I found my wife through newspaper advertising.

I can't think of a better recommendation than that.

No, it wasn't the personals. After I had moved from Lubbock to Amarillo in 1990, I saw a one-column-inch-ad in the movie section of the Amarillo Globe-News. Nestled among action movies and chick flicks was an ad the Paramount Terrace Christian Church singles ministry was running on a regular basis.

The ad drew me to a singles class at the church, I met Kathy there, and less than a year later we were married. We still are after 12 years. (And we're still attending PTCC.)

That's just one anecdote you can use to convince businesses - and churches - of the power of advertising. Another come from my aunt, Linda Haynes. She was PPA president for 1982-83, but now she's on the other side of the fence, running the North Fork antiques store in McLean.

Just a few weeks after she and partner Jo Ann Jones opened the business, they placed ads in five newspapers for a July 4 showing of an estate sale. In addition to the McLean. Groom News, Linda said, they advertised in the Pampa News, the Clarendon Enterprise, the Canadian Record and the County Star News.

When the Fourth of July rolled around, people from all over the Texas Panhandle showed up on Main Street in McLean for the estate sale. Linda and Jo Ann don't have any firm numbers on how many people the ads attracted, but they do know they sold almost all the estate merchandise.

* * *

Because I teach journalism at Amarillo College, I keep up with the best books in the field. And because I've worked at weekly and daily newspapers (Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, Amarillo Globe-News, Houston Community Newspapers, Galveston Daily News and owning The McLean News, 1979-80), I like materials that are practical, not written in a lofty, academic style.

So I have to take this opportunity to recommend to you some resources I think are indispensable for producing the best newspapers you can produce. There are others, but if I were stranded on a desert island, had to put out a newspaper and could have only three books, they would be:

* "The Newspaper Designer's Handbook," 5th Edition, by Tim Harrower.

* "The Associated Press Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law," (2004 Edition)

* "The Associated Press Guide to News Writing," by Rene Cappon.

All can be found at www.amazon.com, and the two AP books are also at www.ap.org.

Harrower's book simply is the best and easiest to understand book on newspaper page design ever written. It has plenty of examples of good, bad and indifferent designs and lots of ideas you can "steal" (By the way, Amarillo College hopes to have Harrower speak at a fall Media Mania Workshop in the next couple of years; watch your PPA mail for information.) The book is pricey, but it's worth it.

The "AP Stylebook" is called "the journalist's bible" for good reason. It provides the consistency in writing that's necessary for our newspapers to have some common ground. It covers mostly little things like spelling, capitalization and punctuation, but there also are valuable sections on business terms, sports terms, computer and Internet terms and then the part on media law that all of us should read for our own legal safety.

'The Associated Press Guide to News Writing" gives practical tips and examples on how to place quotes in our stories, when and when not to use adjectives and other advice on putting stories together. We all need it.

Go online, to the Amarillo College bookstore or somewhere and buy these books today. They'll be a great investment.

* * *

Signing off with a couple of quotes that always make me laugh:

Basketball coach Bob Knight to a sportswriter: "All of us learn to write by the second grade; then most of us go on to other things."

Mark Twain in Galaxy magazine, 1870: "I am not the editor of a newspaper and shall always try to do right and be good so that God will not make me one."