The Superior Express -

This newspaper gets hundreds of e-mails a day. I processed e-mail Saturday but didn’t on Sunday. Monday morning more than 400 e-mails were looking for my review. With that many in the in box, I don’t take the time to read all of them. I scan them looking for senders I recognize or a subject that indicates they may be of interest. The majority go right to the trash.

A few days ago a man’s name in the subject line caught my attention. I looked at the name and tried to remember where I had seen it before. I associated with my days of selling agricultural products but couldn’t place where it fit.

The e-mail contained a file I couldn’t read on the receiving computer but my curiosity was aroused to the point I transferred the file to a computer that would open it.

As I reviewed the e-mail, the pieces began to fall into place. It was about a grant the Dean Coughenour Estate had given Pawnee Mental Health.

I didn’t recognize the name until I read the story. Then I remembered Dean Coughener as a sharp, middle-aged newspaper owner with an office and plant near the Kansas State University campus.

My college professors used him and his successful business as an example of the opportunities offered by niche publications.

A struggling weekly newspaper had been published in his Aggieville shop. To supplement the general interest weekly newspaper, a weekly newspaper known as Grass and Grain was started. It was tailored to serve a multi-county ag community. More than once I visited his office, I purchased advertising in his publication, bought things that were advertised in the publication and ordered commercial printing from his shop. Before my arrival in Manhattan, the general interest weekly had ceased publication.

When I returned to Superior and became a partner in Superior Publishing Company, I applied ideas given me by the Manhattan businessman. Two years after becoming editor of The Superior Express, a weekly farm publication known as the Farmer-Stockman of Nebraska, which had been a faltering monthly publication based at Cozad, was purchased and moved to Superior. It was converted to a weekly and published at Superior for 14 years. At its peak, more than 20,000 copies were mailed each week, and more than half the issues published in a year contained more than 32 tabloid pages. Many of the weekly mailings were so large they more than filled the mail truck. I remember helping the route driver stack mail sacks from floor to ceiling, leaving just a small space at the rear of the truck for mail he would load at other offices on his way to the sectional center at Hastings.

Eventually, a larger truck was added and we began sorting the mail into cages. This sorting reduced the handling needed within the postal system. For example, there were cages filled with mail for each Nebraska sectional center.

When it came time to remodel the Superior Publishing Company buildings, I adapted ideas I gathered from the Ag Press building in Aggieville.

Until reading this week’s story about the gift from the Coughenour estate, I had forgotten about the Manhattan journalist.

But I haven’t forgotten my professor’s instructions about finding a niche and filling it. There are still many opportunities in rural America for entrepreneurs who find and fill niches. A successful businessman, Coughenour apparenly filled many niches with his company known as Ag Press.

As we learned with the Farmer-Stockman, niches don’t last forever, but they can be good while they last.

While a college student, the Kansas State University Housing Department built a multi-use recreation area near the residence hall I lived in. The concrete slab was to be used not only as a tennis and basketball court but also as an ice skating rink.

When the skating rink opened, my father’s business had an inventory of ice skates that hadn’t sold well. I loaded those skates into the trunk of my car and took them to Manhattan where I promptly sold them to college students interested in ice skating.

I sold my initial inventory but I didn’t restock for the ice skating rink wasn’t practical. The winters were not cold enough to keep the water frozen. However, it did provide the setting for a picture page I had published in the student newspaper. During a mid-winter warm spell, the ice melted and I photographed students splashing around in the resulting ice water trying to play basketball. On speculation, I submitted the photographs to the Collegian editor. I received a few dollars for the submission, probably not enough to pay for my photography supplies, but more importantly I received an example of my work for inclusion in the stringbook I was making to show potential employers the quality of my work.

Not everything we do is immediately profitable, but what we do today can be a building block for tomorrow.