Source Date: April 30, 2018
Dear Concerned Reader,
My name is Jonathan Hartley Finch, a professor of modern literature at Attica College, Boston, MA.
I represent the interests of detectives first class Dirk Dickerson and Jack Step of Kyiv Unedited online investigations.
In the interest of full disclosure, I must acknowledge that I am not personally acquainted with Messrs. Dickerson and Step, but only know them through the treasure trove of rough-and-tumble reporting they have compiled from the “comic-esque” world of modern Kyiv.
But it has come to my attention that these men are now in desperate straits and badly in need of your generous support – financial and otherwise as you may deem appropriate.
For the last five years, Dickerson and Step have taken on the self-appointed establishment of expatriate Kyiv in a bold attempt to uncover shameless self-promotion, cynical deceit, personal perversion, and ultimately ruthless revenge enacted against the investigators themselves, who have sacrificed career, family and reputation in their pursuit of “absurd truth.”
Now, I don’t want to paint these two men as angels. Dickerson has a temperamental nature, and Step is haunted by a decades-long struggle with alcoholism… one in which he gladly took the losing side. Both men have been fired from countless jobs, often through no fault but their own. But our heroes sometimes come flawed. While the villains hold eminent positions as chief editors of English-language newspapers, PR executives, and the like.
Don’t take my word for it. Access their site on your own (kyivunedited.com.ua) and expose your mind to tales some might feel are best left untold. Experience disturbing, even shocking drama-filled mug shots splashed across the canvas of a captivating narrative, depraved episodes of human sin, their dead-men’s yarns, the dreamscape setting of post-Soviet Podil, Kyiv’s low-lying, bohemian district, its pop-up and quickly gentrifying skyline, cement-cracked waterfront, the old Jewish quarter, The Carriageway of the Czars!
Do you support a soiled and sordid truth, its grotesque and humor-filled retelling by fallen heroes, themselves often caught up in the crime… or the cookie-cutter platitudes trumpeted from London-based broadsheets, false promises from false prophets of business, government, and the ubiquitous NGO?
Your support will help Dickerson and Step continue their selfless enterprise in the name of truth, freedom, and the primacy of the written word and told tale.
Among other improvements to the Kyiv Unedited project, plans call for adding illustrated icons to help readers navigate their way through the already 400-plus firsthand reports, as well as audio-visual enhancement, animated films, a mobile-phone delivery system, and merchandise, like in-house-designed T-shirts, postcards, and more.
Let these men live to write another day, another way!
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Sincerely,
Jonathan Hartley Finch