Paradise NEWS starts Twenty-Sixth Year! Life is what happens while you are waiting to win the lottery.
This is the 25th December issue Paradise NEWS has published. We decided to start our 25th anniversary year this month with a little retrospection. The collection of covers on the front of this issue, are some of our favorites. We have learned many things in the time we have been in this business. For example, time flies whether you are having fun or not, so you might as well have fun. We also learned that persistence pays off. Accomplishments of the past quarter century are lasting changes that can be seen, such as the Corey Sunday Market, St. Pete Beach’s nickname, The Sunset Capital of Florida, and many less visible, like the countless readers who discovered Paradise NEWS when they relocated to the area. The Paradise NEWS story probably should start when Renee and I met almost 50 years ago in government class at St. Pete Junior College, but there just is not enough room on this page.
Enrolling our son in Admiral Farragut Academy 15 years later was a turning point which brought us to the beach. Jay Anderson, then the president of the Pass-a-Grille Community Association provided the inspiration to report on Pass-a-Grille as publisher of the Grille Bits Newsletter Renee founded in 1988.
The passing of Joan Haley was also a milestone. She had saved the first church on the island from demolition, lived in it and donated it to the county for a museum of Gulf Beach history. Renee volunteered to help clear it out and set it up as a museum. It was there she met Sally Yoder, historian and volunteer publisher for the Vina Del Mar Community Association who was volunteer museum archivist.
They published Paradise NEWS together in December of 1995.
The original edition celebrated the opening of the new ‘state of the art’ police department building in St. Pete Beach, mailed to all addresses in St. Pete Beach. After three years at breakeven, I was hired to help promote ad sales and quickly realized expansion was needed. We started mailing to Tierra Verde, which had precious little business of its own at the time, and advertising started to grow.
Soon after the millennium changed, Sally retired from Paradise NEWS and started her own beach newsletter Tropical Views in July 2000. Paradise NEWS grew again, mailing to all addresses in zip code 33706, in October 2001 after a weekly newspaper in Treasure Island stopped. Soon thereafter we added distribution to higher socio-economic carrier routes in neighboring zip codes.
Full color printing was added as printing costs declined due to technology and glossy covers were added in 2010. The move to glossy throughout came more recently in 2016, when we also decided to start targeting nearby waterfront communities on the mainland. In June 2018, the Island Reporter ceased and you are already seeing some of their writers and advertisers in Paradise NEWS. We are expanding again into downtown St. Petersburg.
We wish all our readers a Merry Christmas, and a Happy & Prosperous New Year!
Renee & Peter Roos & All the Talented People That make Your Holidays in Paradise a Little Bit Brighter.