Back in April, as part of our annual April Fools' shenanigans on NHRA.com, I wrote a column here called "The Insider … out," reporting that I was closing up the Insider because I was bored to tears with living in drag racing's past. No one who knew me really fell for it, which is a good thing, but today's start of a new year also marks a bit of a new era for the DRAGSTER Insider, and I hope you'll bear with me as I chart this column's future path.

First off – no, the column is not ending, but, yes, there are going to have to be some changes around here.

Over the last two-plus years, this column has come to mean a lot to me, as it has to many of you. It started out with quite a different mission – more like a blog about what was going on behind the scenes to produce National DRAGSTER --- and evolved into what it is today, mostly a fond look back at our history and a great community effort to not only keep the past alive by retelling stories told many times, but also to take a fresh new look at these stories with the type of introspection that sometimes only can be possible years after the fact. The tagline on this column used to be "The stories behind the stories," which I rather liked. I didn't want to just regurgitate the sport's past, but rather put a fresh spin on it through research and interviews and through the generous donations of memories and photos from the readers of this column.

Judging from your e-mails that come in every week, profusely thanking me for this gatekeeper role, I've accomplished that goal. I hear regularly from fans from the '60s and '70s thrilled to see some of the cars they used to root for, and I'm also quite pleased that a literal Who's Who of our sport – including heroes from the past and present – regularly follows the column. I never knew it would have such legs or create such a buzz, and my old pal Todd Veney, not one to heap praise or hyperbole, even went so far as to say something along the lines that this column would be my legacy in the sport, even more so than my decades at the helm of National DRAGSTER. That's all very flattering, but …

The column has become a bit of a victim of its own success. So many of you have written to my bosses or otherwise expressed your gratitude to them for a job well done and a column much enjoyed that I began to get asked the question, "If this column is so good, why are we giving it away for free?"

OK, don't panic yet. Deep breaths. It's going to be OK. Before you get all riled up at big, bad NHRA for messing with another of the things you love, take a moment to understand the motives.

It's no secret that print publications have taken it on the chin the last couple of years. Driven not only by the loss of advertising revenue as companies tighten their belts to get through the recession but also by spiraling costs for paper and ever-rising postage fees, approximately 450 titles ceased publication in 2009, according to online magazine database MediaFinder.com. Though that number is down from 2008's losses, it's still very troubling, especially when you look at some of the household names that have gone belly up this year: 68-year-old Gourmet magazine, 58-year-old Home, 27-year-old PC Magazine, and niche mainstays like Vibe and even Playgirl. Teen magazine, once read by every Shaun Cassidy-smitten girl in the 1970s, folded last year after 54 years of covering teenybopper heartthrobs. Even Editor & Publisher magazine, the authoritative tome that has covered the world of publications for more than a century, folded last month. The number of daily newspapers that has shuttered also sends a dismal message.

Certainly, that bleak scenario is cause for concern for anyone with a print publication, National DRAGSTER included. Although the cost of a membership brings you much more than just National DRAGSTER 48 times a year – you also get the live audiocast, live timing, insurance, and other goodies – we're continually looking for ways to make the actual publication portion of the package more valuable. I've discussed here several times our 2010 ambitions to make ND bigger and better (and readers already have seen and saluted some of the changes), and now part of that plan includes taking this column into print.

I'm not stupid or naïve or big-headed enough to think that this column is soooo good that people will plunk down their credit cards just to continue reading it, but the hope is that it adds enough additional benefit to an already great package that it'll push those fence-straddlers over the hump.

Even though your $69 membership doesn't come close to covering the costs of producing and mailing you 48 issues (the balance is made up through advertising), we all realize that $69 a year is a lot of money to some people. Heck, it's a lot of money to me. I picture a guy arguing with his wife at the dinner table while they sort through the bills, trying to figure out how they're going to get through the rest of the month, and him trying to convince her that it's less than $1.50 per issue, plus look at all the goodies. I think we all realize that, at some point, someone has to get out the checkbook or the credit card and commit to a membership, and that can be temporarily painful. Our goal is to make it a short-term loss, long-term gain, and if adding this column to our new efforts helps convince people to sign up, it's something we need to do.

(I'm not going to go into full-sell mode here, but if you used to subscribe to ND but gave it up for one reason or another or just have never gotten around to signing up, now's the time. It's going to have a fresh new look and more additions. We have some new columnists to complement last year's popular guest writers, more color, and pretty much more of everything.)

Worried yet? Don't be.

A rational person might just fold up shop here and go exclusively into print. After all, I've been writing this column twice a week now for a couple of years (it started out as three times a week ... what was I thinking?), and the sheer magnitude of some of the research is a huge time eater, so why not take the easy road and have to write just one column a week for DRAGSTER?

I can’t do that. I tried, believe me. Well, I thought about it, for sure. But when I go back and read some of the incredible e-mails I have received, I just can't turn my back on a loyal and supportive bunch like y'all. So I'm going to be brainstorming about how two columns can coexist and not rob from one another. I won't lie to you: The really, really good stuff – the in-depth features, personality profiles, history lessons, remainder of the Misc. Files, etc. – is going into ND. I owe that to the newspaper that has supported me and kept my cupboard stocked with more than Pop-Tarts and Diet Coke for more than 25 years.

I know that many of you eagerly await new columns each Tuesday and Friday, and I thank you for that diligence and attention; I certainly want to continue giving you a reason to come here. I want to hear from all of you about what you’d like to read here, keeping in mind the kind of limitations I've already laid out.

What I'll probably end up doing is more of a notebook-style blog, probably updated more often than this column, with various odds and ends that will interest you, most with a nostalgic spin. This actually will be helpful to me because, after losing two of my writers in our recent staff reductions, I'm probably going to be doing a lot more traveling in 2010, and putting together columns on the road is tough without full access to our photo libraries. Plus, I get an awful lot of little tidbits along the way that I'd like to share without having to create a whole column around them, so this new format will help.

I'm still twirling the ideas around in my head, but it might be a tease of what's appearing that week in the print version, maybe videos, links to interesting stories, and correspondence of different kinds from you all. A few readers have asked for more stuff about how DRAGSTER is put together each week or who I've been chatting with, so I'll probably do that kind of thing, too. I think I will keep the Fan Fotos feature going here, which should help any of you going through withdrawals for photos of vintage iron from back in the day, and other interesting contributions from the Insider Nation.

I think it’s a good plan and a decent compromise, and I hope you agree. Again, your feedback, which has helped make this column what it has become, is most welcome and, heck, very much expected.