The Ind is going monthly in print — and online daily big time.
August 8, 2012
| The Ind Monthly will offer everything you’ve come to expect from this feisty little pub — the investigative reporting, the hard news and political analysis, the arts and culture coverage; the best, most irreverent writing in local journalism and the relentlessly local reporting you rely on to stay attuned to our community. |
Is it still a rumor if it’s true? You may have heard by now about big changes at The Independent. On Aug. 15 we’ll distribute the last weekly issue of this newspaper. On Sept. 6 we’ll debut both The Ind Monthly and our new presence online.
Although 2011 was the best ever in our nine-year history, this wasn’t a hard decision. Far from it. Transitioning to a monthly is something we began tossing around a few years ago — an idea that seemed, at the time, several years away. We dropped “Weekly” from our name more than a year ago because we’ve long known that our future — the future of our industry, in fact — has digital written all over it. And we knew there would come a time when our online readership surpassed its print counterpart. That time came sooner than expected as the rise of smart phones and tablets accelerated the way information is consumed, and the gap between our digital and paper identities has widened considerably since. Today, while our print readership remains as strong as ever, our online readership now consistently exceeds print consumption by up to 150 percent. So we’re making the move. It’s not a baby step — it’s a plunge into the deep end. We’re doing a cannonball into a future that is now. Step away from the computer if you don’t want to get wet.
What to expect for our readers in print: The Ind Monthly will offer everything you’ve come to expect from this feisty little pub — the investigative reporting, the hard news and political analysis, the arts and culture coverage; the best, most irreverent writing in local journalism and the relentlessly local reporting you rely on to stay attuned to our community. But we’ll offer a lot more, too: revamped culinary coverage for the foodie tribe; eye-popping photography features; fashion, home design and nightlife; technology; sports and recreation — everything that makes Lafayette the vibrant, plugged-in community it is.
We’ll also be adding dozens more rack locations in boutiques and restaurants.
You’re welcome.
For our online readers: This transition isn’t just about beefing up our print coverage and changing our rack frequency. Hardly. This is, after all, about the digital now.
| This transition isn’t just about beefing up our print coverage and changing our rack frequency. Hardly. This is, after all, about the digital now. |
Expect TheInd.com to become, more than ever, you’re daily source for reporting on local and state news, political analysis, arts/entertainment coverage. We’ll break the big stories online rather than hold them for print. We’re expanding our zones — currently devoted to news, business, A&E and food — to include style, fashion and family.
More blogs. More coverage. More Ind.
News, culture, commentary: It’s what you’ve come to depend on us for, and that’s what you’ll continue to get, only deeper and fresher than ever before. We like to think of it as the beginning of The Ind. The new Ind. Online and in print. We hope you’ll agree.
MAY 24 Blogger Robert Mann posts this entry about the Baton Rouge Chamber's recent report on Louisiana's higher education system. It's critical to economic development, and yet our system is facing a "funding crisis" with no way to resolve it, the report says. The Chamber says control of tuition and fees must be returned to the higher ed governing boards.
MAY 24 Here's a NBC33 story about Tyrann Mathieu. He has signed with the Arizona Cardinals, inking a $3 million, four-year deal. He gets a signing bonus of $265K, but gets another, larger bonus if he doesn't get cut from the team for doing drugs. The deal reportedly includes mandatory tests and meetings for the player.
MAY 24 Jarvis DeBerry posts here about the redonkulus rhetoric that would have us believe NOLA is a safe city with a murder problem. Maybe the city's crime stats don't compare with its murder stats because you can't manipulate a murder, he says: a dead body's a dead body. It just doesn't make sense, he says, and his readers agree: a poll asks if they believe the city is safe, and more than 90 percent say no.
MAY 24 Jindal administration officials announced Thursday that the privatization of public health care is going to cost a lot more than they budgeted for, the Advocate reports here. "I'm so surprised," said no one. Anywhere. The cost they're projecting now is more than $1 billion - a lot more than the $626 million budgeted for it. And, it's more than it cost the state to operate those hospitals. So why are we doing this again?
MAY 24 Blogger CB Forgotston ridicules the recent PR campaign by the state GOP in the wake of a legislative auditor's request to both major parties. The GOP (apparently unaware that the Dems got the same request) started yammering about being targeted because it had "killed" a tax increase. CB finds that laughable, but it's also pretty funny that the GOP was comparing this episode to the IRS scandal (Because the President has so much to do with our state auditor. Right?).
MAY 24 Politico details some recent fund-raising efforts by Sen. David Vitter, which have raised the question of his future political plans. This time, it is a $5,000 per head "bayou weekend" that includes "Cajun cooking" and an all-caps "alligator hunt," the story reports. Funds raised go to a super PAC that can spend money to support Vitter in federal or state races, the story points out.
MAY 24 The pink building on Royal in the quarter was sold at a sheriff's sale Thursday, this Picayune story reports. An injunction that would have halted the sale wasn't enforced because the family failed to post a $150,000 bond, the story reports. So the owner of the mortgages on the building bought it, for nearly $7 million. Now the feuding family will have to negotiate with that company to get a lease on the building that has housed their business for close to 60 years.
MAY 23 This post in Louisiana Voice tells us about a bill by a Winnsboro lege that would require all public high school students to take at least one Course Choice online class in order to graduate. (What?) Blogger Tom Aswell says it's a monument to "waste and corruption," especially in light of the problems he's exposed with the program in recent weeks. Idaho had a similar program, but voters removed it by a 2-1 margin, Aswell says.
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