Bidness As Unusual

Business in local

communities is to be regularly featured in upcoming SBJ issues

by Paul Flemming

The mayor of Nixa was on the phone. We had just published our 1998 Market Fact Book in June.

The supplement to the Springfield Business Journal contains valuable information about industry, the economy and services in southwest Missouri. The Market Fact Book also contains thumbnail sketches of communities in the Ozarks, including information about city government, utilities and amenities.

And we'd misspelled the name of Nixa Mayor Jay Wasson.

It was a typographical error, a poor transcription of information we'd received from the Christian County city. Wasson was good-natured about the gaff, but he had a point to make.

He said our misspelling of his name was indicative of the poor coverage SBJ afforded Nixa in particular and outlying towns in general. We wouldn't, after all, misspell Lee Gannaway's name, Wasson said.

It's true. Though the Business Journal covers large stories coming out of smaller communities, we are far from thorough. And the indictment was all the worse for the fact that we ought to pay more attention to the growing areas surrounding Springfield.

Limited resources of staff, time and newsprint space is no excuse for a paper that purports to offer information necessary to conduct business in southwest Missouri.

The big city, as it were, of Springfield is inextricably linked to the people and places surrounding it. Think of the building going on in Christian County. Consider the commuters from Republic. And what about the employers in Rogersville and Strafford?

We hear from Springfield leaders that growth of retail services in outlying communities is a contributing factor to declines in sales-tax revenue in recent years.

I told Wasson back in June that, though it could not make up for the error of his mangled name, we were going to address his concerns. Plans in the works before that call are now coming to fruition.

The Sept. 28 issue of the Business Journal will include a new weekly feature. This column, written by contributing writer Diane Rarick, will contain news from Springfield's adjacent communities. Rogersville, Ozark, Republic, Willard and Strafford news will be written. And yes, Nixa, too.

The format will be similar to the Southwest Missouri News we already run each week, reporting from Branson and Joplin.

Rarick has contacted city government officials, chambers of commerce and major employers in all those aforementioned cities and will be receiving regular information from them for inclusion in the column.

That regular contact, in turn, will allow us on the editorial staff to be more in tune with activity in these communities; better able to identify larger stories of interest to our readers.

I have not yet decided on a name for this feature. Bedroom Eyes seems too frivolous and All Around the Town doesn't sufficiently describe its content. I'll be working on it in the next few days and you can see next week what I come up with.

Whatever the name, the important thing is the addition to our content, and the information you can glean from it like the name of the mayor of Nixa and how that city's Board of Aldermen affects business there, and in Springfield.

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