What's next with my substack?

A personal message to subscribers

I reached a milestone today, with more than a thousand people now subscribing to my newsletter since I started writing my first of thirteen published posts a month ago. I’m very grateful to each of you for being so interested in my work.

As many of you have seen, my investigative journalism covers a wide variety of topics, ranging from environmental concerns to depth psychology, drones and UAPs, and the Kennedy assassination. I recently decided to stop using the overall heading “Blowing the Whistle,” in order to make each post’s subject matter clear in the title and sub-title.

I’ve got a folder full of ideas for future columns, and I’m wide open to suggestions for important issues to look into. Substacking is a whole new world for me (I’m an older guy and not very savvy about social media), so I’d also welcome your thoughts on format and what they call “branding.” For example, I just found out from a friend about “tagging,” using key words or phrases accompanying a post to draw attention on other social media.

In the coming weeks, I’ll be informing you about critical environmental issues such as a proposed LNG pipeline that could devastate one of our pristine coastal habitats. I’ll be scrutinizing the backgrounds of appointees slated to be in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Departments of Interior and Energy. I’m anticipating a promised release of long-withheld CIA files about the Kennedy assassination, as well as documents that shed light on what our government and military may have long known about extraterrestrial civilizations. These are strange and perilous times, and we need to come clean about the past in order to move forward into the future.

However, I believe investigative journalism is about more than exposing the wrongs in our world. It’s about examining promising new technologies in the energy and green building arenas, and the important changes RFK Jr. wants to make to our public health system. It’s about wonders of the natural world like the endangered monarch butterflies, and an eco-warrior named Paul Watson freed from prison to go on fighting the Japanese whalers. It’s about ongoing efforts to protect the natural world for future generations.

A number of you have shown enough faith in the value of my work to pledge a paid subscription - $8 monthly, $80 yearly, or as a “founding member” who pays more than the listed price as an extra show of support. For whatever you can afford, I am deeply thankful. I’ve just set up an account to receive payments via substack’s secure collection partner, Stripe. Many of my future newsletters will remain free to subscribers, but for pieces that demand considerable research and time, I will be asking readers for a paid subscription.

And I’m hoping, of course, that many of you will elect to subscribe voluntarily. Here’s what substack.com says about the process. First, log onto your substack account and sign in. Under your profile, click settings. Navigate to the subscription setting and click edit next to Dick Russell’s Substack. Then click update to paid and select your plan, whether monthly, annual or founding member. You’ll be asked for your credit card information and, as I mentioned, it’s secured by Stripe.

Besides researching and writing this substack (at least two columns a week), I’m currently contracted to write two new books. One is Who Killed JFK?, picking up where the podcast series that I did with Rob Reiner left off. The other book will tell the stories of scientists, inventors, lawyers, whistleblowers and more who’ve devoted themselves to aspects of the UFO phenomenon. I have a third book coming out in the spring, Bridges: A South-Central Odyssey, co-authored with a young African American who’s a genius in mythology, For any readers who’d like to know more about my earlier writing life, see the About the Author page on my website at dickrussell.org. (It’s a little outdated, in case anyone knows a good webmaster who could assist with keeping it current).

I much look forward to our ongoing dialogue about these turbulent but remarkable times. Thank you again for reading.