Categories: OLD Media Moves

Founders of Kansas City Business Journal reminisce

Mike Russell and William “Doc” Worley, the founders of the Kansas City Business Journal, which was the cornerstone of what has become American City Business Journals, today the parent company of 41 weekly business newspapers, talked about how their firstÂ paper got started in an article posted Friday on the paper’s web site.

Brian Kaberline wrote, “Not everyone was pleased with the new publication. Worley can recite a quote from R. Crosby Kemper Jr., then head of United Missouri Bank: ‘The Business Journal has replaced the stockyards as the stench that permeates Kansas City.’ Russell and Worley put the quote on coffee cups — and Kemper sent someone down to get him one.

“The paper also caught the attention of The Star, itself the subject of a front-page story in the inaugural edition. Worley said he knew the paper was catching on when The Star began sending a cab to the Business Journal‘s offices each week to pick up papers.

“‘We woke them up 25 years ago, and they’re still awake,’ Worley said.

“Fogel agreed that The Star rose to the challenge posed by the Business Journal and put together a strong business staff.

“Buoyed by their success, Russell and Worley began building a chain of local business journals. In four years, they started 18 papers and bought another 18.”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.