Englewood Edge - Englewood Florida's own online daily newspaper

That’s the Engle­wood Edge, Englewood’s own online daily newspaper.

An online news­pa­per – that’s the cut­ting edge of the news­pa­per busi­ness, right here in Englewood.

Englewood’s a great com­mu­nity. I know. I came here in 2002 to run the Engle­wood bureau of the Sara­sota Herald-Tribune — remem­ber when they had an Engle­wood bureau? — and fell in love with the place. I adopted it imme­di­ately as my home town.

As the Herald-Tribune began to aban­don Engle­wood, even­tu­ally shut­ting down its office next to Bay Har­bor Ford, and the Sun began to cut back staff and cov­er­age because of eco­nomic pres­sure one thing became clear: Engle­wood res­i­dents needed a news and infor­ma­tion source they could depend on to be there for them, all day, every day.

Engle­wood is dif­fer­ent than most other Florida coastal com­mu­ni­ties, with a per­son­al­ity and charm all its own. And Engle­wood res­i­dents deserve a news­pa­per all their own, a place to find out what’s hap­pen­ing with­out hav­ing to sort through all the Venice, Port Char­lotte, Punta Gorda, North Port and wire news. A place where busi­nesses can get their mes­sages to the com­mu­nity with­out them being lost amid a sea of out-of-area adver­tise­ments lur­ing cus­tomers to other towns.

So here we are – Engle­wood Edge – rapidly becom­ing Englewood’s must-read Web site.

Among the Edge features:

• All the news, from cops to gov­ern­ment to com­mu­nity events, updated 24/7
• Plenty of photos
• Reg­u­lar columnists/bloggers, such as Herb “Padre” Agee, Car­olyn Schoner, Jenna Lons­dale, Dane Hahn and Edi­tor Mark Chapman.
• Easy-to-find sto­ries; no visual confusion
• Free obit­u­ary listings
• Many cat­e­gories of free clas­si­fied ads, includ­ing help wanted and posi­tions wanted

Of course, news­pa­pers don’t just hap­pen. There are bills to pay. And we are painfully aware of how tight money is right now, in Engle­wood and around the coun­try. As part of the whole “cut­ting edge” thing, we decided to charge a small sub­scrip­tion fee for read­ers. All the cool kids are doing it – the Wall Street Jour­nal, New York Times – and vir­tu­ally all news­pa­pers are or will soon be charg­ing for online access to all or some content.

News­pa­pers that still offer their con­tent for free on the Web can do so because they pay their employ­ees through rev­enue from the print oper­a­tion. Those rev­enues are dwin­dling, and so is the size and con­tent — and qual­ity — of your print papers. With­out a print news­pa­per to sub­si­dize us, we must charge for con­tent. When you pay for your daily print paper, you are pay­ing for the con­tent. It’s the same with us. For $7 a month or $70 a year — that is cheaper than the print papers, and we don’t kill trees and take up space in your recy­cling bin — we give you Englewood’s news and events like no one else does.

Please be sure to patron­ize our adver­tis­ers and let them know you read Engle­wood Edge. With­out them — and you — there’s no us.

And spread the word that there is a place to go online for break­ing news and sto­ries and pho­tos — lots of them — of com­mu­nity events and activities.

Join us in this brave new world of online jour­nal­ism, and be a part of the only news­pa­per that is all about Engle­wood, for Engle­wood, and by Engle­wood people.

Come on out and join us at the Edge. Engle­wood Edge.

Mark Chap­man
edi­tor & publisher