Joplin Globe moving

The Joplin Globe is moving.

I'm sure this news shocks some of you who didn't realize the Globe was still in business.

The Globe announced today it's moving from its stately home at 117 E 4th Street, where it has been since early in the 20th Century to a much smaller location in the Hafeez Plaza, 2613 S. Main Street.

That's like moving from a spot by the Red Onion to a place by McDonald's- which is exactly what the Globe is doing.

In its story, which I won't post to since it's behind a pay wall, it was noted that the Globe stopped printing in Joplin in 2024 (it is printed in Tulsa), so there really wasn't a need for the larger building.

The move will take place February 2. The Globe building is for sale.

This news won't surprise Turner Report readers since I predicted in the February 6, 2024 edition:

Over the past few years, the Globe's coverage area has continued to shrink. It's essentially Joplin, Webb City, Carl Junction and Carthage, with sprinklings of news from other Jasper County towns and adjacent counties.

At the time I wrote the previous post, the Globe was published seven days a week, print and e-paper. That is no longer the case. The Globe has eliminated its Sunday and Monday editions and there are times when it might as well have chopped off another weekday or two.

Rumors continue to circulate that the Globe's classified advertising section has been declared an endangered species.

Only a small percentage of the deaths in this community are recorded in the Globe these days because the cost is too much for grieving families. The same mindset that decided obituaries were no longer news but a cash cow, has also drastically curtailed the number of wedding, engagement and anniversary announcements. In other words, your news is no longer important, but we will happily take your money.

With every one of the Globe's changes decreasing the amount of local news that is carried in its pages, the powers that be at the area's "newspaper of record" have still seen fit to double the price of subscriptions.

You have to sympathize with the people who make the decisions at the Globe, wherever they are. Paper and supplies cost more and how in the world are you going to replace the money that used to come from all of the newspaper's fleeing subscribers unless you jack up the prices for the loyal subscribers who remain.

This is not just a Joplin Globe problem. It is a basic problem that has infected the entire newspaper industry. Out-of-town owners with no feel for the community cut jobs, reduce frequency of publication and eliminate jobs.

They also push deadlines earlier and earlier meaning that important news from local meetings is often stale by the time it is published. You would think that problem might be lessened by publishing the stories on the website, but for some reason, in this day and age when immediacy has become more prized than ever in news coverage, no one at the Globe seems to be in any rush.

It would not surprise me if the next step will be for the Globe to follow the example of so many other chain-owned newspapers and sell its building and move to some storefront to save money.

I'm not bragging about my prediction. I made it because I knew what other newspapers were doing across the United States. Also because I saw what happened to my former newspaper, the Carthage Press, which moved out of its downtown building to a small building on Central Avenue.

That was a major step on the Press' journey from being a community newspaper to being an afterthought and then being one of a long line of newspapers that no longer exist.

Hopefully, that fate won't happen to The Joplin Globe, but all of the signs are heading in that direction.