From The Publisher

We can’t imagine a more rewarding career than publishing Paradise NEWS for more than the past quarter century. We have had the opportunity to meet and do business with some of the best businesses in the area. We are known to and appreciated by residents and elected officials from the beaches through downtown to St. Petersburg’s eastern shore, in Tallahassee and Washington. 

It is not a career path without challenges! William Randolph Hearst started his publishing career with The San Francisco Examiner and $80 million from the Homestake Silver Mine his daddy gave him for his 21st birthday. He would have gone bankrupt had his mistress not given him her savings to go on. The only quote I recall from his autobiography is “You can come out of the publishing business with a small fortune if you start with a big enough one.” Not having a wealthy mistress, I have had to be more conservative. Hearst is credited with starting the Spanish-American War. Most of what we have accomplished is much more local and way more peaceful. We moved to St. Pete Beach 35 years ago, when our only son, Jordan, was a freshman boarder at Admiral Farragut Academy. Pete’s maternal grandfather had done well in life and wanted to help provide his great-grandchildren a better education than they might get otherwise. Jordan had boarded at Admiral Farragut and, as an only child, liked the education, but found living there confining. So, Renee and I decided to move close enough for him to be a day student. We held on to the home we moved from, knowing we would be back. That has been Jordan’s home, while we made a life for ourselves here. We had not realized the differences we would find, living at the beach rather than an hour inland. We found the weather better, the people are easier going, more fun-loving and there are a wealth of entertainment options with way less traffic jams than inland. After starting Paradise NEWS here, we planned to stay indefinitely. Jordan is 50 this summer. What I did not realize at the time was how rewarding owning a home on the barrier islands would be. We were going to rent while Jordan finished high school but owning a home in Pass-a-Grille turned out to be a better option. We bought our first beach home, a 1930’s vintage all-wood home on 30th Ave., at the north end of Pass-a-Grille. Twelve years later, when we sold it for double, it gave us back ALL of the payments we had ever made on it, including principal, interest, taxes, and even insurance. Our second home in north St. Pete Beach is now worth more than three times what we paid 22 years ago. It may be like that all over the state today, but having lived “in Paradise” for 30 for FREE feels like a blessing from heaven. Paradise NEWS has done its part to allow us to live here, and vacation once or twice each year, so it has truly been a symbiotic relationship.

We publish monthly except in July and September, so in this issue we have tried to condense two months worth of information into a single issue. We mail 20,000+ copies to valuable residences at the beaches and downtown St. Petersburg and distribute at least 10,000 more print copies in 400+ racks and stacks to reach visitors and other interested residents. 

We value advertisers that can be trusted to do a great job at a fair price and are always looking for new ones for our readers, because our advertisers often get too busy to continue to advertise. If you know someone who does a great job for you, and needs more business let us know about each other. We treasure our regular readers who make our labor worthwhile. Have a great summer, and remember our website is 10 years deep and often updated daily, at least weekly and we email the top five things to do each weekend to digital newsletter subscribers (free). See this week’s and sign up under the weekly tab at www.paradisenewsfl.com.