An expe­ri­enced news team

Mark Chap­man, Edi­tor and Pub­lisher: A 32-year print jour­nal­ism vet­eran, Mark brings a breadth and depth of expe­ri­ence to the Edge that few can match. From small-town week­lies to big-city dailies, he’s cov­ered news, sports, enter­tain­ment, travel and more. Mark also sent nearly six years direct­ing Engle­wood com­mu­nity cov­er­age for the Herald-Tribune, and ran the local bureau until the Sarasota-based paper picked up and left town. Mark, along with Nancy and Eric, lives in Engle­wood, where they — and the bank — own their home.

Nancy Chap­man, writer and pho­tog­ra­pher, has trav­eled the world, from Zim­babwe to Alaska, to write and shoot travel pieces for the Boston Her­ald. She has been editor/writer of the Bridgeton Jour­nal in New Jer­sey, com­mu­nity reporter for the North Port Herald-Tribune, and was interim com­mu­nity edi­tor for the Char­lotte and Engle­wood edi­tions of the H-T. She has writ­ten for many pub­li­ca­tions over the years. In addi­tion, she is an accom­plished artist.

Eric Chap­man, web designer, was once just a mild-mannered Graphic Artist work­ing at a print news­pa­per by day, toil­ing in obscu­rity despite a BFA in Illus­tra­tion from Rin­gling Col­lege of Art and Design… but by night he took to the dig­i­tal skies in search of why, exactly, news­pa­pers were get­ting the inter­net so wrong! He tried to warn his employ­ers, oh he did, but they wouldn’t lis­ten. As time went by, the Graphic Artist found him­self devel­op­ing amaz­ing pow­ers, to make the inter­net bend to his will! … and so he built the web­site. (Oh, and some­where in there, he won a bunch of awards for his art­work, and went back to Rin­gling Col­lege of Art to teach oth­ers how to cre­ate art with com­put­ers, and design web­sites, but that didn’t fit nicely into the whole Superman-riff. This is why he doesn’t write for the site.)

For less than the cost of lunch for one at a local eatery…

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• A police and fire inci­dent log updated mul­ti­ple times a day.
  Find out why the police or res­cue ser­vices were down the street, or if the smell of smoke on the air is cause for concern.
• Daily arrest report.
  Find out if your neigh­bor has been busted, or why your employee didn’t show up for work!
• Lots of infor­ma­tion about upcom­ing events and infor­ma­tion the every Engle­wood res­i­dent needs to know.
• The infor­ma­tion is always there, avail­able when you are ready.
  No need to hold on to yesterday’s edi­tion just in case you missed some­thing. Read at home, at work, or on the go: if you have an inter­net con­nec­tion, we’re right there with you. Going on a trip? Don’t come back to pile of old news­pa­pers, just log on and click through the sto­ries you missed. Or if you have inter­net access on your trip, read us while you’re away! Search our archives for sto­ries we posted ages ago: if we ever reported on it, it’ll be there. We don’t fade with time.

We’re giv­ing you all of that for just $7 a month. One lunch for one per­son costs more.

Or, if you are really sure you love us and you want to com­mit — and want an even bet­ter deal — you can get two months free by sign­ing up for the annual sub­scrip­tion instead. 12 months for the price of 10!

Ready to get started?

To pay with any major credit or debit card,
first choose your subscription

This will take you to a Pay­pal page to make pay­ment. While you are there you will be asked to cre­ate a pass­word. This is sep­a­rate from your Engle­wood Edge pass­word and will be required if you ever need to change your pay­ment info, credit card, etc.

We strongly advise you to make your Pay­pal pass­word dif­fer­ent from your Engle­wood Edge pass­word, and make a phys­i­cal record of it so you don’t for­get. This way, if some­one man­ages to find out your Engle­wood Edge pass­word, they still can’t see your priv­i­leged pay­ment info.

Note: To sub­scribe with­out an exist­ing Pay­pal account, there is a link to sim­ply use a credit card below the Pay­pal login form. Click that.

After com­plet­ing your pay­ment, you will be returned here to cre­ate your Engle­wood Edge user account if you don’t already have one, or attach your paid sub­scrip­tion to your exist­ing account. Then you’re done!

If you don’t want to pay by credit card, we have pay-by-mail sub­scrip­tion options.
Click here to learn more.

Questions?
We may have the answer right here:

1. Why can’t it be free, like bigger news sites?
2. Can I share my sub­scrip­tion with other people?
3. Is it safe to use my credit card online?
4. Who is Pay­pal and how are they involved?
5. Why does Pay­pal need a sep­a­rate password?
6. Where is my pay­ment infor­ma­tion stored?
7. Will I be billed automatically?
8. What if my card gets rejected?
9. How soon will I be able to access the site?
10. How easy is it to unsubscribe?
11. What is your refund policy?
12. Who do I con­tact if I have a prob­lem with my account?

• Why can’t it be free, like bigger news sites?

  Big­ger news sites often are con­nected to a print news­pa­per or a TV sta­tion that sells lots of ads over a broad area. Big­ger news sites that are not con­nected to print or TV — Huff­in­g­ton Post, Salon.com, Politico.com — are national and inter­na­tional sites that have mil­lions of read­ers and sell mil­lions of dol­lars worth of ads. They can pull in adver­tis­ing from big busi­ness, major elec­tron­ics pro­duc­ers, energy com­pa­nies, and the like. Those ads are used to pay the staffs that write and edit and post the news. Even then, many of those web­sites are los­ing money, and are kept run­ning that way only because it brings new read­ers to a larger enter­prise. Engle­wood Edge is inde­pen­dent, has a much smaller reader-base, and the Engle­wood busi­ness com­mu­nity, as we all know, can­not afford a lot of adver­tis­ing. But our staff still works very hard and needs to be paid to col­lect, write, edit and post the news. Just as you would pay for a printed news­pa­per to land in the pud­dle in your dri­ve­way, we need you to pay for EnglewoodEdge.com to be at your fin­ger­tips when­ever you want the news.
   
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• Can I share my sub­scrip­tion with other people?

  We’re com­pletely okay with every­one in your house­hold using the same sub­scrip­tion. That’s fine. That’s what we hope you’ll do! It’s per­fectly okay to log in from home and from work (just don’t tell your boss we said that) and even from a cof­fee house too, if you have the abil­ity. We want you to use our site wher­ever and how­ever you want. Every now and then, show­ing a story to some­one is good for us, but giv­ing your account to other peo­ple to use instead of sub­scrib­ing hurts us. We’ll go out of busi­ness. For the record: to pro­tect our­selves, we do have coun­ter­mea­sures in place to pre­vent mul­ti­ple house­holds from using one login.
  We’re a small oper­a­tion — just like every other small busi­ness in Engle­wood, we need every penny we can get. We don’t have any out­side back­ing; all the money that has gone into this busi­ness is our own. If we go out of busi­ness, we lose the house. So, if you know some­one who wants to read some­thing on our site, show­ing them isn’t a bad thing, in fact it’ll prob­a­bly help us. But if they want to read on a reg­u­lar basis, please, encour­age them to subscribe.
   
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• Is it safe to use my credit card online?

  There is risk, but it's probably no more risky than using your credit card in a store. All our trans­ac­tions are made through Pay­pal and are secured with the best encryp­tion soft­ware avail­able to con­sumers. This scram­bles the data so that it can only be read by you and by Pay­pal. This is how all e-commerce is done. Most of the risk with e-commerce comes not through mak­ing pur­chases but from other angles, such as decep­tive emails from scam artists trick­ing you into giv­ing them your cre­den­tials. You should know that we at Engle­wood Edge will NEVER ask for your credit card infor­ma­tion in an email, and we will NEVER ask for your Pay­pal cre­den­tials for any rea­son. So long as you are care­ful whom you give those cre­den­tials to, you’re prob­a­bly safer than you are using your credit card in a store. When was the last time a cashier actu­ally checked your name and sig­na­ture to see if it matches what's on your card?
   
  The bottom line, though, is that all credit card transactions are protected by the Electronic Funds Transfer Act of 1978. Even if your credit card information is somehow stolen online, you are not liable for fraudulent charges, so long as you report fraudulent activity to your creditor as soon as possible. The exception is if your card is physically stolen and you don't report it right away. For full information, do a web search for "Electronic Funds Transfer Act".
   
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• Who is Pay­pal and how are they involved?

  Pay­pal is an elec­tronic funds trans­fer com­pany that was born in the early days of the con­sumer inter­net. They exist to make it easy for small busi­nesses and indi­vid­u­als to make or receive pay­ments online. Since they started out, they have become mas­sive, and in 2008 $60 bil­lion worth of funds moved through Paypal’s sys­tem. Their sys­tem accounted for 15% of all e-commerce in the US that year. If you’ve ever used the world-famous inter­net auc­tion site Ebay, which owns Pay­pal, then you’ve prob­a­bly already sent funds through their sys­tem. We use them because we’re a small com­pany and that’s what Paypal’s made for. All of us at Engle­wood edge are involved either in pro­duc­ing news sto­ries or keep­ing the web­site run­ning. We have no billing staff. We have Pay­pal take care of that for us.
   
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• Why does Pay­pal need a sep­a­rate password?

  Pay­pal, being such a large facil­i­ta­tor of finan­cial trans­ac­tions, has had to imple­ment a lot of secu­rity to keep fraud at bay. When you sign up for a recur­ring monthly pay­ment and you don’t already have a Pay­pal account of your own, a monthly pay­ment pro­file is cre­ated instead. Think of it as sort of your sig­na­ture on the sub­scriber agree­ment: as long as that pay­ment pro­file remains active, your sub­scrip­tion stays on. No one can access it to make changes to your billing info (such as address and credit card num­ber) but you. You can can­cel it at any time. We can access it only to see that pay­ments are being made and who they’re being made by. Even we don’t see your credit card number.
   
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• Where is my pay­ment infor­ma­tion stored?

  Your privileged payment infor­ma­tion is NOT stored on our servers. It is stored on Paypal’s secure servers, in an undis­closed loca­tion. In the event that some­one got your Engle­wood Edge login and pass­word, your finan­cial infor­ma­tion would remain safe because they don’t have your Pay­pal pass­word. Even our staff has lim­ited access: we can’t see your credit card info, only your billing address and con­tact phone number.
   
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• Will I be billed automatically?

  Monthly sub­scrip­tions are billed, auto­mat­i­cally, once a month. Your bill date should be the same as when you sub­scribed. Exam­ple: if you sub­scribe on March 12th, then you will be billed imme­di­ately for the first month, and then again on the 12th of the every month after, until you cancel.
   
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• What if my card gets rejected?

  The sys­tem will attempt to bill you again, and you will be noti­fied next time you log in that there is a pay­ment prob­lem. You will need to log into Pay­pal with your email address and pass­word you gave them when you first signed up, and cor­rect your pay­ment infor­ma­tion. You can also con­tact us for more info using the infor­ma­tion at the bot­tom of every page on our site.
   
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• How soon will I be able to access the site?

  If pay­ing by credit or debit card, once your pay­ment is approved and your user account is set up, you should be able to access the site right away! If you have trou­ble, email echapman@englewoodedge.com with your name, Engle­wood Edge user­name, phone num­ber, and a brief descrip­tion of what hap­pened and we’ll do our best to get the sit­u­a­tion corrected.
   
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• How easy is it to unsubscribe?

  The eas­i­est way is to use the Unsub­scribe link on your user pro­file page. You can also con­tact us using the con­tact info at the bot­tom of every page. Unsub­scrib­ing can­cels your next billing cycle, so you wont be billed again, though your account remains active until the end of your cur­rent paid time.
   
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• What is your refund policy?

  We do not issue refunds for monthly sub­scrip­tions. Annual sub­scrip­tions can be partially-refunded dur­ing the first 30 days of the sub­scrip­tion, for an amount equal to $63 ($70 minus the cost of one month). Pay-by-mail subscriptions work similarly, partially refundable within the first 30 days, for an amount equal to the full amount minus one month's subscription.
   
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• Who do I con­tact if I have a prob­lem with my account?

  Com­ments, sug­ges­tions or com­plaints are best han­dled by the Edi­tor, Mark Chap­man, while tech­ni­cal prob­lems (like you can’t see the site, or your sub­scrip­tion isn’t work­ing) are best addressed to Eric Chap­man. Con­tact info for both is avail­able at the bot­tom of this (and every) page.
   
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Any other questions? Email the Editor, or call us at (941) 391-7541