In February, I wrote about our impending launch of Capitol News Insider, our subscriber-exclusive state government news hub.
After more than half-year of product development later, it’s finally time to go live.
What does that mean?
Right now you can navigate to capitolnewsinsider.com to sign up for a 30-day free trial. After that, it’s a $99 one-year subscription if you sign up by Jan. 1.
We think it will be worth it for those who watch state government closely, given some new features we’re introducing with our relaunch.
The foremost of those is our Alert Center.
Picture it as an à la carte service that makes sure you’re aware when the big news is happening.
We’ve got four types of alerts, which you can toggle on and off with ease.
- News alerts. We won’t spam you, but we’ll make sure you know when somebody’s been indicted, resigned, or a big bill passes or is signed.
- Session alerts. This one’s for those under the dome. Know when lawmakers go to caucus and get the scoop on what they’re discussing, if we can get it. Be alerted of bombshell developments, when the budget deal is struck and other major process news.
- Bears alerts. Brenden Moore and Ben Szalinski have been as plugged in to the Bears beat as anyone. When they know something, we’ll text you so you’ll know, too.
- Story-specific alerts. Each morning, we’ll post to the front page of Insider what stories we’re working and what it’s about, and you can click a button to make sure you see it when it goes live.
Importantly, we know this means you’re putting your trust in us. So we promise not to overdo it. To put it frankly, we’ll use our news judgment: If it’s important, we’ll make sure you know about it. But we won’t burden you with nonsense.
If it gets to be too much or you don’t want to be bothered on vacation, it’s simply as easy as flipping a switch on our home page to turn them off.
Outside of the alerts, you can count on reading our Daily Digest each morning, a space that will be updated throughout the day with tidbits of state government news. Picture a reporter’s notebook: We’ll share story links, press releases and other updates as they come in.
And finally, we’ll be putting a paywall up on the type of Insider-focused stories we’ve been publishing since February. Some examples: Our dispatch from the Senate hallway where Bill Cunningham broke the news that the House’s Bears bill was dead, our brief that Harry Benton was booted from caucus, our monthly budget updates from Ben Szalinski, and our scoop that Sen. Linda Holmes would retire.
We encourage you to check things out at insider.capitolnewsillinois.com and sign up for the free trial to get a feel for the new site.
And while we’re on the topic, a big shoutout is in order for our web administrator JC Dart and K. Ellen Stackhouse, our director of audience. Between their work on product development and Moore and Szalinski’s reporting, great things are ahead for Capitol News Insider.
But I wanted to address one more thing:
We’re not changing the depth and breadth of content we provide for free at our main site, capitolnewsillinois.com.
Since our 2019 launch, we’ve become a trusted source of information for Illinois’ news consumers and the editors of the state’s newspapers, websites and broadcast outlets from Chicago to Carbondale. We’ll still offer in-depth coverage for free every day.
And our main site will remain free to access.
We’ll simply be upping our game under the dome, and doing so in a way that’ll be well worth the investment for those who are either emotionally or professionally invested in Springfield and state government.
So thanks for reading, and send any tips or questions to insider@capitolnewsillinois.com.
Jerry Nowicki is the editor-in-chief at Capitol News Illinois, a nonprofit, nonpartisan Illinois state government news service.
