"A good weekly newspaper in Joplin could do a lot of damage to the Globe."
At that time, Farley asked me to come up with a news coverage plan for such a publication. My plan involved a heavy emphasis on community coverage, something that the Globe has always considered beneath it.
I am not talking about the kind of cookie-cutter features the Globe seems to prize to the extent of often pushing real news off page one. I am talking about blanket coverage of issues that affect Joplin.
All aspects of the player recognition and royalty coronations would have been included in those photos and there would have been interviews with the royalty. The issue before would have had a preview of the game, the ceremonies, and perhaps a feature about a JHS homecoming of 20 years earlier, complete with yearbook photos and interviews.
With the Globe, you get the game preview, the game story, and a posed photo of the royalty candidates taken several days before the event.
That is the difference between a community newspaper and a newspaper that considers itself to be above that kind of "small town" coverage.
The weekly would also have emphasized investigative reporting, strong columnists who could write about local issues, not a bunch of wannabes who want to write Fox News talking points or regale us with the latest misadventures of their families.
The challenger newspaper would have featured coverage of government at the city, county, and state levels, a generous helping of records material and feature coverage on the passing of people who were important to the community, often including people whose names would not be readily familiar
The project sounds like it would require a large staff, but that is not the case. During my years at the Press and at the Lamar Democrat, I learned how to make do with small staffs augmented with eager part-time college and high school reporters.I also learned how to hire the right people.
The same approach would work in Joplin, I told Farley and he wanted to give it a go. He was never able to get approval for the project.
The only challenger that ever emerged to the Globe was the flawed Joplin Daily in 2006 and the failure of that project after only one year has discouraged any other potential print competitor.
The Daily's original concept of having a weekly newspaper to lead into daily online coverage was a good one, but management never had any idea of how to sell the product and kept pushing it like it was an ordinary newspaper and despite the hard work Editor John Hacker put into it the publication never had a chance.
I thought about that conversation with Farley and that plan when I saw what the top Turner Report post for the month of June 2016 was.
Another suggestion I included in my Joplin weekly plan was regular coverage of area media. People were interested in what wass happening with the local television and radio stations and with the Joplin Globe. Today, that interest includes local websites and blogs.
Some of the best known people in this area are those who appear on our local TV news programs, and in the case of former KSN anchor Phillip Mitchell, the interest was even greater because he was one of the few local reporters who grew up in Joplin. His departure from KSN for other opportunities was the top post for June.
Joplin R-8 coverage continued to make the list with the announcement that JHS Principal Kerry Sachetta had been named assistant superintendent and the departure of Chief Operations Officer Tina Smith, as well as my "apology" for a post I had written about her also landing among the top posts.
Again, a brief pitch for the Turner Report/Inside Joplin- I do not want a cent from any reader who does not believe the posts on this blog, Inside Joplin, and Inside Joplin Obituaries have any value. If you do believe this news operation has value to you and to the community, please consider making a contribution, for any amount, or taking a subscription at the PayPal buttons below. If you would prefer not to use PayPal or a credit card, send your contribution to Randy Turner, 2306 E. 8th, Apt. G, Joplin, MO 64801.
The June 2016 Top 10 list, a couple of extras, and the links for the lists from January through May can be found below the PayPal buttons.
As always, thanks for reading.
You have no idea of how to run a "community newspaper" Turner. As proof of that, you were fired when you ran out of the tolerance of the community who made it clear to the owners of the paper that they were not going to pay money to read your lies. So they dumped you and all of the owners and managers blacklisted you to where you had to get into a new profession to be fired and blacklisted from.
ReplyDeleteYou really should move to a portion of the country where they don't know you as well.
Pretty much all of the newspapers face the same problem: They are run by idiots who think that they are smarter than their readers. Their readers migrate to places where they get their own confirmation biases confirmed on the Internet. People able to pay for newspaper subscriptions don't want to read newspapers any more.
Thus you are and will remain a mere blogger begging a small pool of fools for money to confirm their biases -- nothing more.
While most Americans can read, somewhat, they can't read well. And it is a minority of Americans who can think. What minority of locals that can read and think don't think much of you, Turner.
But you do write a good, tedious hate-fest against CJ Huff. Maybe you should rename your blog "The Huff-Haeting Post".
That has got to be the most ridiculous bunch of nonsense I have seen. Apparently, in this age of Donald Trump, the new trend is to just keep repeating nonsense and pretending it is fact. I was editor for several years in Carthage and in Lamar and there was no push to get rid of me by the community in either place. I left Lamar on my own and the Terry Reed lawsuit ended up costing me my job at Carthage.
ReplyDeleteThere was no blacklist that kept me from getting a newspaper job when I was fired at Carthage. I received my teaching degree in 1981, but wasn't able to get a teaching job at that time. I decided in 1999 I would give teaching a shot. When August 1999 arrived, I still did not have a teaching job, so I interviewed for managing editor positions at Siloam Springs and Miami. I was offered the job at Miami, but was able to get a teaching position at Diamond the same week, so I turned it down.
In 2003, when Diamond had a reduction in force (RIF) and cut three jobs, including mine, Randy Cope offered me a reporting position at the Neosho Daily News because he wanted me to work with his younger reporters on investigative reporting and do some myself. History repeated itself, when I turned down that job because I was hired to teach at Joplin South Middle School. And I remind you that the Neosho Daily News even then was owned by the same company as the Carthage Press- the same company that had fired me four years earlier.
I am far from being a perfect person, but I always gave my all at every job I had. I was a good reporter, a good editor, and a good classroom teacher. I earned a reputation as someone who showed up for work early every day, stayed late and did whatever I could to help my newspapers and my school districts succeed.
The readers and the taxpayers always got their money's worth from me and more.
As for community newspapers, they are still succeeding in communities where they are not owned by the bigger chains. Newspaper that are still family owned, though they are few, are still succeeding and so are ones in smaller chains with a better idea of what community is.
And Jim Farley's assessment from more than two decades ago is still on the money- a weekly newspaper using the plan I outlined could give the Joplin Globe a run for its money.
Apparently, in this age of Donald Trump....
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, if you keep saying things like this, inserting random hate against Trump in topics which have nothing to do with him, you'll lose readers and most certainly sponsors like myself. Please keep this sort of thing segregated and on topic, like your posts on Billy Long's press releases.
That was not "random hate," but a statement of what has been obvious for months- The president-elect has proven that you keep saying something often enough, even if all evidence points in the other direction, for many people it becomes true. While Mr. Trump is certainly not the only politician, or person for that matter, who has done this, he has certainly taken it to a new level. If you will check, before the election, I wrote that this country is going to survive no matter which of the candidates is elected and I received a considerable amount of criticism for that statement from Hillary Clinton supporters and those who were for anyone but Trump for saying that. On the other hand, now that people have seen that someone can succeed by denying facts and blaming everything on the media, we are certain to see others take that route.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry for my lack of clarity. It's not the "hate", or the truth or not of it, it's that I don't want to read what you have to say about Trump on "random" topics that have nothing to do with Trump.
ReplyDeleteIf you're doing something akin to constructing a Grand Unified Theory of Everything around Trump, "taken it to a new level" as you put it, and potentially interjecting this into most any random topic, you're engaging in a monomania which has little or nothing to do with reporting the local news as of yet, he hasn't even been inaugurated!
Randy Turner has all the self-awareness of Daffy Duck in a Bugs Bunny Looney-Toon. The pore critter can't figure out that it isn't liked and so it keeps on doing the exact same things which have gotten it run off in journalism and teaching. Turner simply has been run off using whatever excuse was at hand and now isn't allowed back in. Sure sounds like a blacklist to me.
ReplyDeleteHaving lost and lost big in the past election when they actually were gibbering to themselves about how they and Hillary had it in the bag, they can't blame themselves or their idiotology for losing and losing big in their effort to establish a soft tyranny over those of us who despise them and everything they stand for. Nope, it is "fake news" and the Russians who shoved them and their liberal fantasies into exile of their own private Uranus.
All these local papers sold out to conglomerates who skimmed everything off the top. Now things have gone to blogs which confirm the readers' biases. Turner just wants to pretend that his biases -- which haven't worked out for this clueless drone -- are the only valid biases. Hillary was a crooked evil bitch. Trump won even though none of us really knew what we would get because everyone knew what we would get with Hillary. More of the same, but even more crooked and vicious. What Trump SAID doesn't matter much to us any more than it amounted to them Hillary drones what Hillary DID. Trump talked nasty. Hillary enabled a serial sexual predator in order to advance her own official perversions. Trump is a bully and blusterer. Hillary is pure evil.
I really like it that Turner can't figure out what is wrong with him and is simply a wounded walking dead-head in suffering and pain. No need to stop, Randy. Just keep on telling yourself that the fault lies in the stars or in ourselves so you won't get any better and have no hope of improvement.
Trump won even though none of us really knew what we would get because everyone knew what we would get with Hillary.
ReplyDeleteThis is indeed why Trump won both the Republican nomination and the presidency. We knew we were going to lose with any other candidate. With Trump we may lose, but it's at least not a certainty.
I also accept the argument that Trump's vanity won't allow him to willingly be a failure as president, and in general he a successful guy. He certainly, besides the above wins our betters told us were "impossible", blew open the Overton Window on a lot of topics, showed unheard of by the GOPe loyalty to his own people, treats the press/MSM with a big degree of the contempt they totally deserve, and doesn't hate America.
Or to use Lincoln's comment about Grant, "he fights", and that's one of the things we need, even if today's standards of that are unacceptable to our betters if they're coming from a Republican/"conservative", which is the gravamen of Randy's complaint. Which indeed reaches the level of a Derangement Syndrome when he can't keep his TDS from leaking out to topics which have nothing to do with Trump. And the fact that he doubled down instead of listening when called on in by a now apparently to become former contributer gives legitimacy to the stronger arguments people make against him like your's, 8:56 PM.
Apparently, in this age of Donald Trump, the new trend is to just keep repeating nonsense and pretending it is fact.
ReplyDeleteHere's something concrete to illustrate why this is a Derangement Syndrome as opposed to something more reasoned.
Just how many times did Obama say "If you like your health care plan, you'll be able to keep your health care plan"?
PolitiFact, very much biased to the Left and Democrats, nonetheless was forced to declare this the 2013 Lie of the Year, and separately found 37 instances where he said that, making our host's claims against Trump anything but a "new trend" (in fact, I'd bet he said the same thing about W, it was certainly true about him, say I from the Alt Right end of the spectrum (and of course W had a great deal to do with the genesis of the Alt Right)).
Yet our host defends Obamacare, and therefore implicitly Obama's lies about it, and trashes even the concept of Republicans replacing it with the lie that they don't have any proposals to do so (really now, is it even vaguely credible to claim none of the right of center think tanks have been idle on this subject for the last N decades??).