A few thoughts about Jim Burrows

I discovered belatedly Sunday that Jim Burrows, the former courthouse reporter for the Neosho Daily News, died last week at age 59.
I first met Jim more than 20 years ago when he was working as a photographer for the Daily and I was working at the Lamar Democrat.
The articles and columns in last week's Neosho Daily News about Jim's death, rightly stressed his ability as a photographer, but he definitely made a mark during his days covering the courthouse.

While I was at The Carthage Press, I had the opportunity to work with Jim after American Publishing, the owner of the Daily, bought our newspaper. Though Jim was never a polished writer, the amount of information he had at his disposal was incredible, and his filing system was legendary.

As someone who has read nearly every issue of the Neosho Daily News for the past four and a half decades, I can tell you that, while there have been other fine reporters handling courthouse coverage, none were ever quite as thorough as Jim Burrows.

Occasionally, Jim gave readers far more details than they needed, but in this day and age when so many newspapers have scrapped governmental coverage to improve the bottom line, reporters who provide some meat and potatoes to go with all of the fluff are sorely missed.