Residents paying exorbitant rates on electricity supply based on contract under investigation by New York utility regulator.
We Moved
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Why has this article moved?
LAST UPDATED: May 30, 2024
In May 2024, I moved from Substack to Ghost which you can read about here: Goodbye Substack, Hello Ghost.
During the move, I posted some Premium content on Talk of the Sound. Now that the move is complete I moved this article.
My Substack newsletter began a couple of years ago as an experiment. I wanted a home for my long — form journalism and investigative reporting, a place for personal commentary and observations, and a way to tell readers more about the reporting that went into my news articles before they were published.
I thought a lot about lessons learned from that experience. I took the opportunity of my move to Ghost.io to apply them.
One key lesson was that my investigative reporting involves too much work to just give away those articles for free. Those articles are now only be available to Premium subscribers.
This was a difficult decision because my investigative reporting over the past 15 years has been highly impactful, exposing bad actors leading to a lot of “unexpectedly resigned” and “GETTING RESULTS” outcomes including arrests and successful prosecutions by law enforcement. I want to have the high level of impact that comes from reaching as wide an audience as possible but giving away my best work to achieve that is not a good return on the investment of my time and resources.
I believe that my loyal readers are willing to support my effort to deliver reporting unavailable elsewhere. For those willing to pony up 19 cents a day, my many thanks. For those who are not, I will be sorry to lose you as readers but hope you will change your mind.
There are several changes in place as of May 2024:
- I acquired robertcox.ie and set up Words in Edgewise on that custom domain.
- I set up two tiers of pricing: Basic Account and Premium Account.
- I created the Basic Account to replace the Free Account —no longer available to new subscribers — priced very low to incentive readers to make some minimum commitment but at a low threshold.
- Free Substack Accounts that were inactive and more than a year old were purged.
- Free Substack Accounts that were active or less than a year old were transferred to Ghost.
- Free Substack Accounts were grandfathered in until the end of 2024 but will only receive limited content — no Basic or Premium content — and regular reminders to upgrade before year-end.
- Free Substack Accounts now in Ghost.io that do not upgrade to a paid account (Basic or Premium) by December 31, 2024, will be purged.
- As of January 1, 2025, my Ghost.io platform (Words in Edgewise at robertcox.ie) will be 100% paid accounts (Basic or Premium).