When Groupon came to our town

And then you had Groupon and the myriad copycat coupon daily deal services. We had one local business who used Groupon and generated 88 new customers, he mirthfully reported to us.

While Groupon created a relative tidal wave of customers, his ads in the Kuna Melba News were producing a steady trickle of clients. He was reconsidering his ad-buying decisions.

But then I calculated the real cost of a Groupon deal: Let's say he offered 50 percent off his regular rate of $100 for a visit. So that’s $50 gone right off the top for 88 customers. That equals $4,400. On top of that, he has to give half of his proceeds to Groupon. So, even if all 88 customers redeem their coupon, he’d have to give $25 for each customer, or $2,200, to Groupon. In essence, he’s generated $2,200 in revenue but has spent $6,600 to get it.

Plus, in our minds, offering such ridiculous discounts does not help your business in the long run because you’re not really attracting loyal customers. You’re simply attracting customers who are looking for a crazy deal and don’t value your product enough to pay full price for it.

The emergence and surge of Groupon in those days was a scary prospect, without a doubt, particularly for newspapers and particularly for small newspapers like us. But as time passed, we saw Groupon and other coupon daily deal sites wane in popularity like so many other advertising gimmicks.

Our local business owner continued advertising in the Kuna Melba News but never again did a Groupon deal, nor did any other local business in our market.

On our launch of "Business of the Month"

As the economy continued to deteriorate, we continued to do our best to promote our local businesses. At the beginning of 2010, we launched a new feature, “Business of the Month.” We hired a local resident to write a story each month about a selected business and we unabashedly urged everyone reading the story to go to that business at least once that month. We then ran ads for free for the whole month for that business.

This was my little version of a “cash mob,” in which hundreds of people descend on one business and spend hundreds of dollars there to give that business a cash infusion, a mini-stimulus, if you will.

Our first business was a local restaurant. The owner seemed reluctant to tell us how it went, other than to say that it was really nice of us to do that. But we did hear through the grapevine later that it was the restaurant’s best month ever.

We, ourselves, received compliments from readers who loved the idea and thanked us for either spotlighting one of their favorite local businesses or for introducing them to a business they were not familiar with.

We continued the effort throughout the year, at which time it felt like the feature had run its course. In the beginning, it was new and generated buzz. After 11 months, it became just another feature that had lost its novelty.

But it was a good run and I think it did a lot of good for those businesses that were featured. Plus, I think it generated a lot of goodwill for the newspaper.

Thank your local daily newspaper every day

My local daily newspaper had some excellent articles today about: Rep. Todd Akin, the value of a college education in this recession, the demographic makeup of the incoming college freshman class, Pussy Riot-like punishments around the world, Phyllis Diller's obit, charitable giving in religious states, evidence of Amelia Earhart's plane and more.

Plus, I learned about Rosie O'Donnell's heart attack, Nikki Minaj on American Idol and the death of Scott McKenzie.

In addition to local briefs, there were briefs about student immigration checks in Alabama, Rep. Yoder's skinny dip, another Syrian attack, cosmonauts' space walk, Argentina seeking voting rights for 16-year-olds and India blocking websites.

And that doesn't even count sports, life and business — all delivered right to my house.

And I could read all of that news and vital information in about the same amount of time that it takes to watch half an episode of Dancing with the Stars.

And I could read all of that news and vital information without any shrill commentary about those stories from either the left or the right.

Thank you to my local daily newspaper for making me a well-informed citizen every day.

Paying someone to do deliveries was money well-spent

After three years of counting up the leftover copies at convenience stores, I was burned out and borderline psychotic about newsstand sales.

First of all, I took everything personally, so every leftover copy was a personal affront to my abilities as an editor. I would bring my stack of 50 leftover copies of the paper up to the counter with my receipt for 10 copies and payment of $5 and have to endure the chuckle from the clerk behind the counter who would invariably joke, “Not a very good week, huh?”

Second, I still could not handle the vagaries of the public’s taste in news. One week a salacious story about a suicide sold out like hotcakes, but the next week only 100 people bought a copy of the issue that contained important information about an upcoming election on which I had spent hours working.

Finally, it was physically exhausting. After driving one hour to Homedale, hefting 20- to 30-pound bundles of newspapers off the loading dock and into my car, driving one hour back to Kuna, unloading those same bundles onto a hand truck at the post office and distributing those bundles to the carriers, then driving 30 minutes down to Melba, delivering to the post office down there as well as a grocery store and then driving 30 minutes back to Kuna, the last thing I wanted to do was drive all over town delivering new bundles to 10 more stores, which meant driving, parking, hefting a bundle to each store, embarrassedly retrieving my leftovers for the week, collecting my pittance from a minimum wage clerk, lugging my leftovers back to my car then moving on to the next store.

The whole process was demoralizing and draining. To pay someone $25 or $30 to deliver to the stores for me was the best money we ever spent.

My sanity and my body were restored.

Even with price hike, subscription was a bargain

At the start of 2010, we raised the price of the newspaper from $22 per year for a subscription to $28 per year and the single-copy price from 50 cents to 75 cents per issue. Despite some people turning up their nose at $28 as “spendy,” we knew that even $28 was way below other weekly newspaper subscription rates. Even in the Treasure Valley, annual subscriptions were $30, $36 and up to $46. Plus, it was ridiculous to me to think that a family of six will go to McDonald’s and spend $28 on a dinner of Big Macs and Happy Meals but balk at $28 for an entire year of the Kuna Melba News. Heck, I’d go into the convenience stores and stand behind some guy buying $28 worth of Red Bull, beef jerky, cigarettes and Keystone Light. No, no one was going to make me feel guilty about charging $28 for a year’s worth of the Kuna Melba News.

Taking an unnecessarily stinky walk through your neighborhood on a Tuesday night

I recall one year doing a particularly good job of telling people what was going to be opened and closed for a certain holiday. Included in that list was a definitive item about garbage collection. Essentially, if a holiday were on a Monday, garbage collection would be delayed by one day. Therefore, if your regular collection day fell on a Tuesday, your holiday-week collection day would be Wednesday.

On Tuesday morning that week, I pulled out of my driveway to head into the office and I noticed that my neighbor had put out his garbage for that morning. Well, I thought, he doesn’t read the paper. Then I noticed our neighbor on the other side had his garbage can out. And the person across the street. And their neighbors. In fact, every single house on my street had their garbage can out. I took a special trip around the neighborhood and saw nearly every house with its garbage can out.

It is a small thing, I know, but it got me to thinking about how the world would be a better place if everyone just read the newspaper. After all, an evening stroll through the neighborhood becomes unpleasantly stinky when the garbage is put out for two days. Similarly, neighborhoods and street corners were littered with garage sale signs, sandwich boards and posters for yard sales and youth sports signups and pieces of paper stapled to telephone poles for lost cats and items for sale. My perennial favorite was always the cardboard box with writing on the side of it. I always had the nearly uncontrollable urge to swerve off the road and drive over the box with my car, but there was usually a big rock placed in the box to weigh it down.

I got to the thinking that if everyone just read their local newspaper and advertised all their stuff in the paper, we wouldn’t need all this clutter. But alas, people put up those signs because otherwise, if they advertised only in the newspaper, they wouldn’t reach a significant segment of the population.

But not just the small stuff like garbage cans and yard sales would be affected. How about elections? That’s pretty big. Like a supplemental levy election, which affected people’s taxes.

Sometimes it helps to view your life objectively

I recall getting ready to go out to the annual Down Home Country Christmas craft bazaar on a cold December Saturday morning in 2009. For many reasons, I wasn’t quite up to the task that day. Having worked extra hours just about every night the previous week, I just wanted to do nothing that Saturday but sit around in my pajamas, read the paper and maybe watch an old movie on TV. I was not looking forward to a full day of a craft bazaar, taking photos, interviewing grumpy vendors, covering the parade and Christmas tree auction and not getting home till well after dark.

But then it occurred to me: Isn’t this what it’s all about? Isn’t this exactly what I had imagined life being like as the editor of a small-town newspaper? Holiday bazaars and bake sales, candidate debates and Friday night football games. If I looked at my situation objectively, I could see that this was an enviable position — the enviable position I had envied — to be getting up on a bright clear crisp winter morning, heading downtown to the Old 4^th Street Gym, where I would see friends and acquaintances, perhaps meet some new friends and be a vital part of the life of a community.

Yes, this is what it was all about. I headed downtown in the bright December sunshine with a new perspective and a renewed energy for my job and my life in general.