Meet the People That Make The Free Press Possible

Talk to anyone in the media industry and they’ll quietly tell you that there’s little point in trying to build something that contains disagreement. There’s no point in reporting critically on the left and the right because readers want one thing or they want the other. A publication is either MAGA or coconut-pilled, and nary the two shall meet.

We don’t believe it. And not because we’re not paying attention. 

We don’t believe it because we listen to you.

Our readers, our listeners—a growing community of Free Pressers—come from every corner of our modern, subdivided world. Homeschoolers and Harvard professors. Priests, rabbis, atheists, and mystics. Federal judges and criminal-justice reformers. Police officers and former convicts. People from every state of this country and from many countries on the map. 

You want scoops and critical analysis—and you’re sick of the partisan pablum the legacy press doles out. Who wouldn’t be? Many of the FP staff were sick of doling it out themselves—and happily for us, found their way here. 

Free Pressers are people who seek the truth about the world as it actually is—and understand that reality is not partisan. For Free Pressers, complexity is a virtue and curiosity isn’t a liability—it’s the healthy condition of free people who want to know more.

It turns out, those values draw a pretty incredible group. Every day we are encouraged by just how special the Free Press community is.

Today we want to introduce you to some of them. Or rather, some of you. 

Meet the free people that make The Free Press.

People like Emily Riedel, a maritime gold miner in Nome, Alaska.

People like Father Jonah Teller in downtown Manhattan—a Catholic priest and Dominican friar who Nellie has appointed official TGIF chaplain after a competitive application process.

People like Ram Eshwar Kaundinya, a 27-year-old AI engineer in Bangalore, India.

Or like Max Lasco, a senior at the Air Force Academy doing research at the Pentagon on China’s influence in Latin America.

People like Lieutenant Tracy McCray, the president of the San Francisco police union, who told us: “I don’t feel like The Free Press is asking you to agree with everything they put out. And that’s the thing I love about it.”

What all of us have in common, as Lt. McCray puts it, is that for us, “freedom is a value” that “we love and cherish.”

The principles of freedom—true freedom—are as challenged in America (and as frightening to our enemies at home and abroad) as they’ve ever been. They are also, to invoke the title of Douglas Murray’s beautiful Sunday column, things worth remembering. Freedoms—of speech and thought and belief—are the keystones of our liberal, democratic order. They are values not just to hold but to defend.

What we’re trying to say at The Free Press, in a hundred different ways, is that the demand for freedom—and the principles it rests on—are as real, inspiring, and necessary as they were in 1776.

Today, 765,998 are joined together by their common pursuit of truth under the banner of The Free Press. Help us get to a million by sharing one of these videos (or all of them!) with the people you care about. And if you don’t already subscribe to The Free Press, please join us today.

A million subscribers is just one short-term goal. The more important one—the one that goes deeper than any number—is that we want to know each one of you.

So if you loved their videos and want us to feature you in the coming weeks, write to freepeople@thefp.com. (If you’re camera-shy and just want to tell us why you’re a Free Presser, we’d love to hear from you, too.)