First casualty claimed in Joplin newspaper battle

BusinessWatch, the publication started by the Joplin Globe to counter the creation of two business news competitors, is biting the dust.
The publication has been a miserable failure since its inception and the head honchoes at the Globe have decided to pull the plug, a reliable source has told The Turner Report.
Probably most Joplin readers did not realize the Globe had a business publication. It was started a few months back in response to the beginning of two business weeklies, Asay Publishing's Joplin Business Journal and Tri-State Business, a publication from the same company that owns the Springfield Business Journal.
BusinessWatch has been somewhat along the same lines as the Globe's weekly newspaper, the Joplin Herald. It was formed without a plan and with little to make the readers want to come back for more. In fact, the only message that the creation of these cannibalistic papers sent out was that the Globe was desperate to stave off competition, but lacked the creative mindset to know how to do it.
Readers learned from the creation of BusinessWatch and the Joplin Herald that Globe editors don't think there is enough room in the parent newspaper to cover Joplin news or business news. At least that was the message sent by the editors and especially by Publisher Dan Chiodo in his column introducing the Herald.
Then after a few weeks of feeble attempts to offer at least some new content in these niche publications, they became more or less harbors for reprints of Globe articles (especially in the Herald) and a place for features that never should have been created in the first place (consider BusinessWatch's Wal-Mart Watch column).
Though the Globe's chief print competitor, the Joplin Daily, has come nowhere near to living up to its potential, if GateHouse Media is patient, it has every opportunity to succeed. The people who are running the Globe have no idea how to meet competition.
Now if GateHouse had been smart enough to combine the resources of the Joplin Daily, Carthage Press, Neosho Daily, and Big Nickel and start a regional Sunday newspaper with some actual meat in it, the Globe might really be in trouble. And who knows, that may happen sometime in the near future.