The name I first heard it called was TOPS Executive Journal. That was in 1980, and I was selling advertising for the Springfield Daily News and The Leader & Press. Ken Willoughby was talking about quitting his job at Springfield Newspapers and starting this business newspaper along with Dianne Elizabeth and Marty Ross.
What was my sage advice?
“Who would want to read that? That’s not going to amount to anything.”
Fast forward 13 years. After moving on to USA Today, then Penny Power and MD Publications, I found my sofa was beginning to sag in that one spot where I had been sitting for a few months while looking for a job. I had begun to wonder if the best job out there really was selling plastic earrings to convenience stores. And that’s when the phone rang.
I couldn’t believe it. It was Dianne Elizabeth at, you guessed it, the Springfield Business Journal. My old friend Dorothy Gardner was now her No. 2 person and she had given Dianne my name. Dianne told me they were looking for someone to run the sales department and wondered if we all could have lunch.
I liked that lunch idea.
We met at John Q’s, and it was cold and raining, if I remember right. After talking for a long time, we worked out a deal that suited us all. It was real simple: I could make what I wanted if I could sell what they wanted.
It seemed to me this job was going to be great.
While working for USA Today I had moved to Kansas City and then Chicago, and I had found out just how useful a business journal really was. Just try plopping down in a market of a few million people you don’t know. There simply isn’t a faster way to learn about the business community, who’s who, where they’re located, how big they are and a whole lot more. In fact business journals had been one of my best assets.
SBJ had been in business for 13 years at that point, and while Dianne and Dorothy seemed less than enthusiastic about how things were going, I remember thinking they had built a great foundation and it looked to me like it was just ready to take off.
Lucky me. It did take off. We focused, looking at what we were and what we were not. We looked at which customers would benefit most by being in SBJ and which customers would benefit the least by being in SBJ. We stopped selling the ones who would benefit the least and spent the time we saved selling the ones that would benefit the most.
We looked at who was getting SBJ and who should be getting SBJ. If we felt they should be readers, we made sure they got the paper. We changed the way we did promotion. We tied our house ads to our radio ads, and rather than running all year long, we promoted special products.
For one radio ad, the one that I remember best, I ran into Mr. Hammons at a chamber function. He didn’t know me, but I asked him if he read SBJ. He said he did, and I asked him if he would do a testimonial spot for me. He said, “Do you think I should?”
I said, “Yes,” and he said, “OK.”
That was the easy part. I found that getting to see him to record the spot was near impossible. Finally, I took Nick Sibley’s little tape recorder and went to Mr. Hammons’ office very early in the morning.
Lo and behold, his secretary wasn’t there, but John Q. was. Bless his heart; he recorded a great spot for me. I think the only things he said to me that day were, “Does Springfield Business Journal make any money?” and, “Hurry up, I’m a very busy man.”
I think Mr. Hammons and that spot gave us the little jump we needed.
As I look back at all the places I worked before SBJ, I remember they all spent a lot of time and money teaching me about newspapers, advertising and publishing.
But one thing that Dianne Elizabeth, Dorothy Gardner and SBJ did that none of the others before them did was to let me do what I had been taught.
Every year more people and businesses come to Springfield, and every year Springfield Business Journal becomes more important.
It’s apparent from the quality and the innovation I see in SBJ that the folks who work there now are still free to do what they were taught and that they don’t take their responsibility lightly.
Stan Coffman is president and publisher of Ozarks Farm & Neighbor, a regional farm newspaper serving Missouri. He served as vice president of marketing for Springfield Business Journal 1993–1998.
