Joplin Globe eliminating Sunday online newspaper

The shrinking of the Joplin Globe continues.

In an opinion page column in today's edition, Globe Editor Andy Ostmeyer announced the elimination of the Sunday online edition and a reduction in size for the Monday e-newspaper.

The move essentially ends the pretense of the Globe having a seven-day-a-week newspaper.

The print edition is published Tuesday through Saturday. Prior to today's announcement, the Globe filled in the other two days with online e-newspapers, editions that contained a considerable amount of filler material since many of the print newspaper readers do not check out the online edition, which meant obituaries were usually not included (and there are a lot fewer obituaries anyway, since it costs a fortune to run one in the Globe).

The Globe will continue to post fresh stories on its website, Ostmeyer said, though he didn't say who is going to be available to cover and write those stories.

Most of Ostmeyer's column details the woes facing the newspaper industry today and what he writes is true.

Times have been hard for the newspaper industry.

Ostmeyer concludes his column with this statement:

We are working hard to keep a smaller newspaper a thriving newspaper, because we believe a thriving community needs a thriving community newspaper, and now more than ever.

What Ostmeyer doesn't say is that he is working with a skeleton crew. Key editors have left the newspaper in recent months. Only a handful of reporters remain with the Globe.

How long will it be before Globe owners follow the practice established by other newspaper chains of moving the newspaper office out of stately downtown buildings, selling off printing presses and relocating to a small office space in some strip mall.

Consider the Springfield News-Leader. That newspaper, in a community of nearly 200,000 people, has moved into a smaller building, is printed in Columbia and frequently features two-day-old news on page one of its editions.

Expect the Joplin Globe's shrinkage to continue in coming months. The staff will grow even smaller, something that is happening in newspapers across the United States, and news coverage will continue to decline.

The lights are on (for the moment), but it's getting to the point where nobody's home.