EV has always featured articles about Eastside life. Where to get a great burger, where to see the hottest bands, what’s new, what’s cool and what’s history. We do our best to get the word out on what the mom & pop small businesses have to offer. We keep an unbiased eye out for what our readers want to read about.
Our readers know EV is the only publication that strictly promotes small business and local economy. This grass roots concept certainly has it’s costs. All that big dollar corporate advertising revenue for one. Try buying an ad for a month in any other publication for $59 a month, now a days you can’t even hardly get a classified ad for that. Let alone a full color ad, dedicated web page and monthly articles on your business. We offer the most but only to the people that need it the most, small business.
Now we feel it’s time to include the community residents as well as the community businesses in our content. It’s high time the “Regular Joe (or Jane)” has the opportunity to voice their opinions too. There are not any publications that allow anyone and everyone to write a story on what interests them the most.
That’s a damn shame. That needs to change.
As of February 1st. EV will be accepting reader authored articles. We want to here what you have to say about Eastside life. Submit us an article about live music, dining and entertainment, local small business, what’s new, what’s old or what have you. If it is interesting (and it complies with our criteria) we’ll print it in the next issue for all to read. There are a few rules however. (See our web site for all the details).
First, no politics. Send your political articles to City Beat. They love that sh#t. We have no interest in promoting or demoting any politicians. Political lobbying is bad enough as it is. We refuse to be a part of the ongoing problem.
Second, We print articles to help businesses. No bashing, bad mouthing, name calling or evil reviews. With the exception of the corporate evil doers of course. Feel free to bash them all you like (as long as it’s true).
Third, We never print articles with personal motives attached. So, no personal attacks of any kind, even though there are plenty of local yocal politicians, businesses, residents and government employees out there that truly do deserve a savage scathing article about their misdeeds. Nonetheless, we won’t print it. Focus on the good things, you’ll feel better.
If you must vent your outrage over a situation we may all benefit by learning the truth from, then do send the article anyway. We are creating an online forum just for such necessary releases. We’re tentatively calling it the EV Better Business Blog. That may not be legal, so it’s not official yet. It will be online soon.
Fourth, we will ignore any articles we suspect were written by a business owner about their business if it’s simply praises and amens for how awesome the business is. That would be an ad and those cost money. This is not a free for all to promote your business for free (not yet anyway but we are working on something similar to that). This is meant to give you the power to get your voice in print. Not to promote yourself or your business, but rather for you to promote your favorite businesses, bands, bars, mechanics, doctors, the sky’s the limit.
Your article should promote the good things we have here on the Eastside, that’s the bottom line. There are so many publications out there with their razor sharp pen just waiting to take someone off at the knee’s. The news spews nothing but the foulest fester they can find. What good does that do? Other papers are certain Obama has already saved the planet in his first few days... we doubt it. We see no reason to promote such gibberish, let alone print it.
If Obama can help us, the recipe will be one part Obama, 305 million parts us. We have to take over our own economy, locally. We have to support the people who support us. The Eastside lives off of Eastsiders, not corporate burger clowns from Oak Brook Illinois or sellers of cheap Chinese goods like Wal-Mart.
Our goal is to allow our readers to steer the good ship EV into new waters. We aim to give Eastsider’s the best information we can on how to shop, eat, spend, earn, live and create a better Eastside. If we didn’t we’d be just like every other paper... corporate whores, catering our content to please the almighty advertiser and cash the fat checks. Screw the little guy.
We’ll never let that happen. We work for the readers, you are what matters most to us. Your opinion matters too, so write us and voice it!
Send your articles and photos to us via e-mail at contactus@eastsidevibe.com