We just got a nice note in the mail from one of our faithful subscribers who is in her EIGHTH year of subscribing to the print version of Disclosure:
Received in the mail with a subscription renewal.
We can assure this sweet lil lady subscriber that there certainly ARE times when we feel unsafe; there is so much corruption going on in southern and east-central Illinois, which is our wide coverage area. Lately, the enemies have been the people closest to us, however: the jerks in my own family whose whining and litigational machinations have managed to get an OP against me. We don’t know what they’re going to pull next, and that’s the ongoing threat. As for physical threats? People know better. I don’t need a weapon. Ask anyone I served with in my last couple of years in the Army; a gun is superfluous and noisy.
So here we are about to get you a new issue on the stands. I’d like to note that we have something new in store. You remember that several months back we started a second Disclosure newspaper, Disclosure Heartland, covering Edgar, Coles, Clark and Cumberland counties. You also may be aware that after just two issues, our publisher up in Charleston weenied out and stopped covering the hard-hitting news, especially about the abject corruption going on in Edgar County. We let him go and took over the paper ourselves…mere weeks after a terrible diagnosis that really should have sidelined Ang, but we had no choice but to keep going. The plan was to start yet a third paper in deep southern Illinois in November, Disclosure Egypt, making middle ground paper be our “core” or “original paper,” Disclosure (which we were going to call Disclosure ”Main” or Disclosure Central). The diagnosis precluded that. So we pushed on….until we had a great idea—we could do one paper…with all three segments within it.
So that’s what we’ve done: The new paper is bigger, brighter, and easier to find your area of readership. Our front and back pages contain the biggest stories from the entire region. Egypt leads the sections (and incorporates Saline, Hardin, Gallatin, White and Hamilton counties) starting on page 8; it’s like a second “front page” on the inside. Heartland follows with its own “front page” on page 20 and now includes Jasper and Crawford counties; Central (which includes the core counties of Clay, Richland, Lawrence, Wabash, Edwards and Wayne) is next, starting on page 26 with its own front page. Ultimately, we’re going to be adding counties to each section, just like we planned when we were going to do three separate papers….only now, we don’t have the worry of getting three independent issues, with plenty of crossover stories, off to the press.
One of the BIG changes is that now, Heartland counties have subscription access by mail. Prior to this, Heartland was only available to stores, and anyone wanting it sent by mail received it in an envelope…but at a cost of $60 a year. We have certain guidelines we have to follow when obtaining a mail permit, and we weren’t there yet with Heartland…but with combined issues, we now are. So Heartland readers in Edgar, Coles, Cumberland and Clark—you can now subscribe to the print version. Eugene is on page 22 this month to help you out with that; $40 for all zips starting with 624 or 628; $43 for all other zips if you send check or money order (that’s a cash discount rate; if you order it online with a credit card or PayPal, it’s a little higher.)
You’ll notice that our print job is brighter and more crisp; we made some changes there too. We’d like to eventually go with color throughout the paper; and depending on vendor availability with the new counties we’re adding, that might come soon. When it does, we’ll announce it. Just like changes here to the website, some of this is obvious…but in other respects, it’s subtle. We hope you like it.
Remember to get an online membership to the e-Edition if you would prefer to read the paper on this format; subscribing gets you access to the current stories as well as anything we produced for this issue that didn’t make it in because of a packed news budget. This issue is 32 pages, and we’ll likely STAY 32 pages from here on out, now that we’ve absorbed Heartland. So…more pages for your money. We hope you enjoy the new look, new features, and as always, the news mainstream media won’t or can’t print. We work hard at it, but it’s all because we care about you, the people of downstate Illinois, who have enough to worry about without your local media leaving out facts you deserve to know. Keep reading and clicking….& we’ll see ya at the newsstands.