Why do newspapers put out such lousy Monday editions?

The weakest edition the Joplin Globe puts out every week is its Monday offering. It has fewer pages, more AP content, and less of the kind of local reporting that the area's newspaper of record should have.

Of course, there are reasons for that. The Globe does not have as many reporters and editors working over the weekend. For the most part, you do not have the city council and school board meetings and many of the beats (like the county courthouse) are closed on Saturday and Sunday.

So the Globe offers a far weaker edition (at the same price, of course) than its other weekday issues.

Other area newspapers take an even worse approach, handling the reduced number of pages by eliminating the editorial page, which should be a staple in every edition of a daily newspaper.

Some, such as the Monett Times, have eliminated their Monday edition altogether, which is particularly sad since the Times does not have a Saturday or a Sunday newspaper.

The problem of the Monday edition is nothing new. When I was named managing editor of The Carthage Press in December 1993, we had the same difficulty. Our Monday editions were loaded with AP articles, had editorial pages with mostly syndicated content. One of my major goals was to beef up the Monday newspaper to the point where it was not The Carthage Press' weak link.

The first area I concentrated on was the editorial page. Marvin VanGilder was writing local editorials and I made sure that one of the local editorials was included in the Monday edition. I wrote columns about local events several days a week, and I made sure one of those columns ran on Mondays.

Monday was also the day for preview stories on school board meetings, city council meetings and anything else that might be going on Monday or Tuesday night. These would not just be a listing of agenda items, but often would explore one or two items in depth with quotes from elected officials or others who were involved with whatever the issue might be. At times, we were able to break stories through this method. When the city of Carthage was considering combining the police and fire departments into a Department of Public Safety, Ron Graber called every councilman and found no one was going to vote for it the next night, with most of them willing to go on the record. By breaking that story early, we eliminated the advantage the Globe and the local TV stations had over us because of our status as an afternoon newspaper.

If news occurred over the weekend, we offered extra photographic coverage. That paid off big time on events like area graduations, sporting activities, school carnivals, and events scheduled by local organizations.

When we had multi-part stories, and in-depth investigations, such as our examination of drunk driving in 1998, the first part always started on Monday.

On those few Mondays when we did not have a strong lineup, we set a mid-morning deadline and conducted a news scavenger hunt, with people calling sources, or calling for updates on stories we had previously run. On occasion, we were able to reveal major developments in ongoing stories through that process. (Of course, that could not be done today with the artificially early deadlines most afternoon newspapers have to go through, and obviously it would be out of the question for morning publications.)

Basically, I took the approach that readers should not have to suffer through one subpar edition per week.

So, though nobody asked me, here is my prescription to rescue the endangered Monday newspaper:

1. Offer a strong feature connected with something that is currently in the news, or is coming up during the following week. Don't worry about the length. One of the myths fostered by those saw USA Today as the wave of the future is that people will not read long articles. That is not the case. People will not read long, boring articles. Nor will they read short, boring articles. But offer a solid well-written feature and it will be read.

2. Make sure you have an editorial page and include at least one locally-written editorial, a staff column (preferably about something in the news and not an Erma Bombeck-like missive about the columnist's family or homelife) and have a regular column or guest column written by someone not connected with the newspaper. Keep it local. One of the biggest problems with the Joplin Globe's guest columnists and community bloggers is that they are writing about national stories, when those viewpoints are already widely available over the internet and on cable news programs. Include a local photo on the page which is connected to one of the features on the page.

3. Improve the sports pages by offering either a regular sports profile of an area athlete or coach, or a strongly-opinionated sports column. Please no more local sports columnists offering opinions about the St. Louis Cardinals, Kansas City Royals, MU or any other out-of-the-area subjects. The people who are reading The Carthage Press, for instance, want to read about Carthage and area sports. It is the same for those who read the Neosho Daily News or any other small, local newspaper. They want coverage of those teams, but not from their local sports reporter. A photo feature would also be well-received and can be done on such subjects as pee wee football, the fans in the stands, what goes on on the sidelines, etc.

4. Beef up the local page one coverage with preview stories (again, not a listing of agenda items) on upcoming governmental meetings). Perhaps interviews with people who are affected by potential governmental actions, rather than elected officials. With the kinds of issues that are discussed by school boards and city councils that should not be too hard to do. Many of the issues have been visited before, so offer a historical perspective, either with interviews or with information from back issues.

5. Make sure page one has either a photo (preferably more than one) from an event that occurred over the weekend, and if one is not available, have a strong feature photo in reserve. With the move to digital cameras, some editors and publishers are devaluing the work of photographers, and that is a mistake.

6. Keep a list of stories that have been done in the past and offer an update on one, whether it be a court case, something that happened one, five, 10 or 20 years ago that week, or just a story that at one time was important, but which faded out with time. Newspaper reporters and editors constantly make the mistake of thinking that since they have lost interest in stories, that the readers have, too. On the contrary, readers told me numerous times over the years that they appreciated the fact that the Press (or the Lamar Democrat when I was there) offered updates on stories instead of letting them drop off the face of the earth.

With the reduced size of newsroom staffs and the inclination to pour everything into coverage of major events (murders, disasters), many newspapers have been content to coast on days when major activities or not happening. That leaves them at the mercy of scheduled activities and spot news. That is a recipe for disaster, and that is what we see far too often in our area and regional newspapers.