The Big Five-O … and Counting

Fifty years ago, Ludwell Gaines put his vision into ink on paper, and it became the mission for what Kansas City knows today as Ingram’s:

“I believe that Kansas City is entering an exciting and promising new era, an era of planned growth and a new dynamic spirit. Outlook is a new publication intended to report on and to be a forum for the Kansas City economic community. I believe that our approach to business journalism has never been more relevant and in demand than right now. …

“We will cover business and investment topics which local publishers and broadcasters have heretofore been reluctant or unable to tackle. We will provide specialized investment information and relate that information to the Kansas City market. (We) will help our readers to better understand the economic forces at work here (and will present) the full range of activities and developments in Kansas City finance, investment, agribusiness, real estate, commerce, and industry.”

Mind you, Lud Gaines was not a journalist—not by formal training, anyway. He was an investment broker. But thanks to that good, old reliable we see at the top of the Bill of Rights, one need not carry the equivalent of financial services certifications to perform as a journalist. So into the arena stepped Ludwell Gaines.

Gaines saw a gap in traditional media coverage in 1974, one that left unexplored the vital role that business played in this region. He set out to fill that gap by creating Outlook magazine, which, through a couple ownership changes, morphed into Corporate Report Kansas City and, finally, Ingram’s. Over those decades, the gap that Gaines discerned half a century ago has become a canyon: Readership of the biggest daily newspaper in this market has declined by 80 percent in the 21st century; broadcast coverage remains as insignificant as it is irrelevant.

What hath Gaines’ vision wrought? Ingram’s today is a number of things, but if we had to boil it all down to a single word, we’re about connections. We strive to connect our readers with the most significant trends in regional business—primarily banking and financial services, health-care and insurance, construction and development, and higher education and workforce training.

We do that with editorial themes that rotate throughout the year, providing enterprise coverage that explores how market conditions, economic trends, executive achievement, and other factors are influencing growth and investment in a region that runs from Topeka to Sedalia, from St. Joseph to Harrisonville. By doing so, we connect executives and business owners with actionable intel to help them frame their own decision-making.

We layer over that a robust program of business and individual achievement awards, recognizing the best employers, rising young executives, outstanding health-care providers, pinnacle educators, and others who set standards. By doing so, we connect the regional executive community with high achievers who present new business opportunities.

Yet another layer comes with our industry ranking lists, updated each year to inform the community of the top performers in banking, professional services, health care, education, real estate sales, construction, venture capital, and literally dozens of other disciplines. By doing so, we connect potential customers with proven market leaders.

Lud Gaines started it all with a single platform: a monthly print magazine. We’ve taken the baton from him and added other means of sharing this wealth of content with special publications, such as our Chiefs’ Super Bowl tributes, with an increasingly robust online presence addressing the biggest news developments daily, and with Ingram’s Executive Insights, a series of daily, themed newsletters that provide additional business insights to tens of thousands of subscribers.

Much has happened in this region—good and bad—since that first issue of Outlook came off the presses in December 1974. As we’ve learned over the years—and relearned, examining more than 600 issues since then—is the importance of serving as an archiver of the biggest of business trends in this region, of the most influential of business personalities, of the most successful companies, and of the region’s greatest collection of thought leadership from executive suites.

It’s been a lot to pack into one working lifetime.

In 50 years, the United States has overcome seven recessions, including the biggest one of all that didn’t earn distinction, the Great Depression, and the sharpest one of all, brought on by the global pandemic.

Bankruptcy has claimed one-time business icons like Woolworth’s, Sears, and Kodak. Financial services firms like Lehman Brothers, PaineWebber, and Arthur Andersen have gone away, replaced in the roll call of U.S. business icons by both the wildly profitable—Microsoft, Apple, Google, etc.—and the questionably trendy (think Uber/Lyft, Bird/Lime and other companies with eyebrow-raising bottom-line numbers). Travel companions Eastern Airlines, Pan-Am, and TWA are no more. 

Such has been the pace of change that even some monster corporate brands have both come and gone, a la Blockbuster. Often, what’s gone away has been replaced by something better, cheaper or more easily accessed. As we moved from DVDs to streaming services, did you ever hear anyone longing for the good old days when they had to be reminded  to rewind video-store tapes before returning them?

Publication of this magazine’s first issue coincided with the bottoming-out of a Wall Street bear market in 1974 when the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at just under 578 points—a day’s worth of volatility in modern market movements.

Closer to home, the regional population has increased by more than 800,000 souls to 2.2 million. The shifting tides of commerce saw Kansas City become home to a health-care IT startup that grew into the region’s largest private-sector employer—Cerner Corp.—before hometown honors escaped us with a monster acquisition. 

A similar fate was in store for United Telecommunications Co., which had grown from a rural phone company into one serving 15 states, then into a national telecom powerhouse called Sprint before it met the same M&A ending. 

Consolidations have swept through banking and financial services, construction and development firms, health-care providers, and many other sectors. Across almost all sectors, the big got bigger. The region has bolstered its position as a center for agribusiness, vehicle manufacturing, logistics and distribution, health-care delivery, and research—even technology, boasting the title of Silicon Prairie. 

All of those factors have enhanced this region’s reputation for being less likely to fall into national recessionary patterns and more likely to emerge first from downturns, thanks to an economy that does not rely on one or two major employers in given sectors.

Having been right there, stride for stride, with the business community through so much of this shared journey, we pause here with this special edition to commemorate a milestone year in Ingram’s history. We’re turning 50. We hope this retrospective view of a city’s business history will be as informative and entertaining for you as it has been for us.