Unlike the Joplin Regional Business Journal, Beatty has left a footprint on the community, In the eight years since he arrived from Baltimore, Beatty has overseen a newspaper that has consistently missed the biggest stories to hit the Joplin community or twisted them beyond recognition. If any official with the Joplin Globe has helped turn the newspaper into a house organ for the Chamber and the entrenched powers in the city it has been Publisher Michael Beatty, whose impending departure was announced on page one of the Monday Globe. After all, what was the Business Journal but a newspaper dedicated to providing fealty to the Joplin Area Chamber of Commerce and we already had one of those. I never was sure we needed the Joplin Regional Business Journal. You can make the argument, and it is a legitimate one, that the loss of any newspaper is a loss to all of us because it is one less news source in a time when we so desperately need news sources. My reasoning- the newspaper passed without leaving a footprint. I wrote about the demise of the other Joplin weekly business newspaper whose name I don't recall. I wrote about the Joplin Daily, which lasted only one year, far less time than JRBJ. I debated for a long while whether I should write something about the newspaper closing. While the Journal occasionally offered some insight into the Joplin business community, it was better known for its stunts like honoring Joplin businesswomen or influential Joplin area people under age 40- any excuse to sell advertising, hold a banquet and sell blocks of tickets to companies that naturally wanted to support their employees who had been nominated. It is almost the one-year anniversary of the last issue of the Joplin Regional Business Journal and this is the first mention I have made of that newspaper's demise.
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