In this podcast, the Hawaii Catholic Herald’s associate editor Anna Weaver interviews the Herald’s circulation manager Donna Aquino. Aquino has been with the Herald since right out of high school and not only manages the newspaper’s circulation but also helps proofread each issue, and takes care of many administrative tasks.
Transcript:
Anna Weaver: Hello and welcome to another episode of Hawaii Catholic Herald Highlights, the regular podcast for the Diocese of Honolulu newspaper. Today I’m talking to someone I know pretty well, my Herald coworker, Donna Aquino. Donna, thank you for letting me coax you into doing this interview. I appreciate you doing that.
Donna Aquino: Oh, you’re welcome.
Anna Weaver: So you’ve actually worked for the Herald since 1980? I think you said.
Donna Aquino: Yes.
Anna Weaver: You were how old when you started at the Herald?
Donna Aquino: I was actually 17 years old.
Anna Weaver: And how did you hear about the job? I don’t think I know.
Donna Aquino: I went to a state office. Before you could go to the state office and apply for jobs. And so I went and I just applied for an office clerk job. And when I came to the interview, this is where I was at. And been here ever since.
Anna Weaver: Do you think they knew that you were Catholic in giving you this job?
Donna Aquino: Yeah, the manager actually just so happened, knew my grandmother, who was a very strong Catholic as well. She has passed away now, but she knew that our family was very strong Catholics. And so I guess that’s why she thought, well, I’ll hire her because she has that background. Even though I was very young.
Anna Weaver: Yes. So right out of high school. And you’re from the Windward side, you go to St. Ann Kaneohe. That’s always been your parish, growing up?
Donna Aquino: Yes. Kaneohe, at St. Ann’s.
Anna Weaver: Okay. And you’re actually the second longest employee here. Because while Patrick, our editor, has worked here 40 years, as of December, right? You were the next longest hire. And then Shaina, our other coworker, has worked here even longer. Right?
Donna Aquino: Yah since 1975.
Anna Weaver: Okay, so you all are veterans and it’s just the reporter/photographer/assistant editor position that rolls over all the time, huh?
Donna Aquino: We’ve been here for a long time.
Anna Weaver: Yeah. And how has your job changed since you first came on in 1980?
Donna Aquino: Well, when I first started, everything was written, manual. You know, you use a manual typewriter. We would write everything out. All of the subscriptions were on cards, index cards. And that’s how we did it. Like, very ancient as you would see today. But now we’ve changed it to computers and just gotten more quicker and faster. The computers have helped a lot.
Anna Weaver: It’s awesome. Yeah. They used to actually do physical cut and paste, right?
Donna Aquino: Yeah, for the newspaper. Cut and paste.
Anna Weaver: And Mrs. Kealoha was here originally. She was the office manager?
Donna Aquino: Mrs. Kealohanui was the office manager when I started, and I think she was here way before most of us, like, years, because when she passed away, I think she was only in her 60s, but she was here from very young.
Anna Weaver: So you’ve been under two editors, Monsignor Marzen, who preceded Patrick, and then Patrick when he came on.
Donna Aquino: Yes.
Anna Weaver: Yeah, in 83, I guess it.
Donna Aquino: Patrick started in 1982.
Anna Weaver: Okay, well, that would make sense because you just did 40 years. And what is your job now compared to what you did originally? Because you are kind of the multi hat-wearing person in the office. You help us proof, you’re the circulation manager, you handle the budget, you do a lot of other things. Talk about what other things you do.
Donna Aquino: Well, that’s pretty much what I do. When I started, I was just mostly in circulation. I just did all circulation. I did all the billing, worked with the post office on the subscriptions. And when I first started, we had only 8,000 subscribers. We were very small. But then we did this special program in 2000 where we had the parishes give us the names of people on their parish list. So now we’re at 15,000, which really was a big help for the Herald. But yeah, it was very simple. We just had it on cards. I used to do the billing. I did help with the paper, with putting it together, but not as much as Shaina. Shaina did most of that with Msgr. Marzen. And Mrs. Kealohanui, we used to call her Mrs. K, that was her name, Mrs. K in the office. She and I used to do the proofreading and Shaina and Monsignor would do the paper layout. But yeah, I just do everything. Reception. When people walk in the office, I’m the first person that you’re going to see.
Anna Weaver: So we had the all the cards circulation. Was there a big box?
Donna Aquino: Yeah, we had a big index. File cabinet that could fit file index cards. And we had it by alphabetical order, all the As, by last name, the Bs. And so everything all the notes and everything were written on the card, when they paid. We had to write down all that, keep all that information, all on these little index cards. It was very, very tedious. But, the parishes give us names. In 2000. We asked everybody, mandatorily 100% of the parishes had to give us some kind of names, whether they give us their religious ed classes’ list, or their whole parish, whichever they wanted to choose, but they just needed to give us some names. And they did. And we’ve continued that program ever since. So now, instead of us billing each parishioner like we used to or each subscriber, we do everything. All everybody is all donation-based now. So whatever a subscriber donates, it’s credited to their parish and then the parishes get billed for whatever the balances are.
Anna Weaver: So technically you can get the paper for free if you’re registered at a parish. And then we just send out if you’d like to donate letters every year. And a lot of people do donate. Like what percentages do you get?
Donna Aquino: A good we get a good percentage of people that are so generous and, you know, we’re really grateful for that. They keep us going. Yeah.
Anna Weaver: And then that goes towards covering the costs of the parish.
Donna Aquino: Yeah.
Anna Weaver: It’s not like we’re very expensive either, are we? What is the cost of an annual subscription?
Donna Aquino: Well, the annual subscription is $28 for just a regular subscriber. It’s $28. So that’s just like about a dollar an issue because we have 26 issues a year, and that’s the mailing and everything. But if you go with your parish, it’s $15 a year. So that’s what we base it on.
Anna Weaver: And we run a lean machine. We have exactly four employees. We don’t have a lot of waste, right? We’re using your money well.
Donna Aquino: Oh, yeah. In fact, one thing I wanted to say is that when I first started, we were a weekly newspaper, and now we’re biweekly. So when we were a weekly, it seems like we weren’t as busy as we are now with our biweekly. It seems like we just have so much news! But we were weekly, and that was a lot.
Anna Weaver: That’s interesting. I wonder if it was spread out a little more in the weekly format.
Donna Aquino: We get so much local news now, and I know that Patrick always has to, you know, you guys have to decipher what are you going to put in because we have so much news.
Anna Weaver: And a limited number of pages.
Donna Aquino: And he always tries to, you know, get everybody in. He’s good about that. But yeah, we are a weekly. Now we are biweekly.
Anna Weaver: And you have the fine eyes to catch details when we’re proofing the paper for little things. And parish and school news is kind of your thing where I know you always catch things that I miss when I’m going through that section especially. So yeah.
Donna Aquino: So I help with the proofreading. But Anna is the main eye catcher.
Anna Weaver: I don’t know.
Donna Aquino: So definitely between she and I, we work on all that proofing, so we hope we’re getting the paper out with good editing.
Anna Weaver: So why have you stayed at the Herald all these years?
Donna Aquino: Probably because I like the people we work with. Yeah. Patrick is a good boss and we always have good people we work with, so that’s number one. And the flexibility. I’m a little bit more flexible here since I’ve been here for what, 40-something years. But when my kids were growing up, Patrick was always so flexible about if I need to pick up, drop off and all of that. So he was really good about that. Him and I were the only ones that had kids at that time because most of our reporters, before Anna, didn’t have kids, so they didn’t have to really worry about it. It was just Patrick and I [with kids].
Anna Weaver: Yeah, I stuck around long enough that now I have kids. I was here, I left, I came back. And he’s still very flexible.
Donna Aquino: But around my family, it was just always, you know, really nice to work here because everybody’s understanding. Patrick always told us family first. As long as your work gets done, that’s the main thing. So and all of that helps. You know, when I come to work, sometimes I feel like I’m on vacation because it’s so much, you know, it’s so nice. And everybody, even throughout the building, is always so good to work with.
Anna Weaver: Yeah, you even saw a building move. Right. They tore down the old building before they built this one. And now they’re talking about eventually converting this building. So you might see three new buildings in your time, possibly.
Donna Aquino: Yeah. When I first started in 1980, we were at the old building, and then in ’81, we moved here to this new building. And yeah, we saw it come up and everything. And then we moved in here. And so we’ve been here ever since.
Anna Weaver: Is it worth Century Square is now?
Donna Aquino: No. That was a parking lot, where Central Square is. But our building was where you drive into our parking lot, there was a building right there.
Anna Weaver: I think it was only a two-story building, very old. And you know, that was when Bishop Scanlan was here.
Anna Weaver: And now we’re in the six-floor chancery building downtown. Though COVID has certainly transformed the way we work. You also get to work from home, and I work from home more. Shaina holds down the fort here the most.
Donna Aquino: So, yeah, I work remotely.
Anna Weaver: We’ll have to convince her to be on the podcast somehow. I think she’s the hardest sell. I’ve got you and Patrick now.
Donna Aquino: She is the hardest sell.
Anna Weaver: Anything else you would like to say about your time working at The Herald or something you think that our readers don’t know about The Herald, its mission, its workers?
Donna Aquino: I don’t know. I always encourage everybody to keep receiving the Herald because it’s a good paper. It’s a good way to evangelize. We like to send it to everybody’s homes, which is our main thing. Getting it into the homes is like the most important, not picking it up at the church. Anybody can do that. But Patrick and my main focus was, make sure we get it into everybody’s homes, even if they leave it on their table or desk or coffee table, it’s there in the home and people see it. And so for us, that was one of our main things is getting it into everybody’s homes. And so that’s why we started this new parish plan program in 2000. So it’s been, what, 23 years, we’ve had this program, and it’s worked out so good for the Herald. And most of the pastors have been on board with us, the bishops have always been supportive of that. And so we want to keep that program going. And that’s our main focus is to get the Herald into the homes. Many of us can’t even go to church for whatever reason, but at least the Herald is in there, the news is in their home. They know what’s happening with the church, and that’s what our main focus is. And even if somebody can’t pay for it, they can’t donate anything, that doesn’t matter. They can still get it. You know, we’ll send it to anybody who wants it. Doesn’t matter. You don’t even have to be Catholic. But our focus is Catholic news, yes, but anybody can receive the Herald. It’s for everybody, and it’s a great paper.
Anna Weaver: And what if somebody is not getting it, but they say, ‘Oh, I go to a parish.’ Do they contact you about being added or do they contact their parish?
Donna Aquino: They can contact me, it’ll get on there faster than them contacting their parish, and I’ll make sure that it gets in there, gets on our listing, gets in the mail for them.
Anna Weaver: And I, of course, have to put a plug in for other ways that we’re reaching out to people, like this podcast here and our social media. If you’re on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, the Hawaii Catholic Herald is on there. We also have a biweekly e-newsletter, and of course, our website hawaiicatholicherald.com. So hopefully this didn’t sound too much like an infomercial, but I really wanted to talk to Donna because of for many years of history here. So thank you for agreeing, even though you were initially a little reluctant, but I appreciate it. So thank you very much.
Donna Aquino: You’re welcome.
Anna Weaver: And I’ll close here by saying that this has been another episode of the Hawaii Catholic Herald Highlights. And we will be back again soon.
Want to learn more about our staff? You can also listen to a podcast with our longtime editor, Patrick Downes.
Listen to Hawaii Catholic Herald Highlights on SoundCloud, Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
