Time flies when you are having fun. The truth is, as we get older, time flies whether we are having fun or not! Well, as we make our way through year No. 2 with The New Falcon Herald, we are definitely having fun yet trying to determine what’s next. We talked in our last edition about our humble beginnings and our intention to create a monthly newsletter that would be direct mailed to a wide area of Falcon, with the idea of expanding that direct-mail zone. However, as we’ve mentioned a few times, the response to our initial newsletter was overwhelmingly positive, and we had to switch to a newspaper format the month following our launch. The paper just kept getting bigger and that meant increased postal and printing costs.Anyway, we’ve been sending our newspaper via ground mail to about 3,300 homes for more than one year, and we are tossing around the idea of adopting a subscription policy for our readers. Our postal costs, as we’ve said, have increased, and we absorb those costs every month. Rather than raise our advertising rates or charge for the newspaper at this time, we’d like to survey our readers and ask if they would support a yearly subscription cost of $18. If we decide, based on our readers and advertisers comments and desires, to go to a subscription mailer only, we will increase our newspaper stands and locations.In other words, our readers would no longer receive the newspaper in the mail at no cost. We do have some current subscribers, so obviously nothing would change for them. We’ve done a bit of research, and we have concluded that we are about the only for profit newspaper in America that is mailed to customers without cost.However, just because other newspapers do it this way or that doesn’t mean we are averse to trying new things. We haven’t yet concluded what’s best for our community, so we are asking for a response from you.The $20 subscription rate covers the costs of mailing the newspaper only. Let us know what you think. Our idea is merely a seed that we are planting. We will wait to hear from you to determine where we go or grow from here. Until we do get a good feel for what the community desires, it will be business as usual. We’ll keep you posted.On another note: Some Falconites have suggested that we publish our newspaper twice a month. One thing keeps us from moving in that direction this year: All of our costs would increase if we went to a bi-monthly newspaper; thus, our advertising and subscription costs would be significantly more as well. We believe in taking things slow. At some point, this newspaper will most likely be a weekly, but there is time. And perhaps late this year or early next, it will be time to first test the waters with a bi-monthly edition. Meanwhile, we can’t always get you the news as it happens but we try to do more in-depth pieces about issues of interest to everyone.And we continue to encourage your feedback, ideas, and suggestions regarding our content.Okay, so please let us know what you think about our subscription idea. Take a minute, if you will, and send your opinions to us at ml@jazzwireless.net or call and leave a message on our landline – 683-7292 or write a note and address it to The New Falcon Herald at 7643 McLaughlin Rd. #141, Falcon, Co., 80831.And, as usual, thanks for your support. Happy Valentine’s Day! We’ll see you next on February 26.Michelle and MarylouP.S. We’d like to extend our heartfelt apologies to Elaine Douthett. We thanked all of our writers and editors, our designer, our Web designer, our columnists and our sales reps in our first-year anniversary issue of the NFH. As luck (or memory lapses) would have it, we forgot someone very important – someone who has been with us from the beginning. We forgot to include our ad designer, Elaine Douthett. Sorry Elaine – we appreciate all that you do, and please note our follow up thank you ad inside!Remember to visit our Web site at www.newfalconherald.com.PLEASE NOTE THE NEW E-MAIL ADDRESS FOR MARYLOU DOEHRMAN: ml@jazzwireless.net.
