Thoughts from the Publisher

After months of saying, “I’ve been in the newspaper business for nearly 20 years,” I have actually reached that milestone. As of this week, I have officially been in the biz for two decades. Starting at The Signal as an advertising salesperson in September of 1994, I began relationships with business owners, municipalities and non-profit organizations from both Long Beach and Signal Hill. I knew within that first month that the newspaper business was something special. Little did I realize at that time, that those relationships I began building then would still be part of my life two decades later.

During my early days as an ad salesperson, my boss/publisher of The Signal, Tom Allen, taught me that although we had a serious responsibility to our advertisers and readers, we should not forget to have a sense of humor and to empathize with those we were serving. I have done my best to follow his advice. After all, as he often said, “what’s printed is printed; we can’t take it back.” If we made a mistake, we would either print a retraction or correction in the next issue. We would then apologize to the injured parties ’til the cows came home. Nearly all of our errors (under Tom’s publishership and mine) turned out to be fabulous learning experiences that in many cases brought us closer to those who we thought would be angry with us.

Tom closed The Signal in 1998 and later gifted me bound copies of the entire run of The Signal. I have a shelf full of each issue from 1990-1998. Realizing my 20 year anniversary was approaching, I recently pulled out the book housing the issues from September and October of 1994. Looking through those pages, I couldn’t help but smile and shed a tear or two when I saw more than a dozen advertisers who were my customers in The Signal and are still with me now as advertisers in the Signal Tribune.

Who are those businesses? They are: Bixby Knolls Car Wash, National Cleaners, Bamboo Teri House, Buono’s Pizza, Signal Hill Disposal (now known as EDCO), American Gymnastics Academy (moved from Long Beach to Signal Hill), Bixby Knolls Towers (my Mom lives there now), Pete’s Plumbing (also moved from Long Beach to Signal Hill), Wall Units, Inc. (now House to Home Furniture), Bud’s Auto Upholstery, Long Beach Playhouse, Café Bixby (as of this week- changed their name to Breakfast Club of Long Beach) and Nino’s Ristorante Italiano.
Looking back through those old issues, I also found a restaurant review written by my mother, Marjorie Gromme’. I totally forgot that she often wrote articles for The Signal about local dining establishments. I guess the newspaper business was meant to be a family affair for the Stricharts and Grommes from the get-go!
Besides the newspaper, the Signal Tribune has also been involved in many other projects. We have sold and designed more than 120 anniversary banners and a special section for the city of Signal Hill’s 90th anniversary, published special issues for the 50th anniversary of the Hancock oil fire, opening of the new Signal Hill police station, a special issue for Veterans Day and a program for the Long Beach Veterans Day Parade (working on our second one now). We were also involved in the creation of the directory for the Bixby Knolls Business Improvement Association for 10 years and are currently working on a new full-color version that will be published in early 2015.

Now that I have completed 20 years, I can’t help but wonder where the next few years will take me and the Signal Tribune!