Congratulations to the Neosho Daily News for making the effort to give its readers a comprehensive look at the controversy surrounding the proposed Moark expansion.
In the first day of this week-long examination, the Daily made an effort to get officials' thoughts on the record. Neosho Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Gib Garrow's quote was priceless. "Agribusiness has always played one of the biggest roles in employment throughout Neosho and Newton County form dairy farms to cattle operations. Neosho is fortunate to have the industrial base we have with around 4,500 to 5,000 industrial related jobs in our area. Of those, one-third are in the agriculture related field." Well, sure, Gib. But what does that have to do with anything?
The first part deals almost equally with supporters of the expansion, opponents, and those who do not intend to take sides (or do not have the courage to do so).
I would suggest the Daily still needs to explain to readers how Editor Buzz Ball's initial trip to Roggen, Colo., to visit so-called state-of-the-art Moark facilities came about. Did Moark pay for the one-day jaunt to Colorado or did the Neosho Daily News foot the bill. Did the two companies share expenses.
It appears that for this series the Daily has made an effort to contact people from Roggen to find out just what effect the Moark facility has had on that community. That is good. But if new publisher Rick Rogers is going to make an impact with this (and believe me, this special series has the earmarks of a Rick Rogers project and not a Buzz Ball project), then he needs to take care of the mistakes that were made with Moark coverage in the past.
Ball's original story on Moark's Roggen facility read like a press release for the company and it was timed to coincide with the announcement of the proposed expansion. As part of this series, the Daily needs to tell the entire story about how that article came about. That would do a great deal to restore public confidence in the newspaper.
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