In 2006, the director of creative services and the vice president of advertising sales came up with a plan to sell more ads…and I was given my own column assignment. For three years, I interviewed local San Diego business owners and wrote an advertorial column, “Furniture Focus,” published each Saturday in the Home Section of the paper. It was a lot of fun, and according to the account managers, the retailers were thrilled with the added publicity – I helped sell a lot of windows, flooring and furniture, and often designed their ads to boot. I was also received the San Diego Union-Tribune’s 2006 Advertising Recognition Top Achiever Award, for this endeavor. I continued to write this column on a weekly basis until I left the paper in November, 2010.