Announcement: Publishing Schedule Changes

Noelle Maxwell

Dear readers,

If you subscribe, you’ve probably come to expect the Independent in your inbox every Friday or maybe on the occasional Saturday. When I launched this venture, I conceived of it as a newsletter, published once a week, not all that different from a print outlet, just online.

Recently, I’ve realized that’s not working well for me as a journalist juggling this solo and I feel I’ve not been delivering the best possible product to the people of Decatur County.

 We’re not a print publication, why behave like one?

For the remainder of 2026, the Independent will shift to experimenting with a less rigid publishing schedule. Here’s the breakdown of what that will look like:

• We will shift to publishing articles more frequently. Instead of a single issue in your inbox each week, we will post articles individually online.
• You will still get an issue in your inbox Friday afternoons, but it won’t be branded as “volume 1 issue X” as it has been so far. Why? Because seeing “Volume 1, Issue X” tells you nothing about what’s inside. We’re still brainstorming names and will announce a name for the weekly recap when the time comes.
• The “newsletter” will still have a free plan and a paid plan. The paid plan will still cover features stories such as our local business spotlight and local arts coverage as we build that out. The free issue each week will review everything we posted throughout the week and link to the full articles on each article.
• Paid plan subscribers will gain an additional perk – while most of our articles will remain free, those on the paid plan will have articles delivered to their email inbox the instant they’re published. If you aren’t on the paid plan, don’t panic, you will still be able to read articles when they’re published, we will still post the links to our social media channels when we publish, you just won’t get the article directly in your email inbox. This is an experimental move for the Independent and we’re open to feedback – if you feel this is going to clutter your inbox we can discontinue it.

 By doing this, I hope to serve the people of Decatur County better, meet your information needs in a more timely manner and continue ensuring you have the knowledge you need about the world around you. Thank you for reading. Thank you for subscribing.