Journal promotions designed to curry favors with readers

As The Flint Journal prepares to welcome the public to its 125th anniversary open house Sunday, we take a look at events the newspaper has put on for the community over the years.

By Doug Pullen
Journal Entertainment Writer

We all know about the spelling bee, the New Year’s baby and the ever-popular Outpick Poniers contest.

But did you know The Flint Journal once sponsored its own boy band? Or a marbles tournament? Trips to Europe?

Those days are long gone, vestiges of different times. These days, The Journal sponsors revenue-generating events including a soccer tournament, a 5K run and walk — which benefits the American Lung Association — and a Women’s Expo.

We still have a host of contests, such as The Flint Journal Academy Awards Contest, now entering its 22nd year. We also put our name on other people’s events as a corporate sponsor, such as the Crim Festival of Races and cultural happenings at the Flint Cultural Center and Clio Area Amphitheater.

Why?

“(To get) readers into the paper,” said Journal retiree Rowland Raymond, former creative art director for The Journal’s marketing department in the 1970s and ’80s.

Marketing at that time mainly helped advertising customers with research and design services, said former marketing department Director M. Teresa Calkins. She said community outreach fell either to advertising or personnel staff.

That changed when a full-service marketing department was born in February 1995.

It was an inauspicious beginning.

“The marketing department was carved out of the third-floor area that had housed the editorial photography darkroom area, dismantled after computers replaced jugs and trays of chemicals for producing photos,” Calkins said by e-mail from The News-Press in Fort Myers, Fla. “The area hadn’t seen the light of day in years and was in sorry condition.”

The six-person startup staff added two key individuals and functions over time:

• Mary Ann Chick Whiteside from the newsroom to help turn The Journal from a printed product into an information service, using the Internet, voice mail and the printed newspaper to provide area residents with information when and how they want it.

• Lois Revenaugh — now marketing director — brought advertising expertise and built The Journal’s events roster to include our Catch Your Breath Run and Walk, The Flint Journal Women’s Expo and the Publisher’s Cup Soccer Tournament.

But all of those folks are too young to remember the Flint Daily Journal Boys Band.

These days, the term “boy band” conjures up singing, dancing, money-making pretty boys adored by hordes of screaming girls.

That wasn’t exactly the case in 1922, before The Journal moved into its current quarters on E. First Street and dropped “Daily” from its name. The paper recruited 26 student musicians, slapped military-style uniforms on them and sent them to perform at community functions. The band debuted at The Journal’s annual picnic for the paper’s 500 newsboys, or “newsies” as they were called, at Flint Park.

There are no reports of screaming teenage girls, but one Journal scribe did gush: “Under the direction of Bandmaster A.V. Fleck, this organization, which a few months ago could scarcely play two notes in succession in tune, has been turned into a musical organization, which does itself proud.”

Kids today are into video games and computers. But before television changed the cultural landscape, young boys enjoyed a good game of marbles, or “mibs.” The Journal showed just how hip it was in the 1930s and ’40s by sponsoring tournaments. Each school would crown a champion, who would compete against kids from other schools until one emerged victorious.

There were lots of contests and events for children. Tempo Editor Cookie Wascha remembers judging coloring contests the paper sponsored.

“It took all weekend and all the floor space in the ... Tempo department,” she said.

Big kids weren’t forgotten: Duffers got their day in the sun. Well, special ones did.

“We used to have a contest for everyone who made a hole-in-one,” recalls Journal sports department retiree Len Hoyes, who still writes for the paper. “It was a day where everybody who made one would play against each other.”

Hoyes said the unusual tournament sank its last putt in the early ’50s.

All kinds of contests have been hits with readers, from the now-defunct Kodak International Newspaper Snapshot Awards, which featured the work of amateur photographers from the area, to offbeat fare such as last year’s “You Know You’re From Flint If ...” contest, in which hundreds of readers submitted jokes about their hometown in hopes of hearing comedian Jeff “You Might Be a Redneck If ...” Foxworthy perform them at the Clio Area Amphitheater.

The paper’s oldest contest goes to the youngest member of the community. The annual recognition of a New Year’s baby has awarded gifts, savings and war bonds to the first child born each year since 1924.

The Journal used to play travel agent, too. Well, sort of. The paper teamed with a local agency, Wonderland Travel Service, for its annual Flint Journal European Summer Tour. Custom-made “Flint Journal Tour de Europe” bags were handed out to the travelers, who numbered in the 40s each year in the late ’50s and early ’60s.

The Journal still has promotions that champion children. Next year’s middle school segment of The Flint Journal Championship of Champions spelling bee, co-sponsored with the Genesee Intermediate School District, will be named for Journal personnel manager Vertie Brewer, who has coordinated the event for 15 years.

Now in its 19th year, Kaleidoscope is the annual free, fun-filled day that draws between 2,000-3,000 children (and their families) to Crossroads Village on the first Saturday in June. The Journal collaborates with agencies from throughout the county that are dedicated to providing educational, cultural and fun activities for younger children.

Last year, The Journal added the Publisher’s Cup Classic. The soccer tournament draws thousands of youth athletes from all over the region to fields in Clio, Davison, Flushing and Grand Blanc Township.

Less visible to many people is The Journal’s Newspapers in Education program, a project that brings newspapers into the classroom. It dates to the Cold War-era of the 1950s, when it was called Newspapers in the Classroom of a Free Society.

And high school students interested in learning more about a career in newspapers can participate in The Journal’s Explorers Post, a cooperative effort with the Boy Scouts’ Tall Pine Council.

The Journal’s former marketing Director M. Teresa Calkins contributed to this report. She started at The Journal in 1990 and left this year. Entertainment writer Doug Pullen started at The Journal in 1991. He can be reached at (810) 766-6140 or dpullen@flintjournal.com.