From David French: An Offer You Shouldn’t Refuse

Today it’s my turn to pitch our free trial memberships, and first let me make it easy for you. If you’re already sold—and you don’t want to read any more—you can go ahead and click this link and join.

But if you’re not (yet) convinced, let me tell you the thing that surprised me the most about my Dispatch experience. And yes, I’m a consumer as well as an editor. I write and podcast, but I also read and listen. I get all the emails, and I listen to all the podcasts. And here’s what The Dispatch does for me—it reminds me of better times.

Some of us, who are old enough, remember the days when the morning paper helped you greet the day. No, we didn’t have time to read it cover-to-cover, but we did (ideally) read the important stories, and they were (again, ideally) written by reporters we’d come to know and trust. I could start the day confident that I understood what was happening in my world and my community.

When I wanted to dive in deeper, I could turn to a different section—sometimes it was called “review and outlook”—where analysts I trusted would take a close look at the news. In Cold War days, that’s where I learned about the balance of power between NATO and the Warsaw Pact or how the Exocet missile presented the Royal Navy with an unprecedented challenge during the Falklands War.