Absolutely brilliant!

This is the coolest thing I saw at the National Newspaper Association convention Maria and I attended two years ago in Oklahoma City.

It's IMPACT, a single-copy newspaper sales box made by Bellatrix Systems of Bend, Ore. and it makes all other coin newspaper boxes look like junk.

I had the pleasure of chatting that day with Rich Candland, vice president for business development and finance at Bellatrix, mostly about our shared interest in BMW motorcycles.

The boxes have an electronic mechanism rather than the clunky, malfunction-prone mechanical operation we're used to seeing in newspaper coin boxes. The boxes had gone through North Dakota winters and South Florida summers without failure, proving their reliability under extreme conditions.

But the slickest feature, from a newspaper standpoint, is the custom vinyl wrap that displays the name of the paper and creates advertising space that can be sold.

Like for instance, you sell ad space on a couple of boxes to a hospital and put them near the main entrance and ER entrance of said hospital. The advertising revenue pays for the cost of the box. The space can be resold after the initial contract period and now the box is generating a brand new revenue stream.

It's a natural for advertisers like hospitals, banks and shopping malls.

And the Bellatrix web site says they're working on a model that will take credit cards in addition to cash.

The Tampa Tribune went all out with the boxes. Here's their explanation:

One of their primary goals was to “let people in the market see their lives reflected on the racks.” Whenever possible, panoramic photos were taken at each site creating continuous three-sided graphics that were then applied to the IMPACT cabinets. Tampa is an active, outdoor environment so some of the "newsrack billboards" depict scenes of sports activities and entertainment. Others focus on community services and activities like hospitals with strong emotional themes such as newborn babies and children.