I normally find the so-called "Progress" editions of newspapers to be boring, useless, and primarily designed for generating advertising during the slow winter season.
The Lamar Democrat's most recent "Progress" edition, on the other hand, is a fascinating document, both in what it says and what it doesn't say.
Unbelievably, the paper devotes one full page to a story on Taylor Quarries in Lockwood, complete with color photos, but only devotes one small story to anything from the Lamar R-1 School District.
In the past, high school writers turned out stories about all of the good things that are happening in the school district. Apparently, the lack of stories must be due to one of three things:
1. Nothing progressive is going on in the Lamar R-1 School District. I am pretty much inclined to discount this one, since I have known and worked with many of the teachers in the district for years.
2. The Lamar Democrat no longer covers the school unless someone brings in material, and then only if there is enough room left over after the Greenfield articles are published.
3. No one at the school will work with the Democrat because of its coverage over the past few years.
I suppose there are other possibilities. Maybe someone from the school missed a deadline or maybe more material will be featured later, but this "Progress" edition did include a "Health and Education" section.
The section features considerable material about Barton County Memorial Hospital, which has always been heavily covered by the newspaper (and rightfully so, it is the major health care provider, a large employer, and is partially taxpayer-funded). In fact, most of seven pages are devoted to the hospital.
The education portion of the section devotes more space to Lamar Head Start, the Arts Council of Barton County, Southwest Missouri State University, Missouri Southern State University and Crowder College than it does to the R-1 Schools.
The only Lamar R-1 story is headlined "Lamar East Primary School continues improvements." It is about four column inches, with a total of four paragraphs.
The Democrat Progress Issue used to always be filled with up-to-date information about the schools. More people are affected by the Lamar R-1 School District than anything else that was featured in the issue. The school district is a major employer, is supported by taxpayer funding, and last I remembered, one of the ways for a newspaper to be successful was to heavily cover schools and school activities.
Apparently, I have been out of the business too long.
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Besides coverage of the Lamar R-1 School District, the "Progress" issue also lacked a couple of features that had become staples over the years. One of them I was happy to see go, the other I will miss.
One of the things that people most looked forward to each year was the two-page spread with the babies that had been born to O'Sullivan Industries employees over the years. Apparently, either the company is not making enough money to buy two pages any more or it no longer cares about fostering the kind of community spirit that O'Sullivan stood for when Tom O'Sullivan and his family were in charge.
This year, the company had a rather generic one-page ad. It simply says, "50 years, O'Sullivan Industries, Inc. " Then repeats "O'Sullivan Industries, Inc. celebrates 50 years of progress in the furniture industry." Of course, the ad fails to mention that little of the progress, if any, can be credited to the people who are in charge now.
Also revealing was the article written by O'Sullivan official Rowland Geddie.
The article begins with a lengthy tribute to the late Tom O'Sullivan, concluding it by saying, "The company and the entire Lamar community will miss Mr. O'Sullivan."
Then immediately the article forgets the people who made the company a success and concentrates on the people who were brought in and pushed Mr. O'Sullivan's family out. It starts with the listing of officials, led by million-dollar CEO Bob Parker who came to Lamar from Newell Rubbermaid.
Let me correct that. They came to O'Sullivan Industries from Newell Rubbermaid. They never had any intention of coming to Lamar, at least not for long. "The board also decided that O'Sullivan would move its headquarters to the Atlanta area, feeling that a large metropolitan area would make the company more accessible to its customers and enable the company to attract a broader pool of talent for sales, marketing and management positions."
Then Geddie finally came out and said what I have been saying for a long time in The Turner Report. The decision to move Atlanta did not come because of that wonderful city's close proximity to O'Sullivan customers (though the tax breaks offered by the state of Georgia certainly didn't hurt). "The Atlanta area was selected because Parker, (Rick) Walters, and (Michael) Orr already resided in the area."
It's amazing that for one million dollars, the O'Sullivan board couldn't find an executive willing to move to Lamar. After all, I have noticed that Leggett & Platt doesn't have trouble finding people who are willing to live in Carthage (and Lamar doesn't even have that foul smell coming from ConAgra.)
The rest of Mr. Geddie's article explained how the company was still losing money, but moving the corporate headquarters to Atlanta and the wonderful things the new management team is doing are going to right the ship.
Also missing from the issue besides the O'Sullivan babies was the full-page ad the city of Lamar had always bought. I could never see how that kind of advertising could be justified to the taxpayers.
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Lamar can thank God for Thorco and Epoch, both of which received big writeups in the progress edition. On the surface, these appear to be solidly-run companies that are providing steady employment to many in the Lamar area.