If you’re ready to become a paid subscriber and don’t need any more convincing, click here. 

Dear readers,

Free news isn’t free. While many online news outlets have implemented some version of a pay wall, making you buy a monthly subscription to read your news, Decaturish hasn’t.

There are two reasons why we haven’t put up a pay wall:

1) We don’t want to limit information access to people who might not be able to afford it. People with limited means need and deserve access to reliable community news.

2) Pay walls for news are not the future of small local news sites. There are numerous ways to breach a pay wall and the content you can find behind a pay wall is often given to other free news websites via content sharing agreements with companies like the Associated Press.

So, if you’re getting the news for free, why should you pay for it? Because having timely, accurate information about your community matters.

A study by Notre Dame’s College of Business found that the spending by local governments has increased as local newspapers have disappeared. The reason is pretty simple. When the press isn’t paying attention to government spending, governments tend to spend more. If no one is there to question it, it goes unchecked. The costs of this spending are passed along to you, the taxpayer.

You spend thousands each year in property taxes. But for as little as $3 a month, you can ensure that there’s a check on local government, allowing us to send reporters to cover important community meetings. Decaturish ensures the public’s business stays public and works to hold our officials accountable.

If you are a regular Decaturish reader, you’ve already seen the difference. We have reporters at every School Board and Planning Commission meeting. We’re covering the Downtown Development Authority, the Tucker City Council and the Kirkwood Neighbors’ Organization. This month, we were able to commit to send a reporter to the Avondale Estates City Commission meeting.

We’re able to do these things because we have 515 subscribers. But to sustain that and expand our coverage, we need more of our 60,000 readers a month to step up. Fewer than one percent of our readers support local news. For $3 a month you can help us continue to grow our business and continue shining a light in the dark corners of the Decatur community.

Our new goal is to reach 600 subscribers by June 30, the end of the second quarter. If you have thought about becoming a part of what we do before, now is the time to jump in.

Stop what you’re doing and sign up for one of the following subscription options:

To subscribe for $3 a month, click here.

To subscribe for $6 a month, click here.

To subscribe for $12.99 a month, click here.

To subscribe for $60 a year, click here.

To make a contribution without a recurring subscription, click here.

Thank you for supporting Decaturish.com!