Publisher takes a look back

BY Chuck Golding

By Chuck Golding
Publisher, The Friday Flyer

I sat on the balcony of our room at the Turtle Bay Hilton looking out over the gorgeous sun setting over the north shore of Oahu. My four little kids giggling in the background with my wife after a day on the beach. My mind was preoccupied with a major decision in our family’s life.

Inspiration hit…right there on that balcony. It was time to leave the comfortable decade-long job as the publisher of community newspapers in Lake Elsinore and Temecula I had with the Press-Enterprise Company and venture out onto my own.

It was the spring of 1990 and I was just turning 33 years old. My wife and I had built a home on Clipper Court in Canyon Lake and fell in love with the community. I became acquainted with Canyon Lake matriarch Carolyn Knight with whom the Press-Enterprise and I worked with on publishing a monthly newspaper for the Canyon Lake Property Owners Association, The Canyon Lake Community News.

Carolyn and I, on the side, had also rescued the Canyon Lake Residential Directory from a bad publisher and it was a venture the two of us found profitable. It also helped us provide a nice service to the thriving Canyon Lake Home Owners Club.

Carolyn convinced me that there was nothing like being my own boss and knew that I could go out and find more residential directories out there to publish. Hence, on June 1, 1990, I left the Press-Enterprise Co. and started up Golding Publications. With nothing but some cashed-out 401K money and a very, very brave and supportive wife, I moved into a small office off the atrium inside the building behind Pepe’s and went to work.

The contract the Canyon Lake POA had with the Press-Enterprise soon fell apart and Carolyn, still the editor of the Community News, came knocking on my door. Would I assume the contract and take over the publication? We negotiated with the POA and felt like The Friday Flyer, which was still being handed out weekly at the gate as a folded flyer with tons of paid flyers inside, was much more popular than was the Canyon Lake Community News. Let us combine the two, and call the new newspaper, The Friday Flyer.

On November 1, 1990, The Friday Flyer newspaper was born. And it has been distributed every week until today.

My love of Canyon Lake didn’t begin then, though. I was a toddler, sitting between my grandfather and father in the seat of an old Chevy truck with 300-pound blocks of ice in the bed of the truck bouncing along Goetz Road from Perris to Railroad Canyon Lake in the very early 1960s. My grandfather owned the Perris Valley Ice Company and supplied the ice for the little fish tackle market and boat rental place that Don Martin had at the lake.

Don was always so great in letting us use his boats to paddle out and spend a little time fishing on the lake during some of those trips. The lake had strict rules about no body contact, so there was no swimming or other recreational activities other than fishing. We watched later in the decade as bulldozers carved out the fingers of the lake to create the coves and all the waterfront lots as Railroad Canyon Lake was converted to Canyon Lake.

Fast forward a few years and now I’m in my teens and I’m the one driving that old Chevy truck with the ice in the back. I’m bringing down a cool 10 bucks a week working for my grandmother crushing ice, loading ice vendors and delivering these 300-pound blocks of ice.

Delivering out to Don in his brand-new little Village Market and hamburger stand was one of my favorite stops. There weren’t very many houses built yet, but tons of Orange County folks bought lots to gain access to the lake and its water skiing, etc. Mingling with all those city teens was a treat for a kid from Perris.

When my little family purchased our lot on Clipper Court to build our house in the late 1980s, Canyon Lake was finally starting to boom. Builders had a difficult time keeping up with all the building. There wasn’t a time of the day when sawing lumber and nail guns couldn’t be heard.

But, Canyon Lake was still a little adorable town. Our kids would ride their bikes across Railroad Canyon Road to my office in the Town Center, wash windows or empty waste baskets to earn quarters so they could run up to Prestige Video, where the Library is now located, and play video games. They’d wander over to Unga Bunga, the exact spot where The Friday Flyer closes its doors next week, and play with Scott Alexander’s reptiles.

My adult kids brought their families over this week to help clean out our office and they reminisced about their Canyon Lake childhood. It was very nostalgic for us all. Such great memories. Such a great place.

After Carolyn and I started up The Friday Flyer, it began to grow. At first, all the photos were black and white and we used a single spot color on the cover. We always had to travel somewhat to get our newspaper printed. And it seemed we chose poorly…the printers we used all either went out of business or booted us. We were first printed by a printer in Vista, until that newspaper went belly up, then Carlsbad, and then Riverside. We were beginning to panic when Riverside dumped us, when a desperate newspaper publisher with lots of dead press time out in the middle of the desert gave me a call. He had me name my price and said he’d give us full color for free. We just had to drive two hours to drop off the layouts and pick up the newspapers. We were all in. And that also coincided with our best years. The real estate market in Canyon Lake was booming and we had half our paper, which grew to as much as 72 pages, with full page real estate ads. Cha-ching.

Then the 2007 sub-prime mortgage crisis hit. Overnight, those 48 pages of paid real estate advertising vanished. Soon, all the support business followed. We really never recovered.

Right about then, Carolyn retired. We had been together at the newspaper for 17 years. She had dutifully provided all of the news content for every Friday Flyer every week during those years. I ran the business side and made sure we paid the bills and had a functioning staff, etc., and never worried once about whether Carolyn would come through with the news and the layouts. What a perfect partner she was.

Because of some insanely hardworking and loyal people, despite the downturns and the difficulties of the print media world, The Friday Flyer has hung in there. We’ve been profitable. Our newspaper has been healthy and has served the community well. That has been our goal and I feel like we’ve fulfilled that goal.

In addition to some very solid support staff over the years, we have had some amazing people who have been with us most of their lives. Their devotion and talent has resulted in our longevity.

Marti Norris worked with Carolyn as she pushed her babies in strollers going around collecting flyers and taking photos. She later came to work for us as an advertising executive and has been with us ever since. To most commercial people in Canyon Lake, she IS The Friday Flyer. She has had her hands on 90 percent of every ad that has been placed in every newspaper that has entered your mailbox. Marti lives and breathes this newspaper. I know she has a Friday Flyer tattoo somewhere.

Lynda Hoffman has been here for 27 years. I’ve stopped counting the number of hats she wears. I don’t think she has a business card…all the titles won’t fit. I coached her son Brian in Under-6 soccer right after she moved her family to Canyon Lake. Her husband Jeff was the assistant coach. (Brian was a natural, by the way. Still is.) What a great catch to get her to agree to come to work for me. Out of business years ago with Lynda.

My son, Greg Golding, would earn money in high school recording CDs of high school choral concerts. It wasn’t long before he was making money selling videos of the variety shows while he was a student there. He worked his way through college on full scholarship as the videographer for the Brigham Young University football team.

All the while, he was getting a business degree with his eye on joining Golding Publications and expanding our business into the 21st Century. That he has done. In addition to adding videography and web design divisions onto the business, he has totally upgraded our methodology and procedure. He all of a sudden has been with us for 19 years. So incredibly valuable.

The accolades could go on…but as the doors of our office are about to close, let me pay tribute to somebody almost none of you have met. My wife, Gwen, is the one who for some crazy reason at 33 years of age and four kids, fully and honestly backed me leaving a highly-compensated job, with wonderful benefits, to dive into the deep abyss of Golding Publications and a 200 square foot office.

Not only did she believe in me, but I believed her. The business has some rough spots, but we’ve had some really, really great ones. We win. And these 33 years have had some late nights. That’s the newspaper business. Not a peep. Yup…still amazed.