No Time To Gloat
So reads the obituary for KCB in the August 19th issue of Bottom Line Communications. Bottom Line attributes the magazine’s demise to “staff turnover at Anthem Publishing,” but we at Ingram’s have a more intimate sense of the reason behind the publication’s failure and that of Commercial Journal.
You see, KCB was the third well-funded local business magazine launched in the past 10 years with the express purpose of becoming Kansas City’s premier regional business publication. And it is the third magazine to fail.
The last one had been launched with much fanfare as a joint production of The Kansas City Star and the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce.
You might ask what the Chamber was doing competing with Ingram’s, The Business Journal and other Chamber members. We certainly did. As the Chamber soon discovered, however, running a business involves perhaps more risk than running a business association. The Star’s and Chamber’s magazine—Greater Kansas City Business—folded within a couple of years as did Persona, which operated 5 months immediately following our acquisition in 1997.
Staff turnover at KCB was part of the problem and it likely was for Greater Kansas City Business as well. At Ingram’s we too have had some turnover, but, importantly, we’ve had the same editor-in-chief, executive editor and publishers for the past 12 years. That helps. It helps a lot. But that’s only part of the story.
My wife, Michelle, and I are on-site publishers. We worry every issue to publication, maybe not always on time, but always up to snuff. What’s more, as entrepreneurs, we understand and respect the challenges our customers face. Many of you are entrepreneurs yourselves and many more are close enough to the action to understand the perils and rewards of entrepreneurship.
There is yet another major factor. I was born and raised in Kansas City. Michelle and I live here. We care about this community as though we are city ambassadors and not just co-publishers of the region’s business magazine. We promote the bi-state region not just because it is part of the job description, but because it is part of our heart.
To that end, we will soon be releasing the all-new IngramsOnLine.com. In addition, we will also soon launch DestinationMissouri.com and DestinationKansas.com. The former incorporates 265 websites, including an integrated site for each of the seven districts around the state as well as every county and viable city and region; the latter 190 websites include an integrated site for each of Kansas’s seven districts as wellas for every county and viable city and region. We will also release nine publications in both Missouri and Kansas.
Our talented team knows this region and its businesses as well as anyone writing about business anywhere. By year’s end, Executive Editor Jack Cashill and Iwill have concluded 100 Industry Outlook assemblies and formal reports and more than 80 Economic Development summits and subsequent reports and regional publications. An anthropologist hoping to study American business life at the beginning of the 21st century could find no greater treasure trove of genuine information than the reports we have published about these assemblies.
Unlike The Kansas City Star, whose revolving management team and editors tend to trivialize the Midwestern values of its readers, we take those values seriously. We understand the worth of hardwork, thrift, fiscal discipline ,individual initiative, free enterprise, family and, yes, even patriotism.
We are Midwestern enough that not a single day over the past 12 years have we taken our success for granted. And Lord knows, with the economy as antsy as it is, we are not about to start now.
We owe our existence to you, our loyal readers and advertisers. We write for you. We work for you. We pray and work for your continued prosperity. 
Joe Sweeney
Editor-In-Chief & Publisher
Sweeney@IngramsOnLine.com