Longtime Alabama Columnist Leaves Corporate and Partisan Media to Write Directly for Readers
Why I’m striking out to become Alabama’s only reader supported conservative opinion journalist
I’ve written hundreds of popular articles over the years advocating for conservative principles and policies in Alabama, while also defending those ideas on local television and radio stations and in speeches across the state.
You can browse portions of my extensive archive at AL.com, Yellowhammer News, and the Alabama Policy Institute, and also on leading national conservative outlets like The Federalist and the American Thinker.
Now, however, I’ve left the confines of corporate and partisan media outlets to write directly TO my readers through an email newsletter supported directly BY my readers, free of the corrupting financial and political pressures and online algorithms that filter, slant, and censor much of the information we consume nowadays.
Why Subscribe?
Mainstream media is hopelessly locked in a liberal echo chamber, unwilling to correct or even see their own bias, and even embracing it. Many conservative-leaning publications are beholden to undisclosed financiers — special interests who may be fine with all the flag waving just so long as the coverage supports their bottom lines. Both are slaves to click-bait headlines that sow unnecessary fear and anger, driving our nation apart for the sake of mindless likes and pointless shares.
The few independent journalists who recently broke free of the establishment and started their own social media-based outlets are now being increasingly censored by them.
Simply said, there are facts and perspectives that certain people, even certain nations, don’t want you to know about, but since they control the mediums, they control the messages.
That leaves a private, subscription-based email connection the best option for unfiltered, unafraid, and unvarnished journalism. Here, the corporations and the parties and the governments and the social media companies have no authority.
Here, you decide what you will read.
And that’s missing from our state’s media landscape.
Alabama needs a conservative watchdog who isn’t on anyone’s leash, who isn’t stuck inside the party’s fence, and who isn't fed by the special interests. Our state needs someone who’ll write about what’s important — even if it goes against their own “side” — rather than just what’s deemed appropriate by a publisher or a committee or a board, and whose ability to share that work with the people doesn’t depend on them remaining in the good graces of a company or an advertiser or a financial backer.
You need to be in charge of what you read and think and decide.
I’m now here to help … with your help.
Subscribe and you’ll be personally supporting principled, conservative opinion journalism in Alabama that’s free from corporate and political influence, censorship, and bias.
You’ll get full access to the newsletter, articles, essays, and the website. Never miss an update, be part of a community of like-minded people who share your interests and ideals, and help shape the conversations that are shaping our world.
Who Am I?
I began my career writing for military newspapers while serving in the Army National Guard. I studied journalism at Spring Hill College in Mobile, and received the Army Commendation Medal for my deployment to Hungary between my junior and senior years in support of the NATO peace-enforcement mission in Bosnia.
I then became a reporter at my hometown newspaper, the Mobile Press-Register, was a finalist for the prestigious Phillips Foundation Journalism Fellowship, spent time as an aide to Alabama Congressman and Governor Bob Riley, and served as a presidential appointee in the Defense Department during the administration of President George W. Bush.
I was also a strategic communication advisor to U.S. military forces operating in Europe, Africa, and Latin America, including service aboard the joint command ship USS Mount Whitney. I was twice awarded the Office of the Secretary of Defense Award for Exceptional Public Service, once for service in Baghdad and a second time for work at the Pentagon. I then edited a conservative news website, Yellowhammer News, and served as a senior fellow at a conservative-leaning public policy think tank, the Alabama Policy Institute.
You can learn a little bit about my personal background here.
I also published two well-reviewed books — “American Warfighter: Brotherhood, Survival, and Uncommon Valor in Iraq, 2003-2011,” which ranked as high as #25 in Amazon’s history category, and “A Forgotten Man,” which earned an Honorable Mention in the Conservative-Libertarian Fiction Alliance Book of the Year Award contest. I also have a brief collection of short stories from World War II titled “Undaunted.”
I have been published in the Federalist, American Thinker, Birmingham News, Mobile Press-Register, Montgomery Advertiser, Huntsville Times, Dothan Eagle, Yellowhammer News, Alabama Daily News, and the Mississippi Press, and at AL.com, among many other outlets.
My Principles
My writing promotes and protects what I love – America, and the people and culture that make her great. While doing so, I promise to offer thoughtful commentary, sharp analysis, and meaningful articles that speak from a principled conservative perspective. Among those principles are:
Recognition of an enduring moral order, the sense of right and wrong that has built modern society.
Adherence to time-tested traditions that give us our shared identity and have shaped our culture.
Appreciation for established institutions and practices that have already solved many aspects of the problems we face today.
Preference for variety, which stands in stark contrast to the colorless uniformity of progressivism.
Recognition that often tradition and change must be reconciled, keeping that which is proven while accepting that which improves.
Belief in the interdependence of liberty and property – both physical and intellectual. People own themselves and the product of their work, or they own neither.
Trust in voluntary community association, both public and private, and that more local, decentralized decision-making is often best, or at least easiest to correct.
Acknowledgement of mankind’s imperfectability and thus our inability to devise the perfect plan or program.
Doubt, or the good sense to distrust idealistic promises, to move slowly, to consider long-term and unintended consequences, and to prefer gradual, tested reforms over unproven radical change.
Distrust in centralized power, thus the need to check and balance powerful individuals and institutions, both public and private.
From these broad principles spring ideas like the First Amendment protections of religion, speech, the press, and assembly, the Second Amendment protection to keep and bear arms, the notions of limited government, free markets, the rule of law, and many other concepts that hold together the sweeping and diverse landscape of America.
These are more than just high-minded principles, or ideas, or even ideals. Taken together, they are the brick and mortar that built the American middle class — the greatest force for prosperity and good the world has ever known. Take any of them away, or even weaken them, and the America that you and I know will become unrecognizable, possibly unrecoverable. We cannot allow that to happen.
Like you, I believe in the greatness and goodness of America, and with your help, I stand ready to promote and defend what made and keeps it great and good with my every word.
My Promise
How will I do that? First and foremost, by earning your trust by keeping these promises:
I will say what I mean, mean what I say, but never be mean when I say it.
I will tell the truth, even when it hurts, and especially when it’s unpopular.
I will never yield to pressure to go against my principles.
I will never compromise my integrity.
I will abide by the letter and spirit of the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics, writing with both integrity and perspective.
I will hold myself accountable, and correct the record if I fail to meet my editorial standards.
I also promise not to exist in my own conservative echo chamber, that I will explore and present the opposing perspective’s conclusions in the strongest and fairest manner possible, and that I will treat everyone with dignity and courtesy.
I hope my work does for you what great writing has always done for me — give you a reason to laugh, or to cry, a reason to hope, or to morn, maybe a bit of a warning, and sometimes a motivation to do one thing but perhaps not another.
Sometimes my words may lead you to think we need to change things. Other times they may cause you to think we need to keep things the same. Hopefully you'll come down where I have ... thinking life and our ability to find meaning, and a little joy, is somewhere in the middle of all that.
Whatever the result, my words come from my heart, and it's my hope that after they bounce around inside your head for a little while, they'll end up in your heart, too.
And now, with your help, I begin again.
Sincerely,
J. Pepper Bryars
Huntsville, Alabama