Local journalism is one of the best deals around. Do yourself a favor and support it.
For just a dollar more than the price of a croissant, you can have on the spot journalism and analysis in your inbox all month long. Even cheaper by the year.
We’re going to keep this reasonably short. We are approaching the six month anniversary of The Croton Chronicle, and things are going very well. We now have hundreds of subscribers, and about a quarter of them are paying $5/month or $50/year to get all of our highly relevant content. The publication has proven impact in our community, has broken many original stories, and villagers are increasingly relying on its independence and probing coverage of our village.
A few examples of stories you have not seen anywhere else.
As we write, our story on the campaign by low-paid workers in the Croton-Harmon school district to get a better contract has received more than 1500 views. That breaks all records since the Chronicle was launched, but a number of recent stories are not far behind. Our update on the plans to put a cannabis dispensary in the ShopRite shopping center—currently on hold, but not abandoned—is getting plenty of attention, along with our survey of the health standards of Croton restaurants (mostly good news there, especially compared with some other Westchester communities.)
Likewise, our report from a recent Board of Education Policy Committee meeting about the proposed DEI policies in our schools has received plenty of attention, in large part because it was the only place those who weren’t there could easily find out what happened.
Sometimes we have to report negative news, and we realize not everyone likes that. We don’t like having to do it. It was sad to have to burst the balloon floated by the Board of Trustees that the apartments in the Maple Commons (Katz-Regan) project were quite unlikely to go to current residents of the village, despite that being a major sales pitch for approving the development. (At the time we published that story, there were 1500 applicants for 33 apartments; now there are reportedly more than 4800.)
Some of these articles are free, and you are getting this post because you are a free subscriber to The Croton Chronicle. That’s okay, it’s your choice. And we know that we must seem to be a soft touch sometimes by putting so many of our stories in front of the paywall.
(We have to laugh when someone suggests from time to time on a village Facebook group that the editor of the Chronicle is hoping to get rich running a village newsletter—especially when we know that he gave up nearly all of his paying journalism work (based 46 years of experience doing AND teaching journalism) to launch this newsletter as a service to the village he has come to love.)
When we started, we promised that there would be at least one post each week. But so much is happening in Croton all the time that we have been averaging more like three posts per week. It’s hard to believe how much news there is in a village of 8000 souls, but we are trying our best to try to keep up with it.
That’s where you come in. The going price of a croissant in Croton is currently $4. For one dollar more, you can get all of the articles we publish for a full month. If you want to save money, you can take out a year’s subscription at $50/year.
(We’ve been surprised but impressed that the great majority of subscribers have made the latter choice. We suspect it’s not so much to save $10 each year, but out of conviction that local journalism is vital and worth paying for.)
If you are really strapped for cash, then I guess we are asking you to give up one croissant each month to support local journalism. But not really. This is Croton, and Crotonites know the importance of keeping informed, even if—shock, horror—they might not agree with everything they read in an edgy, sometimes opinionated publication like this one.
But we do have something to offer in return. Subscribe, and you will get all of the Chronicle’s stories, including the ones we decide based on a highly complicated algorithm (ie, how generous the editor happens to be feeling that day) to put behind a paywall. You will also get the satisfaction that you are not only helping to save local journalism, but you are proudly supporting it and making it grow.
It’s so easy. Just click this button. Our sophisticated payment system will do the rest. And you can cancel any time and get a pro-rated refund. Please do it now. Thank you.