The Jackson Free Press, as with any for-profit publication, is designed to appeal to two constituencies: the reader and the advertiser. In these pages, the reader will find examples of the writing, research, coverage and reporting that they can expect from the Jackson Free Press.

If, as a reader, you read this issue and decide you want to help us out, here's a quick list of things you can do: give us feedback, apply for a job (salespeople, drivers, assistants and interns needed), suggest ideas, check out the Web site, send us calendar listings, frequent our advertisers (mention us), and attend more community events.

Then there are advertisers. Advertisers don' t just pay the bills; they are part of our content and part of our community. We pledge to help local businesses reach their target customers and reap a significant return on their investment in our magazine.

If this magazine can do its part to build Jackson's unique, vibrant business community, then I'll count that a success—it's as important as fostering dialogue and discussion among readers. If we can help the community reclaim some of the charm, personality and profits that are being funneled out of this town by big-box retail, better still.

We think the magazine can serve advertisers and be loyal to readers at the same time. Those two ideas don't conflict, as long as we maintain our integrity.

Doing so boils down to this simple rule: We will never sell editorial. None of our articles, reviews, listings or calendar picks are bought or sold—they are what our writers and editors believe to be true, without undue influence. We ask our advertisers to pitch story ideas to the editor, not to their salesperson, to avoid a conflict of interest. If we accept an ad that looks like an article, it will be marked as a paid advertisement.

Beyond that, we will present our entire magazine with integrity and professionalism. All corrections will be swift and prominent. Stories will be fact-checked, grammatically soothing and entertaining. And dissenting or opposing voices will be heard in these pages, but hate will not.

We start here, with this issue. Putting together this Preview issue wasn't easy, but it wasn't as hard as it could have been, because amazing things happened during the process. We have a professional staff and remarkable freelancers. In fact, you can't imagine exactly how gifted, how driven and how utterly unlikely it is to have this much talent ever gather in one room, much less volunteer to provide material, sweat and precious hours to an effort that remains, for the moment, a dream. We're amazed and humbled to see how many people are dreaming along with us.

Todd is a Jackson-based author of books on technology and computing. He's also a magazine writer, Internet publisher, Web consultant and the publisher of the Jackson Free Press.

Previous Comments

ID

68314

Comment

As a former fifth generation Jacksonian, I am enjoying the web site. I'll have to buy a copy of your paper on my next trip to Jackson.

Author

Fielding

Date

2003-09-29T13:40:44-06:00