C. J. Huff Administration writing stories for Joplin Globe

When I was editor of the Carthage Press, a fad was beginning to sweep across newspapers that I absolutely hated and would never follow.

The Joplin Globe, on the other hand, was one of the first to start putting the byline "From Staff Reports" on its stories and that is, and always has been, an outright lie.

If it says ":From Staff Reports," that means it is a news release, often run as submitted and the only staff contribution is typing it, scanning it, or in this day and age, copying and pasting it.

If you examine page one of today's Joplin Globe, you will see such a story- a preview of tonight's Joplin R-8 Board of Education meeting. It reads like a news release because that is exactly what it is, including quotes that come from Superintendent C. J. Huff.

The story focuses on the construction of the new high school, the same focus that occurred this morning on KODE's Good Morning Four States when Huff was interviewed for eight minutes and the topics of the state audit and the budget never came up.

The budget is never mentioned until what appears to be the final paragraph of the news release, the last of a number of bullet points about things that are scheduled to take place tonight:

Finalize the budget for the coming school year and receive an audit update.

That's it. That is all the Huff Administration wanted mentioned about the budget and audit.

To its credit, the Globe appears to have stepped in at that point and added some background from its coverage of the audit, which again notes that Huff asked for the audit and that it has long been anticipated.

Public relations for the Joplin R-8 School District is handled by Kelli Price, who was a former marketing manager at the Globe and was close to Globe Editor Carol Stark, who reportedly recommended her highly for the position.

The budget, of course, is a contentious issue because of its meager raises for teachers and staff, which comes to about $1 to $3 a week after the higher cost of health insurance, which R-8 CFO Paul Barr blames on Obamacare in his budget message. The budget also recommended the recent practice of not giving teachers the steps they have earned on the district pay schedule.

And all of this, of course, comes just one month after Barr revealed that the district needed to hire an adviser to seek long-term financing because it had spent $8 million in "might as well" money, for such items as lighting for all athletic fields, artificial turf for all athletic fields, doubling the number of tennis courts, and building a track at the high school so the athletes would not have to travel to Junge Stadium.

At this point, the Turner Report has been the only media source to mention this. Of course, it helps that I actually read the budget and have written about the "might as well" list, two things that cannot be said for the Joplin Globe.