The Best Things in Life Are Free—for 30 Days

The world was a very different place four years ago. The Chainsmokers were enjoying having the No. 1 song in the country rather than being chastised for hosting a concert in the Hamptons during a pandemic. Nobody had any reason to know who Jacob Wohl was. The Cubs hadn’t won a World Series in the past century. (Yet.) But most important—for the purposes of this email—I was still in college. And if there’s one thing you should know about college students, it’s that they love free stuff.

Sure, I had a little walking around money from my job, uh, walking around campus collecting students’ dirty laundry. But when I got an email advertising free stuff—food, basketball tickets, smoothies, tutoring—I was there.

I’m Declan Garvey, the guy who manages our Morning Dispatch team. My job is a little more glamorous now—I try to air out politicians’ dirty laundry, not my classmates’—but old habits die hard, and I’m still a sucker for a good deal. That’s why I’m writing to you today about the 30-day free trial we’ve got going at The Dispatch.

If you’re anything like me, your first reaction upon hitting a paywall on the internet is to … open an incognito browser and refresh the page. If that fails, you move on with your life, condemning the knowledge that lies beyond to a fate not unlike the lost works in the Library of Alexandria. I can get plenty of news for free, why would I ever pay for it?