Paradise considers Casperson's officer to produce town newsletter

By Jon Cox

April 19, 2005 | PARADISE -- Residents could receive a free monthly newsletter if the City Council approves a proposal by one of the initial founders of the former Cache Citizen newspaper.

Quent Casperson, 55, proposed the newsletter to the council though no official action has been taken. The newsletter would be sent along with water bills each month to city residents.

"I don't know if it will go through, it's so far up in the air right now," Casperson said. "They've said yes. They've said no. They've said maybe."

Casperson had asked for a two-year commitment from the council. The group said they could only do it on a month-to-month basis.

Casperson works as a sales manager for Cache Valley Insurance. His first experience with journalism came as a college student in Idaho over 30 years ago.

"As a freshman at Ricks College, I wrote a letter to the editor that got 29 rebuttals," Casperson said. "I don't quite know how I touched such a live wire."

After graduation, he would work with the Preston Citizen, a weekly newspaper for the small Idaho town. Casperson's principal responsibility was selling advertising for the business. "But when you're part of such a small group, you wear every hat," Casperson said.

Casperson would leave his job at the Preston Citizen to work as a real estate agent in Idaho Falls with an annual salary of around $40,000. In 1978, one year later, he received a phone call from his former employers who told him of their plans to start up a Cache Valley newspaper, the Cache Citizen. Casperson dropped his job in Idaho Falls and began work with the fledgling newspaper.

"I went from making $40,000 a year to about $18,000," Casperson said. "I made great sacrifices to do the Citizen, but I loved it. I loved to go in there and smell that press."

After Casperson left the Citizen several years later, the group sold the business to Utah State University, where it was produced as a student-run newspaper by the department of journalism and communication. Today, the newspaper is no longer in print.

Casperson currently holds the rights to the name "Cache Citizen" and could start up the paper again in the future, though he believes such a possibility is unlikely. In the meantime, he continues his work with Cache Valley Insurance while still hoping to contribute his journalistic experience to towns such as Paradise.

NW
MS