Forum marks 150 years
FORUM FILE PHOTO
Pressmen work to produce the July 7, 1971, edition of the Maryville Daily Forum at its newly completed facility at the corner of South Main and Jenkins streets. Pictured at left in light-colored shirt is the late Robert E. Cobb, who served as the Forum’s managing editor in the 1960s and went on to publish the King City Tri-County News. Cobb, the father of current Forum Publisher Phil Cobb, was inducted into the Missouri Press Hall of Fame in 2013.
MARYVILLE, Mo. — The staff of The Maryville Forum newspaper is singing a different tune at the outset of the new year.
Happy Birthday to Us.
Though mastheads, publishers, buildings and — perhaps most significantly — the way readers access and respond to news have all changed, the print and internet product now known as The Maryville Forum remains, and is celebrating its 150th anniversary this year.
In its current incarnation, the Forum is a Maryville-based weekly newspaper that mails its printed edition to subscribers each Thursday. The paper’s partially free online presence, with daily updates and breaking news, is available to subscribers and casual viewers alike 24 hours a day.
Wholly owned and operated by Cobb Publishing, the paper was acquired by former general manager — now publisher — Phil Cobb and his wife Chaundee, from GateHouse Media in December 2013.
“It is truly an honor and a privilege to be among the current stewards of such a long-standing institution,” Cobb said, “especially one that has recorded so much of the history of this area.
“With that opportunity comes great responsibility, and we do not take that lightly. That’s why we invest the resources and employ professional reporters to appropriately chronicle the events of this area.
“Since 1869, this newspaper has been here through every significant event in the history of this country, this county and this town and has recorded them as they related to the residents of Maryville and Nodaway County.”
A daily newspaper for decades, Cobb adopted the weekly format in December, 2017. The move, which Cobb had seen coming for years, was driven by an evolving business climate transformed by a worldwide reader and advertiser shift toward the internet and other electronic media.
Paradoxically, the transition from a daily printed product dramatically increased the Forum’s readership due to its strong online presence, which has led thousands of readers to access the paper’s website every 24 hours.
Meanwhile, under Cobb’s leadership, circulation of the newsprint edition continues to post gains.
As would be expected in any business celebrating a sesquicentennial, the reorganization ushered in by Cobb is only the latest in a long series of changes spanning decades as the paper — sometimes successfully and sometimes painfully — adapted to demands created by new technologies, economic conditions and customer expectations.
It all began in 1869, just four years after the end of the Civil War, when future Missouri governor Albert P. Morehouse began publishing the weekly Nodaway Democrat, itself a successor publication to Morehouse’s Maryville Gazette, a printed list of owed taxes issued in 1865.
The paper’s subsequent life, as the daily Maryville Democrat-Forum, began in 1910, when William C. Van Cleve, publisher of the Moberly Monitor-Index, acquired the business and merged it with the Nodaway Forum, a rival paper founded in 1901 by future U.S. Rep. Charles J. Colden. A third paper, the Maryville Republican, was also part of the merger.
In 1874, the paper was purchased by James Todd, George W. Martin and Byron A. Dunn. Eventually, the Todd family assumed control of the business and was associated with the Forum for a total of nearly 60 years.
But though the paper traces its corporate roots back to the Democrat and Democrat-Forum, this year’s sesquicentennial really comprises two separate anniversary milestones.
While it’s been 150 years since Morehouse wrote the Democrat’s first headline, it has been 90 years since Oscar S. Stauffer bought the paper in 1929 and changed the name to the Maryville Daily Forum. The organization has functioned under the Forum banner ever since.
Marion W. Stauffer (no relation to Oscar) served as the paper’s publisher for nearly 40 years, from 1929 until 1966, a period during which the Forum became a mainstay of the Stauffer Communications Inc. chain that eventually operated more than 20 newspapers serving parts of 11 states.
What could be considered the daily’s golden era came to an end in the late 1980s, when the Forum passed through a series of corporate owners, including Morris Communications, which then sold the paper to Liberty Group Publishing, which later became GateHouse Media.
During this period, beginning in 1989, the paper was led briefly by the late Jim Fall, a noted northwest Missouri journalist who went on to serve on the Maryville City Council from 2011-2014, a tenure that included a year as mayor.
Toward the end of his local political career, Fall enjoyed a successful second act at the Forum, serving as Cobb’s executive editor and writing a regular op-ed column.
For many, Fall became the face of the Forum during the early part of the Cobb Publishing era. He thrived on rebuilding the newspaper and on the professional and personal relationships that grew out of his community service, which he viewed as a journalist’s highest calling.
Fall’s work as a civic leader greatly enhanced the now-locally-owned paper’s reputation and credibility after the period of decline under GateHouse, and his example and wise counsel led younger reporters to work harder and write better.
For many years, the Forum was headquartered just north of the courthouse square at 414 N. Main St., now the home of The Pub tavern. In 1971, the paper moved to its current location a few blocks south of the square at the corner of Main and Jenkins.
The facility was specially built as a newspaper office by Stauffer Communications Inc. and designed to house a five-unit high-speed offset press along with pre-press production equipment, a research section containing files and reference materials, a room-sized process camera, a mail room and office space for about 20 employees.
The future seemed bright, but then came the energy and farm crises of the 1970s, events that have darkened the rural Midwest’s economic reality ever since. The arrival of the internet in the 1990s created further disruptions for traditional Main Street businesses — newspapers in particular — many of which had existed for a century or more.
By 2012, both the Forum and its Jenkins Street facility had fallen on hard times. GateHouse cut staff, removed the printing press and allowed the physical plant to degrade in the absence of badly needed maintenance and repairs.
Enter Cobb, the Forum’s longtime advertising manager who went on to serve as the paper’s general manger under GateHouse before resigning to go into business for himself.
Immediately after acquiring the paper in 2013, the newly fledged publisher, who had left GateHouse the previous year to found The Post, breathed new life into the Forum’s list of advertising clients, literally bringing what had become the ghost of a newspaper back from the brink of extinction.
A few years later, he completely remodeled and updated the building’s interior and mechanical infrastructure, dividing the facility into several fully modernized office suites.
“Newspapers face challenges,” Cobb said, “but I often wonder how what we consider difficult times today compares with the wars, economic turmoil, social unrest and technological advances — like the advent of radio and television — this newspaper has weathered in the past.
The advent of digital layout and photography technology has drastically reduced the space required to produce a newspaper, and today’s Forum, printed in St. Joseph and distributed via U.S. mail and local retail outlets, operates from a single office space entered from Jenkins Street and containing an open-layout news and advertising area, private offices and an interview room.
Other sections of the building are occupied by a tenant businesses, including Brighton Wellness Spa and Thrivent Financial. A third tenant, Fairway Mortgage, is scheduled to move into a newly refurbished space later this month and will welcome customers through a new Main Street entrance.
ANTHONY BROWN/THE FORUM
Pictured is the Maryville Forum’s refurbished newsroom and advertising office as it appears today. In addition to the main open-floor-plan workspace, the area includes two private offices and an interview room. Pictured from left: Managing Editor Skye Pournazari, Publisher Phil Cobb, Advertising Representative Twyla Martin and Executive Assistant Rita Piveral. Not shown are reporters Geoffrey Woehlk and Anthony Brown.
NODAWAY COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY
The 1942 edition of the Maryville Daily Forum staff poses for a group portrait in the paper’s newsroom, then located north of the courthouse square at 414 N. Main St. The building still stands and now houses the The Pub tavern.
FORUM FILE PHOTO
Members of the Maryville Daily Forum editorial staff are shown producing and editing copy in the early 1970s. The paper, now weekly The Maryville Forum, traces its roots back to 1869, just four years after the end of the Civil War, when future Missouri governor Albert P. Morehouse began publishing the weekly Nodaway Democrat.
ANTHONY BROWN/THE FORUM
Known these days as The Pub tavern, this building on North Main Street served for many years as headquarters for the Maryville Daily Forum, now the weekly Maryville Forum, which traces its corporate roots back to 1869. The paper’s modern incarnation began 90 years ago, when Oscar S. Stauffer bought the paper in 1929 and changed the name from the Daily Democrat-Forum.
