Opinion: Double issue makes SBJ history

In your hands is Springfield Business Journal’s first double issue. Twenty-eight years into this publishing business, SBJ management and staff decided to throw two weeks of work into one publication just before the Christmas holiday. It gives you time to enjoy the content while presumably on holiday time off, and it gives SBJ’s staff a rest-and-preparation period before rolling out 2008.

I suspect you’ll agree with me that the issue packs a punch, highlighted by the special insert of 12 People You Need To Know.

The new product is among two enterprising editorial projects that capped off a great year. The other is Day in the Life, which ran in the November and December issues. The documentary-style personal profiles of Jack Stack, Virginia Fry, Jack Herschend, Neal Spencer and Nadia Cavner have been deemed a success. The only possible hiccup, I’m told by readers, was including financial adviser Cavner. I appreciate the handful of faithful readers who have e-mailed or called me questioning Cavner’s inclusion in the bunch.

What I’ve learned is that her defense in a lawsuit with former employer U.S. Bancorp has led many in the community to question her ethics. My response is that the purpose of the series is to give a glimpse of how these professionals go about daily life in their workplaces. Each was selected based on professional status, and I don’t think any could argue that benchmark.

Cavner’s management of $362 million in assets takes a special person, and she has been nationally recognized for years for such achievement. Are we saying there is conspiracy around how she reached that level? None that I’ve heard.

As I see it, the debate surrounds how Cavner retained that business when moving banks. Unfortunately, the lawsuit was dismissed in a settlement, so we may never know the true outcome. Ironically, the story broke the week before we ran Cavner’s Day in the Life installment.

Even if you don’t agree with the decision, I hope you at least enjoyed the unique look and reporting style with which we treated those stories. The whole series is available at sbj.net. If you missed the first round in print, copies are available through SBJ’s circulation department.

The Day in the Life series will return next year. Please send me the names of businesspeople you’d like to spend a day with.

Quotes of the Year

Continuing in the theme of the editorial staff’s selection of the 2007 Top 10 business stories published in this issue, here are my favorite quotes published in SBJ this year.

5. “In today’s world, it is very hard to sell education. There has to be a few monkeys spinning plates or something to just get people to walk in the door.” —former Wonders of Wildlife board member Paul Potthoff, on the museum’s early mistakes

4. “At the time, most people thought we paid way too much.” —Jim Baker of Missouri State University, on the $1 the school paid to acquire the MFA mill turned into JVIC

3. “All the people that laughed at me for the last 10 years showed up for a shower, something to eat, to warm up.” —Power Source Solar owner Nathan Jones, referring to the historic January ice storm that paralyzed the Ozarks

2. “He’s like traveling with a rock star.” —Hammons Hotels VP Scott Tarwater, on traveling with John Q. Hammons, whom employees want to meet when he’s inspecting his hotel properties

1. “I wouldn’t know an iPod from a pea pod.”

—SRC Holdings CEO Jack Stack, on his use of the latest technologies

Springfield Business Journal Editor Eric Olson can be reached at eolson@sbj.net.[[In-content Ad]]