How I became Substack’s 'early spread' expert …

One hypothesis, formed by events in Troy, changed my life ... Also, Pioneer Museum of Alabama hosts old-fashioned Christmas and CHMS 7th graders show off their community service projects.

I appreciate Jerry Beckett (right) and the Troy Exchange Club inviting me to speak about the re-booted Troy Citizen. I probably told members more than they were expecting to hear about my adventures as a “contrarian” Substack journalist. Duncan Lindsey recorded my remarks (see link at bottom of this story).

As I referenced in my very first Troy Citizen article, I actually produce content for two Substack newsletters. In fact, I’m pretty sure I am the only Substack author in the world who’s producing a “local Substack newspaper” and a Substack newsletter designed for a national and international audience.

My main focus these days is producing content I hope readers of The Troy Citizen find interesting. However, I’m still trying to produce two or three articles a week for my original Substack newsletter, where I’m actually fairly well known in one subset of news consumers.

As noted in my announcement article, the focus of the two different Substack newsletters is entirely different.

With The Troy Citizen I focus on original feature or “human interest” stories, news and sports briefs with a strong emphasis on local history.

At “Bill Rice, Jr’s Newsletter,” I focus on articles that journalists for, say, The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, a local Gannett newspaper or al.com would never write.

These are considered to be the “trusted” news organizations, while my journalism and commentary would be characterized by many people as dangerous disinformation, misinformation and/or “wacko” anti-science conspiracy theories.

Because I fully understand my “contrarian” journalism is controversial and might offend many people, I’ve purposely decided to refrain from such journalism here at The Troy Citizen.

And that’s all I’m going to write about my other “day job,” except for this piece where I want to mention how and why I became “fairly well known” as a Substack author.

The reason I want to tell this story is because events in Troy played such a prominent role in me developing a unique brand or niche as an “investigative reporter.” Also, I feel comfortable that my main investigative journalism focus will NOT be considered controversial to most of my readers.

At my other Substack, I’m probably best known as the “early spread guy.”

For background, Substack became a major media player in the world only after - and because - of the Covid pandemic. Many “citizen journalists” (and Substack subscribers) discovered Substack because, like me, they have a skeptic’s bent of mind.

But, as mentioned, my little niche in the “Covid Contrarian” market didn’t seem overly scandalous, dangerous or an area of inquiry that should be “off limits.”

I think I caught Covid in January 2020 (and I wasn’t the only person) …

My hypothesis is simply that the novel coronavirus began infecting people months before the experts said was possible … and I formed this conclusion based on experiences that happened to me, and many neighbors, here in Troy.

In a nutshell, I became convinced I almost certainly had Covid in January 2020. I think I contracted this virus from my daughter Maggie, who was in third grade at the time. (I later learned Maggie’s teacher, all of her children and at least six or seven of Maggie’s classmates got sick at the same time). Soon after, my son got sick as well.

To be clear, I’m not one of those people who say Covid isn’t a serious illness. Whatever I had (It wasn’t the flu, because we all tested negative for flu) put me in bed for a week. Most of my symptoms were identical to the flu, but there was a few differences from previous bouts of confirmed flu I’d had.

At the same time I was sick in bed, my wife (then an English teacher at CHHS) came home one day and told me “half” of one of her classes was “out sick” and the number of students and teachers in the hallways was noticeably lower than she’d ever seen at a high school.

I also asked a doctor friend and an administrator at a local health clinic if they remembered a rash of sick people with Covid-like symptoms in January 2020 and December 2019 and was told yes, definitely.

The odd thing was that most of these sick people, like myself, were testing “negative” for flu.

As one friend told me, “We thought something must be wrong with the flu tests.”

The birth of a hypothesis …

Around April 2020, a week or so after the lockdowns of mid-March, I had the thought that this virus had already been circulating for many months.

If I was right, this would mean there was virtually no way that a contagious virus that supposedly started from an outbreak at a Wuhan, China “wet market” in mid-December 2019 could have infected so many people all around the world by January 2020.

This would also mean lockdowns of mid-March, touted as slowing or stopping spread, had no way of achieving this result. Many people, I quickly concluded, had already developed “natural immunity” by March 2020.

To test my hypothesis, I used a great research tool for journalists - Facebook.

In an April 2020 post on Facebook, I simply asked my 1,600 followers to contact me if they thought they too perhaps had “early Covid” or knew family members or friends who’d experienced “Covid symptoms” before March 2020.

I saved the responses I received, which gave me a list of at least 75 people who, very possibly, had “early Covid.”

The response that changed the next four years of my life …

One response changed my life. This response was from a Facebook friend who simply linked to an article on Facebook from a Birmingham TV station that had just run a 3-minute story on a couple from Sylacauga who not only think they had Covid (in December 2019), but both had also just received antibody test results that confirmed they’d both previously been exposed to the virus.

One of these people, Tim McCain, had a severe case and was hospitalized in a Birmingham ICU for 28 days in January. Tim nearly died several times.

Via Facebook, I quickly found Brandie McCain and contacted her.

I assumed many reporters would have tracked down Brandie and Tim, but I assumed wrong as Brandie told me in our first phone conversation that I was the only reporter who followed up on the short TV segment.

To make a long story short, I became convinced the McCains (from a small, rural Alabama town) definitely had Covid in December, 2019 - which would be about the same time as the alleged “case zero” in Wuhan, China.

I also started researching “early spread” (as well as other Covid topics) and quickly found other stories (from mainstream prominent newspapers like The Seattle Times and Palm Beach Post of other antibody-confirmed early cases in America - dating to November 2019.)

No interest in my ‘big scoop’ …

Thinking this might be a career-changing news scoop, I wrote a 2,000-word article.

I then started shopping my big story to every news organization that might run freelance articles and, strangely, found zero interest in this story. I sent either a draft of my story or an outline of my “news-worthy” points to at least 30 news organizations in the world.

Only four editors responded with a short “we’ll-pass-on-this” note. (I also found no interest in this story from journalists and editors at The Seattle Times and Palm Beach Post, which I thought was strange as they’d recently published similar stories on the front page of their newspapers).

Finally, weeks after I’d finished my story, Tracy Beanz, the publisher and editor of an alternative media website called uncoverDC.com actually read my story, responded in minutes and said, “Yes, we’ll run this!”

Tracy also asked me the same question I couldn’t answer: “Why hasn’t anyone else run this?”

This, I replied to Tracy, is a very good, interesting and quite disturbing question.

(While uncoverDC published my article (see here), the article made no national splash. To this day, no other corporate or “mainstream” news organization has picked up or mentioned my story).

Since I’d already discovered I couldn’t make a living selling the type stories I wanted to write, I started my own Substack newsletter where I could be my own editor and publisher. (Substack, in my opinion, deserves praise for its “free speech” business model).

Largely because of my “early spread” niche, my Substack business did very well.

Soon my stories were being picked up by Citizen Free Press, a news aggregator that has become almost as big as The Drudge Report once was), Zero Hedge and The Brownstone Institute among other media websites which publish the writing of “dissident” or skeptical “alternative media” journalists.

I’m semi-famous in some circles, but nobody in Troy knows what I’m doing …

In 14 months as a Substack author, my articles, originally published at my Substack site, had been read by well more than a million people around the world. I had subscribers in all 50 states and dozens of countries.

(Still, few people in Troy knew what I was doing. Even today, most local residents have probably never heard of Substack - or hadn’t until six weeks ago when I “re-booted” The Troy Citizen).

While I have far more free and paid subscribers than probably 98 percent of Substack authors and my stories are often shared or “cross-posted” by other “contrarian” authors, my subscriber trends - which had been outstanding - hit hard reverse about nine months ago (for reasons I don’t fully understand).

My revenue “work-around” was to start a local Substack newspaper and, essentially, go back to my roots of writing small town feature stories.

On days where I don’t write a new original Troy Citizen article, it’s probably because I spent most of the day researching or working on stories for my “national” Substack.

That is, Bill is a very busy boy these days, but I’m having fun writing stories I think are important, albeit for different reasons and stories/content that target two very different markets.

I hope my “confession” about my other Substack doesn’t cause me to lose local subscribers or readers.

I continue to think my focus on the question of when this pandemic actually started is extremely important. (I’ve now written scores of articles on this topic and remain more convinced than ever that my early hypothesis was correct).

I think most of my friends in Pike County probably agree with me that my efforts to answer this question should not be considered controversial or somehow taboo.

…. Anyway, readers now know “the rest of the story” on how and why I ended up starting Alabama’s first Substack newspaper in one of the best home towns in America - Troy, Alabama.

For those who enjoy audio podcasts …

Note: Jerry Becket invited me to be the speaker at a recent Troy Exchange Club meeting and talk about the re-booted Troy Citizen. While I spoke about the new Troy Citizen, I also shared some of the same information summarized in this Substack article.

My friend and Exchange Club member Duncan Lindsey recorded my talk and posted this audio podcast on his Deer Stand Hill website. My remarks were 30 minutes. If anyone is interested, they can listen by clicking on this link.

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Have an old-fashioned Christmas Friday and Saturday at the Pioneer Museum of Alabama

Note: When I can, I try to plug our great Museum, but need to do this even more. We have a wonderful museum, unlike any other in our state and maybe the country. If you’re not doing anything Friday or Saturday, you might want to check out this event!

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CHMS students show off community service projects

Charles Henderson Middle School 7th graders “Showed Up and Showed Out” at their American Character #GoodCharacters EXPO on Tuesday.

For the past several weeks, small teams of seventh grade students have been working on service projects they conceived to benefit their fellow students and neighbors.

The Liberty Learning Foundation is a non-profit organization based in Huntsville that facilitates active civics and character programs in K-12 classrooms and immersive events that empower schools, parents, local leaders, and businesses to take ownership of the future of the community and country.

The program concludes with a student-led “Expo” where students share their ideas and execution of service projects with peers, parents and press.

Officials with the non-profit said they “were blown away!” by the projects the students created.

Local sponsors were the Southeast Alabama Gas District and Troy Bank & Trust. For more info, visit the Liberty Learning Foundation’s website.

Bob Mills of Troy Bank & Trust congratulates Charlie Jo Moran (right) and Maggie Rice (left) for their project “Justice For the Judged - Don’t judge when you don’t know the story.” Note the girls T-shirts promote their message.

Left to right: Tyler Johnson, Parker Precise, Gena Sanders, Becca Ann Oliver, Kolbi Parker and Bailynn Birch worked hard on their project “Discover Troy.”

Assistant Principal Kelly Roberts (center) and Jed Bush, a 7th grade civics teacher, were among the adults who supervised or supported the students’ as they worked on their projects. The students have been working on the projects for many weeks.

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Today is the last chance to enter The Troy Citizen Trivia Contest. Trivia buffs (who can win dinner for two) can see the questions and info on how to enter from this link:

(Hang in there with me. I have many great feature stories to come.)

One-time Ko-Fi donations greatly appreciated!