Not unique to Joplin, local media is trash almost everywhere now. Aside from limited or low quality coverage of events I’ve also notice cutting back on local staff even on camera weather people, and outsourcing the weather reports to some random person from another region, probably at another station owned by the same media conglomerate. You can tell because they mispronounce a lot of towns and are never visible on camera at the same time as the anchor.
Especially with newspaper it’s a death spiral. Paper gets sold to a conglomerate that cuts cost which reduces quality. People cancel so the corp owner raises prices to maintain revenue which makes more people cancel, so they cut more cost and further reduce quality… and so on.
When you see the news folks on location, they were in a station van, had a driver and a camera man, and the anchor was dressed up. Now they arrive in their own car, anchor sets up a tripod and films themselves. Most of them are young, have little background in what they are talking about, and are paid nothing like they used to be.
In the mineral area, KREI/KTJJ/KJFF had the endzone show for probably 40 years. Each station broadcast a game of the week, and then the endzone show went on for an hour or so afterwards. Local coaches interviews, continuous score updates, and highlights from games around the state. Few months ago, bought out, cleaned house, and no local programming. It's just going to continue.
