Don "The Entertainer" Clements today. Mr. Clements was a fixture at Joplin and area nightspots almost right up until his death. Maybe I just missed it in the Monday Joplin Globe, but I sure didn't see any article about Mr. Clements in today's paper. And since the Monday Globe death notices on the website don't include one for Mr. Clements, that would seem to indicate there were not any stories in the print edition.
The Globe did run an obituary today which was paid for by the family.
How difficult would it have been for The Globe to have run something similar to what the News-Leader ran. For example:
"Don Clements — a talented, self-taught musician from Joplin who billed himself as The Entertainer — succumbed to cancer Sunday night. He was 65."
A little more from News-Leader staff writer Matt Wagner's article:
Clements played his first gig at Jim Bowen's bar in Joplin when he was 15, said Genene Clements, his wife of eight years and longtime friend. "He was walking by the bar and heard a guy singing, and he told his brother, 'Well, hell, we sing better than that,'" Genene said with a chuckle Monday.
A nice article in The Globe would probably have been a comfort to his daughter, Shyla, who herself has been suffering from cancer during recent months.
Funeral services for Mr. Clements will be at 1 p.m. Wednesday at the Joplin Elks Lodge, 1802 W. 26th St. Burial will follow at the Osborne Memorial Cemetery.