Some of my astute (and older) readers know that I have a habit of using cliches from old movie lines. Especially comedies. Several of you correctly guessed that The Post's new requester mailing campaign "Be Somebody" was based on a funny line from one of my old favorites, "The Jerk," starring Steve Martin.

In the 1979 movie (the year my son Mike, our executive editor, was born by the way) Steve Martin stars as the naive Navin R. Johnson. The movie begins with Navin explaining that he was born "a poor black child" who suddenly realizes that he is actually white and that is why he prefers elevator music.

"This is the kind of music that tells me to go out there and be somebody," he exclaims. He then leaves his family home and strikes out on his own, living in a closet apartment in a gas station. One day he excitedly opens a copy of the new phone book and finds his name listed in it, causing him to cry out "I'm somebody now!"

Our campaign here, of course, is not to get you listed in the phone directory but to get you activated in our new mailing database. In the past year, the majority of households in the various hometowns that we service had already "become somebody" and now have their own individual name listed on the address label on the front of their free mailed copy of The Post. Since we are about to start using our fancy new mailing software that is tied in directly to the U.S. Postal Service database, we wanted to make sure that no readers out there get missed.

It worked!

We received thousands more online requesters within 48 hours with more coming in daily and the mailbox now filling up as well. My circulation staff is working overtime to enter all the information into the software and plans to have the database fully updated by next week.

As I explained in my last column, this will make our mail delivery even faster and enable us to track any address so that we can work with the Post Office to assure delivery of any individual home or apartment. If you want the newspaper and get missed, we can now get the problem fixed immediately by making sure your address is in our database. In the past we, like most bulk mailers, simply rented occupant address lists that we had no control over. With the postal service planning bulk mail service cutbacks, this will make mailing as a higher priority "Periodical Class" piece even more beneficial now.

It will also cost us less and we are already planning added coverage and space that should be enjoyed by both our readers and advertisers. In addition to expanded content offerings, one of our highest priorities is also to substantially lower the price of advertising on a weekly basis. Our goal is to enable more local businesses to offer weekly specials and coupons which will be a win-win for both our readers and the businesses.

This will be tied into our new Web site that will be launched this spring as well.

We have already begun working on the new improvements and you will soon start seeing them rolled out one at a time. Hopefully this will be music to your ears as well as ours, the kind that makes you want to "go out there and be somebody!"