This week, The Independent Weekly launches a free online news service unlike anything else in Acadiana.
Before I give you the details, I thought this was an opportune time for a brief reminder about who we are and what you can and should expect from The Independent Weekly and all its endeavors.
For starters, we're locally owned. Publishers Steve May and Cherry Fisher May and Associate Publisher Odie Terry have been involved in Louisiana media their whole lives. They started this paper more than three years ago with one core belief: Acadiana readers deserved a newspaper that told the local stories that other media wouldn't touch. A paper that valued investigative reporting, top-notch writing and photography and told stories with an alternative, independent voice that wasn't beholden to corporate interests.
Every employee of The Independent Weekly lives in Acadiana. We're either natives or we've lived in Louisiana for decades. We raise our families here, send our kids to local schools and pay taxes here. We do it because we love it here and can't imagine living anywhere else.
For that reason, we always strive to make The Independent Weekly a reflection of your lives and our lives and the things that matter most in our community. We don't work at The Independent because we're angling for a job promotion from our corporate parent to go work and live in Boise, Idaho or Dallas, Texas. We don't have to follow corporate initiatives from New York or California and take a cookie-cutter approach to writing about our region.
We work here because we care deeply about Acadiana and Louisiana.
That means demanding accountability from our politicians. It entails covering hurricane recovery, health care, education, business, the environment, culture and arts and entertainment. It means taking a stand when we see threats to our quality of life ' and celebrating when we see people moving Acadiana forward in positive ways.
We like a good joke and poking fun when it's warranted, too.
Those philosophies that drive The Independent Weekly are the same ones behind our new daily news service ' The INDsider.
Here's how it works: Sign up online with your e-mail address, and every weekday morning we'll e-mail you our take on the top stories of the day in Acadiana and Louisiana. You'll get a mix of breaking news and succinct analysis of politics, business, arts and entertainment, culture and sports. You can also comment on and discuss any item in The INDsider.
You'll notice in this edition of The Independent that we've renamed our IndBrief news section The INDsider, because we'll be updating items that appear in The INDsider in the print edition each week.
And yes, The INDsider is free. No hidden catches. No online surveys to fill out or annoying pop-up ads to wade through. To sign up, just e-mail us at [email protected] indicating your interest or visit www.theind.com. You'll get a follow-up e-mail confirming that you'd like to receive The INDsider. Say yes, and you're all set. And if you ever want to send us a tip for The INDsider, e-mail us at [email protected] as well.
As always, thanks for reading. We hope you enjoy The Independent Weekly and The INDsider as much as we enjoy creating them for you.