The Labor Beacon began publishing in 1956 under the watchful eye of community leader Meyer Goldman. Goldman oversaw the growth of the paper through the golden years of organized labor. In the early 70's Goldman, with other community leaders, founded Kansas City's first non-profit Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) Prime Health. Prime Health later became what it is today, Humana. Goldman sold the paper in the mid 80s and several members of organized labor joined together to operate the paper. Among those that led the effort was Barry Wilkinson, Business Manager for the Laborers 663. Not long thereafter the paper was sold to Mike Riley who went on to become the Business Manager for the Greater Kansas City Building Trades. Unfortunately by this time the paper had fallen on hard times and several of the unions had dropped subscriptions. In 1993 Kevin O'Neill purchased the paper. With only about 2,800 paying subscribers the paper was close to bankruptcy. The timing of the purchase couldn't have been better. President Bill Clinton had just taken the oath of office and a Democratic house and Senate were in place. Optimism struck the labor community. Subscriptions started coming in and after 5 years the Beacon had reached a lofty plateau of 20,000 subscribers. Sixteen years later with over 24,000 subscribers the Beacon continues to inform and educate members of organized labor with strong news content, cutting edge editorial with a focus on local, state and national labor news. While many labor news organizations have fallen on hard times, the Labor Beacon has remained the beacon of light it was intended to be when Meyer Goldman started publishing the paper 51 years ago.