Questions people have been asking me (and a few answers)

People have been asking me questions about a number of wide-ranging topics over the past few weeks. I thought this might be a good opportunity to answer some of them.

1. Will the Joplin Blasters succeed?

Joplin has always been a baseball town. That being said, if the Blasters are going to succeed, they are going to have to do it with business from Joplin and the immediately surrounding area. People who live closer to Springfield are going to watch the Cardinals and some others might, too.

Consider that during the past week Springfield fans have had a chance to watch two established St. Louis Cardinals, Jason Motte and Jaime Garcia, on rehab assignments and every night they are watching a group of players which will have some graduates to the Cardinals, and make no mistake about it, this area is St. Louis Cardinals territory.

 A reasonably priced entertainment alternative for Joplin has a fighting chance, especially if the Blasters management finds ways to connect both to the younger generation and the people who remember the glory days of Joplin baseball.

2. How long will C. J. Huff remain as Joplin's superintendent?

People have made the mistake of comparing C. J. Huff to Mark Rohr. There is no comparison. Rohr had (and still has) a solid core of supporters in Joplin. There is no similar support network for C. J. Huff.  He is surrounded by upper administration personnel whose loyalty was to former Assistant Superintendent Angie Besendorfer. He is not highly regarded by area superintendents, and his only base of support in Joplin appears to be from the churches and religious organizations he brought into the schools through his Bright Futures program.

The name C. J. Huff has become a joke in Joplin. His resume is out there and some school board will love the opportunity to allow the hero of the Joplin Tornado to bankrupt its district. It would shock me if he is still here when the 2015-2016 school year begins and I would not be surprised to see him leave much sooner.

Why Do You Write About Teachers' Arrests After What Happened to You?

I am running a news operation and people are interested in these stories and they should be. Teachers have great influence on young lives and when there are accusations of an abuse of that trust it is news.

When you are talking about cases like those of Carrie Njoroge in Webb City and Janice Rusk in Jasper, you are talking about educators who have had charges filed against them by the Jasper County Prosecuting Attorney's office. My situation was entirely different.

The charges against me never even came close to being of a criminal nature. C. J. Huff's administrators, Tina Smith and Klista Rader, both made insinuations that I had committed some crime. C. J. Huff added to that by saying that the information had been turned over to the Cyber Crimes Task Force and the FBI. For a long time after my hearing, I kept wondering when the police were going to knock on my door (and why they would be knocking on my door for writing No Child Left Alive).

It wasn't until later when I went through documents that had been presented to my lawyer during the discovery process, that I realized C. J. Huff was taking a small incident that had nothing to do with me and making it sound like my arrest was only a few days down the line. Someone had left a message on the East Middle School PTO page paraphrasing the tagline from No Child Left Alive and saying "If the shooter doesn't get them, the East Middle School Administration will."  Dan Wilson, an officer with the EMS PTO at that time, took the message down and told EMS Principal Bud Sexson that he thought it was posted by someone who wanted to make trouble for me. Sexson was furious that Wilson had removed the message, but still had East placed on lockdown, and did call in the Joplin Police Department, the Cyber Crimes Task Force, and the FBI to check out this "threat." Then C. J. Huff used that information (without noting that it had nothing to do with me) as part of his tearful testimony.

Bad teachers should be removed from the classroom. I will publicize any teacher or school official who has criminal charges filed against him or her. I will also write about bad administrators who run hundreds of teachers, mostly good ones, out of a school district.

How Are Your Blogs Doing?

Much better than I had anticipated. The Turner Report consistently has 4,000 to 5,000 visitors a day and when there is a major news story that readers are interested in, it has gone up to as much as 15,000. Inside Joplin started at about 400 to 500 a day and is now up to 1,000 to 1,200.

The other blogs have seen increasing readership with a recent uptick for Inside the Ozarks after I increased the Springfield news content and Room 210 Education.

The Turner Resports has been steady with a few hundred every day.

The one that has been the most pleasant surprise is Inside Joplin Obituaries. I have always said that people have resented newspapers ever since they started charging for obituaries and leaving out the life stories of those who could not afford to pay or who were not willing to pay.

Are You Actually Making Money Doing This?

Not as much as I would like, but combined with my much smaller than it should have been pension, I am hanging in there. The advertising money has been increasing every month, I have had a few more subscribers each month, and the books, especially the e-books, have been selling steadily. Could I use more subscribers- sure? I expect that to happen as more people find out that someone with more than three decades of news experience is putting out an ever-increasing amount of news, including news that cannot be found elsewhere.