Wednesday, April 29, 2020

Five days after Turner Report posts story, Globe runs Leggett & Platt layoff at the top of page one

I know it sounds contradictory, but at the same time I am encouraging you to support newspapers in general and the Joplin Globe in particular, but I am offering a mild criticism of our area's leading newspaper.

At the top of page one in today's Globe is the news that Leggett & Platt, one of our area's leading employers, has laid off another 215 employees in Carthage, following an earlier reduction of 422.

It is an important story and certainly deserves the top billing it received.

It would have been better if the story had run earlier.

The article, which is written by Globe Editor Andy Ostmeyer, was posted on the Globe website Tuesday and was sent out as a "breaking news" e-mail.

No problem, except that the same story, using the same source, the company's WARN Act filing with the Department of Higher Education and Workforce Development, was published five days ago on the Turner Report.

And it was not breaking news when I published it.

Though I do check the WARN Act listings on a regular basis and done so more often during the pandemic, I spotted the story in the Springfield News-Leader, then retrieved the filing from the state website and published my post, adding information from my post about the earlier layoffs.

A question for the Globe- Was someone asleep at the switch?

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