Stop the Presses: Road to 24th anniversary not without bumps

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This is Volume 24, Number 1 of the Springfield Business Journal. This issue, focusing on the construction and design industry in Springfield and southwest Missouri is a big one for the staff 68 pages. I'm extra happy when we celebrate SBJ's anniversary, and it's a paper with lots in it lots of news and lots of advertising. |ret||ret||tab|

It's a pleasure to be a publisher in good times. Longtime staff members like SBJ Vice President and CFO Dorothy Gardner and Editor Clarissa French remember anniversary issues in other years that weren't quite so prosperous. It wasn't always so much fun to be the publisher, but we believed in what we were doing, and we always celebrated anyway.|ret||ret||tab|

For at least the first five years of the Business Journal's history, we had a party at my house with a potluck dinner. I'm sure I couldn't afford to do the whole dinner. Then, as we grew just a little and moved to our office at 209 E. Walnut (now the home of Bijan's), we started having anniversary receptions at local restaurants, and we invited our advertisers and the guys from the printing plant. We were still just glad and grateful to have made it though another year in business.|ret||ret||tab|

The first year we were in our newly renovated building here at 313 Park Central West, we put up a tent in the Heer's parking lot, hired a band and invited everyone we knew.|ret||ret||tab|

There was a crowd, lots of food from Nearly Famous and Cartoon's, and a huge windy thunderstorm. The sky got black and the tent blew down. The party broke up real suddenly, but the event created lots of memories. People are still talking about that year. That was 1996, I believe.|ret||ret||tab|

Then, we broke with traditions and didn't do much at all for the next three years. If we had a staff happy hour to mark the week, I don't remember it. It's all a blur. We were getting settled into our new office and learning to live (and print) with the increased cost of our more luxurious quarters. As in every year of SBJ's history, I'm sure we went through many changes. We always do.|ret||ret||tab|

In the year 2000, as we prepared to begin Volume 20, we initiated the annual Economic Impact Awards. The SBJ staff, figuring that nobody really cared about our anniversary except us, decided we would celebrate the people that made it possible for this weekly newspaper to keep on going week after week, year after year.|ret||ret||tab|

The Springfield Business Journal's 20th year was the year we began presenting all three of our events 40 Under 40 in the spring, Economic Impact Awards in July, and the 20 Most Influential Women celebration in October. Not only are these happy events, times when we can honor SBJ's newsmakers, but they have become ways for SBJ to build itself, too. The special events have become a unique brand-building opportunity for this newspaper. |ret||ret||tab|

As I sat down to write this column, SBJ Circulation Assistant Billie Marsala gave me the news that she was calling the 2003 Economic Impact Awards at The Tower Club "sold out." There were a couple more seats we could sell, she said, but they were "bad seats," behind columns or in the separate side dining areas. We could always sell those and then put staff members in the less desirable positions, she said, if we absolutely had to.|ret||ret||tab|

For those of you who couldn't attend, we're planning on publishing several pictures of the good times at happy people at the event in the July 28 issue. In this edition, SBJ has inserted the special publication profiling all 15 Economic Impact finalists and the three Lifetime Achievement in Business award honorees. These are the people that the Springfield Business Journal is really about, after all.|ret||ret||tab|

We're already starting to plan even more celebrations for the Business Journal's big Volume 25, Number 1 in July 2004. The staff is enthusiastic about putting on a party and about everything they do.|ret||ret||tab|

Year after year, as we participate in our industry association meetings around the country, we are repeatedly confronted with a fact of our business lives: This is a small, small market in comparison with other areas of the country with business publications. But I am reminded, yet again, of the two factors that have made my publishing career possible: This is a vital, active, thriving, growing small business area. There are great people here in southwest Missouri. SBJ couldn't make a go of it in a geographic area of the same size, with the same population, but with just a handful of huge corporations. |ret||ret||tab|

Also, SBJ continues to be blessed with a wonderful, talented, charismatic staff. The faces on the staff change sometimes, but the hard-working, eager optimism and good will remain.|ret||ret||tab|

I'm a lucky, lucky publisher. These are the good times. And that's a good thing, too, considering that after 24 years, we're not getting any younger. Maybe we've learned a few things. I hope so.|ret||ret||tab|

Thanks, SBJ readers for being so faithful. This newspaper is here because you are.|ret||ret||tab|

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