The First Forty … and Beyond

Quite the contrary: Many new, exciting things are unfolding here at Ingram’s Media, and we’re thrilled at the prospect of broadening and deepening our service to the greater Kansas City area business community. More on that in a minute.
In this, the 469th consecutive monthly edition of Ingram’s (or its predecessors; Corporate Report Kansas City and Outlook),
I’d like to take this opportunity to express our heartfelt appreciation to our advertisers, readers and patrons. Since Michelle and I purchased the publication in February 1997, we’re pleased to have delivered 205 consecutive monthly editions of Ingram’s as well as 50 or more special editions. Like most, this organization simply doesn’t exist and sustain without client support—we very much appreciate this opportunity to serve your organization and act as an advocate of Kansas City and the states of Missouri and Kansas.
As you can imagine, there are many moving parts in any one month’s publication. But with a growing online presence and the sheer volume of content in this edition and our Book of Leads & Lists, we’ve been awfully busy for a number of months. Amid all that flurry, I hadn’t grasped the
true significance of this issue until I was proofing the pages for press. That’s when it struck me: The number of clients recognizing our organization’s achievement of celebrating 40 years, the sheer numbers of companies recognized for business excellence overall, and the number of com-
panies celebrating milestones in 2014—many have been in operation for 100 years.
I suspect that most of our readers know that Ingram’s dedicates a good number of feature pages each month to recognize excellence in business perform-
ance by organizations, and we have programs that recognize individuals, as well, such as 40 Under Forty, Top Doctors or
Women Executives-Kansas City. So it’s a bit unusual for us to be on the receiving end of the accolades this month. To us, the real heroes are the organizations that have supported this publication over many years, those that share our values, beliefs and mission and who appreciate the useful information we try so hard to research, report and deliver to our readers each month.
One of the keys of sustaining, perhaps, has been our ability to fill a kind of void in the flow of business information. Ingram’s, as most of you familiar with its content know, specializes in examining issues that affect the biggest drivers of the regional economy—financial services, construction and development, health care, insurance, higher education and many other sectors.
Some are covered regularly, through our Industry Outlook or Quarterly Report series; some on a periodic basis as issues arise in the public sphere or as events dictate. All of that coverage, though, is based on a kind of executive-summary journalism
that lasers in on the key points of an issue, without dragging our time-starved readers into “he said/she said” filler or our writer’s opinions.
Delivering well-produced “executive summaries” worked for us in print for decades; we intend to replicate that style and
concise approach with the rollout of additional on-line content in the coming weeks.
On a personal note, I grew up in Kansas City and have lived here nearly all of my life. For the exception of spending four
years at Mizzou and another four years publishing magazines in St. Louis, Kansas
City has been and will always be my home town. As we researched to produce the 25th anniversary edition in 1999, I learned that
my father, John Sweeney, had served from the inception as the publication’s monthly commercial real estate columnist.
The year was 1975 and I had little awareness of a new start-up publication called Outlook, nor how this magazine would consume such a rich chapter of my career.
We hope you like what you see in this 40th Anniversary edition of Ingram’s, and we encourage your organization to get involved in what we intend to be the most exciting year in the history of Ingram’s and of the all-new, soon to launch Ingrams.com. We have a blockbuster editorial lineup throughout 2014, teeming with content we’re confident will command the attention of the business owners and decision makers our advertisers are also trying to reach.
We’ll have a new and heavily expand-ed digital presence with Ingrams.com and the exciting Destination Missouri and Destination Kansas portal platform. When the Ingram’s site launches in the coming weeks, and particularly when
DestinationMissouri.com launches later this spring (DestinationKansas.com in September) it will extend our brand of journalism to business owners and exec-utives across both states and well beyond.
Again, none of that would be possible without the advertising support and the programming partnerships we’ve forged over the years with other organizations focused on improving the regional business climate of this great city.
For that, all of us at Ingram’s thank you. Now: On to the next 40 years.