Ingram's May 2024

The Big

Half a century ago, this publication made a promise to the business community. We’ve never wavered on that. … and Counting

Fi y Years of Impa Significant Ev and Defining Mom

by Dennis Boone

F ifty years ago, Ludwell Gaines put his vision into ink on pa per, and it became the mission for what Kansas City knows today as Ingram’s : “I believe that Kansas City is enter ing an exciting and promising new era, an era of planned growth and a new dynamic spirit. Outlook is a new pub lication 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 in vestment topics which local publishers and broadcasters have heretofore been reluctant or unable to tackle. We will provide specialized investment infor mation 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 busi ness 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, fi nally, Ingram’s . Over those decades, the gap that Gaines discerned half a century ago has become a canyon: Readership of the biggest daily news paper in this market has declined by 80 percent in the 21st century; broadcast coverage remains as insig nificant 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 region al business—primarily banking and financial services, health-care and insurance, construction and devel opment, and higher education and workforce training.

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I ngr am ’ s

May 2024

Ingrams.com