A college education can be a great thing, but the reality of it is that all too often when you graduate, you end up with a diploma and, more often than not, a huge student loan debt that will take years to pay off, but not much else. Nothing I learned in a college classroom […]
Longtime reader Gerri Poth Beckman and her hubby John are spending some time in our old stomping grounds, the White Mountains of Arizona. Before we went on the road as fulltime RVers, Terry and I lived there and I published the weekly newspaper. The White Mountains are also the setting for my Big Lake mystery […]
As I recall, I was somewhere around 27 or 28 years old when I started my first weekly newspaper. It was quite an experience, and I learned a lot about the newspaper business and business in general, in a relatively short time. I was always fascinated by how successful business owners advertised. I learned fairly […]
Many people think that the money from subscriptions is how a newspaper survives, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. At best, subscription income covers the cost of getting the paper delivered, and not always even that. Many newspapers spend a lot of money managing a circulation department. In fact, several of my newspapers […]
For as long as I can remember the media has been accused of being dishonest, corrupt, and no more than a purveyor of lies. Especially when they report a story that offends a reader’s political or religious leanings. But the reality is that most small town newspapers have always strived to serve their communities by […]
In last week’s Newspaper Days blog, titled Jaws, I mentioned that Westport, Washington, located on the southern opening of Grays Harbor, billed itself as the Salmon Capital of the World in the late 1970s and early 1980s, due to the many charter boats that operated from there, as well as commercial fishing boats. People came […]
When you publish a small-town newspaper, everybody knows you. It’s kind of like being a celebrity, or at least a big fish in a small pond. Sometimes that was nice. I won’t lie, occasionally we got some special seating in restaurants and free movie or concert tickets, things like that. Other times it was a […]
In one of my earlier posts about my small town newspaper days, I mentioned a fellow named Ed, who lived in the infamous East of Snowflake area in northern Arizona. Ed was the man who wanted me to send an undercover reporter out to his property because a UFO had landed and little aliens were […]
After reading yesterday’s blog post Stepping On Toes, in which I mentioned receiving death threats and being assaulted during my time publishing small town newspapers, a couple of blog readers said they would like to hear some stories from those days. I’ve definitely got some stories to tell, and they don’t all involve death threats […]
You may remember that in yesterday’s blog I said I was over the worst of my cold. As it turns out, I lied. Even though I was very tired when I went to bed Thursday night, I just could not seem to get to sleep. My back was hurting and I could not get comfortable, […]
Lately I have been hearing from people asking me to promote their life coaching business to my readers. Apparently that’s the hot new thing to make a living without really working while you travel the country. Interestingly enough, none of them have spent much time, if any, on the road. Only one of them actually […]
Three blog readers have asked me how we are tolerating staying in Terry’s sister’s fifth wheel trailer in the middle of an Arizona summer, and wondering if it is even safe to do so, given the limited insulation and barely adequate air conditioners that most RVs have. Down in the desert it would not be […]
Today is a special day for us, our 17th wedding anniversary. And what a wonderful seventeen years it has been! Terry and I had both experienced bad marriages before and neither of us was looking to get involved with anyone. In fact, when it did happen it took us both by surprise. We had known […]
Well, it’s done. I finished the new issue of the Gypsy Journal yesterday, and by the time you read this it will be sitting on our printer’s web server back in Allegan, Michigan, waiting for them to do their thing with it. This is issue 73 of our little RV travel newspaper, and we’re pretty […]
With our time running out here in our old hometown of Show Low, Arizona, we are busy touching base with old friends, and trying to spend as much time with my daughter and her family as we can. Yesterday we visited with a friend who was a major advertiser when I owned the weekly newspaper […]