Brent Zephyrine

Like the Mighty Shad­ow's Bass­man, the idea for the com­mu­ni­ty newslet­ter-Curepe Round­about-"popped" in­to the head of its ed­i­tor and pub­lish­er, Joanne Williams-Schmid­ham­mer, and just didn't leave her head "some three years" af­ter the thought first man­i­fest­ed it­self. The newslet­ter, which cov­ers a ge­o­graph­i­cal land­scape which en­com­pass­es 16 ar­eas around Curepe-from the Croisee in San Juan (West), to Ma­coya/ El Do­ra­do (East), down to Bam­boo (South) and up to Mara­cas Val­ley (North), had its pre­miere 36-page is­sue on Sep­tem­ber 7. Pub­lished by the Mir­ror Pub­lish­ing Group, Curepe Round­about was of­fi­cial­ly launched on the CNC3 Morn­ing Show ex­act­ly one month ago.

"Curepe Round­about es­sen­tial­ly aims to make res­i­dents of the Curepe area proud and knowl­edge­able, and will stim­u­late eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty as we project the busi­ness­es, fac­to­ries, malls, ter­tiary schools, hos­pi­tals and au­to in­dus­tries with­in its bound­aries," the ed­i­tor said. With 10,000 copies hit­ting the stands, Williams-Schmid­ham­mer laud­ed the work of both her friends and her ad­ver­tis­ers whom she said helped tremen­dous­ly in mar­ket­ing the "free" pa­per. "I have some stock for min­istries, T&T for­eign mis­sions, em­bassies, NALIS, lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­gions and prospec­tive ad­ver­tis­ers. "As we de­vel­op, I ex­pect to have a vol­un­teer dis­trib­u­tor in each of my 16 ar­eas," she added.

Curepe Round­about can be ob­tained at Kan­hai Raghu­bir Jew­ellers, WAVE Swim­suit Shop and Kin's Su­per­mar­ket-all lo­cat­ed in Curepe. She said while there were some "big time" com­mer­cial en­ti­ties that promised to be a part of the pre­miere edi­tion and "pulled out" at the last minute, the ef­forts of those loy­al ad­ver­tis­ers-like Richard Chan, of Val­park Chi­nese Restau­rant-who helped get the newslet­ter "off the ground," should not go un­no­ticed.

As for the read­ers' re­cep­tion of the newslet­ter, she de­scribed the feed­back as "very hum­bling." She said peo­ple from all walks of life loved the pa­per and keep ask­ing when is the next one. Ac­cord­ing to Williams-Schmid­ham­mer, the newslet­ter, which is ex­pect­ed to be a quar­ter­ly pro­duc­tion, will wit­ness its Christ­mas edi­tion "at the end of No­vem­ber". There­after, she teased: "We'll wait and see what hap­pens."