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If you watched cable news and read the old media, you might think: Everyone in America agrees that Donald Trump is the great fascist, democracy-ending criminal. A felon! At The New York Times, even the conservative columnists came out to support Kamala Harris.
So ends the range of opinion in the legacy press. And for readers, so ends the range of vision.
Not for Free Press subscribers.
No one could have predicted the exact shape of last night. But by and large, Free Press subscribers weren’t shocked by the results.
That’s not because we told you what to think. It’s because we did the basic job of journalism: We held up a mirror to reality.
Free Press readers saw last night coming because our Peter Savodnik traveled the country to meet the politically homeless Americans in “The Great Scramble.” And to Flint, Michigan, and to East Palestine, Ohio, to meet those who were used as political symbols—only to be abandoned by those who claimed to champion them.
They saw it because Frannie Block and Olivia Reingold reported relentlessly on the insanity that gripped American campuses—as trust-fund kids trapped janitors, smashed up buildings, and demanded food be brought to their protests as “humanitarian aid.”
They saw it because we went to Dearborn, Michigan, and spoke to the Arab Democrats who were voting for Trump. Demographics were not destiny in this election, and it turns out that races are not a political monolith: Many Latinos this week broke for Trump.
They saw it because Madeleine Rowley reported fearlessly from the border—about the nonprofits making billions from the chaos there and on the explosion of sex trafficking that everyone else was overlooking.
They saw it because Niall Ferguson warned us of how elite culture can rot in his unforgettable essay “The Treason of the Intellectuals.”
They saw it because we never stopped telling the story of big tech’s overreach, especially on free speech, which Rupa Subramanya has covered ferociously and testified to Congress about.
They saw it coming because we reported on the ideological corruption of K–12 education—and the movement of determined parents to do better by their children.
They saw it coming because Jamie Reed, Abigail Shrier, and others cracked open the stories that became a national issue in this election: the medical transition of minors, and biological men competing in women’s sports.
They saw it coming because Uri Berliner blew the whistle in a piece that changed the cultural conversation: “I’ve Been at NPR for 25 Years. Here’s How We Lost America’s Trust.” “There’s an unspoken consensus about the stories we should pursue and how they should be framed. It’s frictionless—one story after another about instances of supposed racism, transphobia, signs of the climate apocalypse, Israel doing something bad, and the dire threat of Republican policies. It’s almost like an assembly line,” he wrote. Turn on MSNBC this morning, and see the truth of his diagnosis.
They saw it because Coleman Hughes wrote plainly about the “New Racism” that has turned elite American institutions into neoracist strongholds.
They saw it because we wrote about the lie that many tried to deny about President Joe Biden’s mental acuity.
They saw it coming because we had conversations on Honestly that revealed our massive political realignment. They saw it because we never shied away from debate, most recently between Ben Shapiro and Sam Harris.
Going into this election our staff had diverse preferences for presidential candidates. That remains so. And that mix is essential to our promise to you: to deliver journalism that tells the truth about the world as it exists. To cover the issues that matter most with integrity and independence.
At The Free Press, we are of no party. We carry water for no politician. Just as Free Press readers weren’t surprised by Trump’s win, you won’t now be cocooned from his flaws. Our commitment remains the same today as it was yesterday: to pursue the truth and to tell it plainly.
If there’s one bias we have, it’s toward the American project. It’s a divided, imperfect country, but it’s a good one. And thanks to our subscribers—freethinkers, like most Americans we know—we’re able to grow and cover it all.
So please join us by subscribing here.
For more coverage of the 2024 election, click here.
I used to be stuck inside a hollow echo chamber.
But then I found myself trapped inside the halls of academia feeling like I was nuts. And then I discovered a little column titled Common Sense. Thank you for providing a way out these last several years.
I am a subscriber to tfp and will happily continue with it because much of your journalism is first class. However, a few things irk me. Bari Weiss is a shameless self promoter who understandably wants to keep promoting “the brand,” but it does occasionally enter puke inducing territory. I don’t need to be constantly reminded of the lofty mission she believes she is on. We’ll see how her principles hold up when a mainstream corporate buyer comes in to capitalize on her mostly great work. Secondly, in my 40+ years in corporate life I’ve seen this movie before: mostly youngish staffers believe they are doing god’s work and changing the world. This syndrome starts infecting judgement and knocks the product down a peg. Thirdly, the blind spot on Israel is so obvious to this Zionist Jew (me) and over the past year has echoes of North Korean media. The coverage of global antisemitism has mostly been excellent and vital, but the dearth of journalistic voices telling a different story on the current middle east wars is such a miss for tfp and I suspect is guided by the “she who must be obeyed” editor. Like I said , I am a very happy free press subscriber but not a blind one.