A Quick Note From Us

Us is Carrie and Shaun at the Bar Harbor Story

Hi! We hope you’ve had a great weekend and your Monday is going well.

We’re writing because Shaun and I have been putting more and more time into the Bar Harbor Story. Every single day, people are emailing us to cover stories in other towns as well as in Bar Harbor, which is lovely.

And we really want to do that. But it takes a bit of time. Right now, our sites receive over 230,000 views every month. We never imagined that would happen. We’re really honored by that. And we want to keep bringing you stories about news and community.

The thing is that we aren’t magically wealthy. So, we have to earn a living. Gasp! We know! Wildness. This is where it gets a tiny bit complicated.

Do not worry! We are not asking you for money. We just want to tell you what we’re thinking about and some possible changes.

We are really committed to making sure that people do not have to pay to see our stories. The major reason we started this in earnest about 18 months ago was because we wanted people to be informed quickly about the news, in a detailed way, in a hopefully unbiased way, and to be able to do so no matter their financial situation.

We both grew up poor. We know how hard things can be, and we believe that everyone deserves to be informed.

Thank you so much for everyone who has voluntarily become a paid subscriber. That means the world to us because you didn’t have to do that and because it lets us breathe a little more easily. It also helps us feel like we’re giving you something you value.

So what’s the change?

Though this is something that we have absolutely no skill set in, we are likely going to start getting sponsorships for some of our stories. This will hopefully allow us to spend more time working on the news and for you in a way that isn’t financially difficult for us.

Most of our readers tell us that they read the Bar Harbor Story because they trust us to get them all the facts and information, to cover meetings in an in-depth manner, and to promote and celebrate the good in our community, not just lean into and sensationalize division. That’s our goal, too.

Thanks for being here with us. Thanks for caring about our community, too. And if you have worries, please send us a message!

Carrie and Shaun

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EMAIL GLITCHING

Also . . .

We’ve heard that some of you have been having issues receiving our posts. This, I promise, has nothing to do with whether you’re a free or paid subscriber.

All our posts are always on the website. But the whole point is for you to not have to go there. I’ve talked to the Substack support and this is what they’ve said,

“If subscribers are having issues receiving emails, we usually offer two pieces of advice. The first is for them to send themselves test emails using this link: https://barharborstory.substack.com/account/email-test. This link allows them to send a test email and includes other steps they can take to make sure they're able to receive emails. The other would be to have them check their notification settings if they use the Substack app. There can be some confusion with subscribers when they first download the app if they accidentally choose push notifications. This option stops emails and sends notifications directly to the app. I'll include help articles below that provide steps to change those settings. 
 
How can I select which notifications to receive on the Substack Android app?

Will I still get emails if I have the Substack iOS app?
 
I hope this helps! Please let us know if there’s anything else we can do to help. You can also receive the posts via email on our WordPress site if you’d like to try to sign up there instead. It’s all the same content as on here, but the format is a tiny bit different and occasionally more visually glitchy.