If USA Today/Gannett Co. wanted to do it up big, they could really do it up if they found a way to get all their Gannett-owned community newspapers papers involved. That would be cool.

The newspaper subscription idea sounds like a great idea - I was thinking about something along the lines of what we do every summer with Six Flags over Texas: coupons are printed in each daily Tulsa World for one week, and readers must cut out a single numbered coupon from each of those papers. You've got to get all seven coupons, tape them to a form in the Sunday paper, send them in, and you get two free tickets to Six Flags.

Amusement park tickets are not cheap, and clipping coupons from seven consectutive days worth of newspapers is the easiest thing in the world - readers love it. They even write letters to the editor saying what a great promotion it is.

You hope, I guess, that your rack / newspaper box sales increase for that week. But I guess the main goal is that you introduce new readers to the paper, you hope maybe after they buy a week's worth of papers that they get hooked on reading the morning paper and perhaps buy a subcription.

Next time we have an inter-office contest for marketing ideas, I'm going to suggest frequent flyer coupons printed in seven days' worth of papers - maybe I've got a shot with that one

Thanks much for your input on this.