The Joplin Globe's recent experiment of having Rachel Kubicek write a sports column is symbolic of one of the biggest hurdles the newspaper has faced in recent years...It simply has not developed any columnist, other than Editor Ed Simpson's Sunday column that you look forward to reading.
The problem is not just the Globe's. The most recent issue of Columbia Journalism Review talked about the lack of columnists who are strongly associated with their communities, people of the stature of the late Mike Royko of the Chicago Tribune, the late Herb Caen of the San Francisco Chronicle, or Mike Barnicle, the plagiarist who used to occupy a regular spot on the Boston Globe.
Strong sports columnists are not quite as difficult to find. Missouri has some of the best, including Joe Posnanski and Jason Whitlock of the Kansas City Star, and Bernie Miklasz and Rick Hummel of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Since the death of Gary Garton, that lack of signature columnists has become more evident in the Globe. The newspaper does not have a sports columnist who can attract readers to the page. I read Jim Fryar's column when he writes about something in which I have interest; otherwise, I skip it.
The experiment of having Mike Pound write a daily column runs into the same problem as far as I am concerned. Pound provides a workmanlike effort, but his writing is not going to make me read what he has to say every day. Again, I am looking at the subject of his column, and if it is not something which I am familiar, I am headed elsewhere.
The Globe has had better luck with niche columnists, including the one who writes about genealogy (I'm sorry, her name escapes me at the moment) and the people who write movie reviews and items for the Friday entertainment section, but in the two sections in which a daily newspaper needs a strong columnist, the A section and sports, the Globe comes up woefully short.
With The Globe, the importance of finding local columnists is paramount, simply because there is a perceived disconnect with the community. With the exception of Simpson's columns concerning Joplin issues and the decision-making process within the Globe, there is a perception that the Globe is not in touch with its readers.
One quick example of that would be the stories the newspaper has featured in recent months about area fairs and events. Covering those events including the Newton, Jasper and Barton County fairs, Apple Days in Lamar, Barnyard Days, etc., is a great idea, but the resulting stories have read more like they were written by reporters who had no interest in doing the story, but that was their assignment so they were going to do it as fast as they could and hold their noses in the process.
Many of those stories appeared to be condescending toward the people who were involved in the events. That is not the way to build a local identity for a newspaper which definitely needs one.
I, of course, notice the coverage of education. When the Globe is covering a negative development, it is all over the story, and many times it should be; but when it comes to positive stories on education, it tends to rely on a cutesy approach that trivializes the good news.
Over the past several years, the Globe has made one effort after another to connect with the community, some have been successful, most have not. I was amused a few years back, when the newspaper started its own competing weekly, reviving the old Joplin News-Herald, to provide local Joplin coverage. It took Globe editors several months to remember one salient fact...they already had a newspaper to cover Joplin's local stories, the Joplin Globe.
The newspaper needs to find columnists who can provide a strong local connection. Find somebody who can write authoritatively about Joplin sports, whether it be a man or a woman. Find somebody who can write everyday or at least two or three times a week, about stories that concern the Joplin area. Signature columnists build a strong local identity for a newspaper and build readership.
If the Globe considers Mike Pound and Rachel Kubicek to be columnists in that mold; it's time to go back to the old drawing board.
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