What Makes The Libertarian Republic Exceptional and Why Libertarians Should Support It

The Libertarian Republic is a unique endeavor in many ways which are often overlooked. The end of this summer will mark the end of my first year as Editor-in-Chief, a job I took when TLR’s founder Austin Petersen stepped down to run for the Libertarian Party’s presidential nomination. In that time I have received more criticism than you could imagine — some of it has been constructive, much of it has been baseless and completely detached from what we actually do here. While I am always striving to improve this site and your experience reading it, I thought I would take the time to explain how TLR works and why it is so unique.

A New Frontier

TLR is the only widely-read liberty oriented news organization that exists solely online. While our critics like to compare us to Reason or even The Foundation for Economic Education, holding these two outstanding sites up as a bar we fail to reach, the truth is that those are long established brick and mortar businesses. TLR doesn’t receive endowments or grants, we don’t have a print magazine, nor do we have a storied history. These comparisons, while flattering, are not a fair assessment of operation — of course we have more ads on our site than Reason, because Reason isn’t dependent on online ad revenue to exist.

The internet is still a relatively new thing in terms of historical progress. What Austin Petersen began in 2013 was a vehicle to explore uncharted territory. Libertarianism and constitutional conservatism had all but been locked out of the 2012 election cycle. The news media was content to pretend we didn’t even exist. The internet has helped to change that by placing power in the hands of small publishers and independent writers. Is generating revenue online challenging? Tremendously so. Admittedly, sometimes viral videos and fluff pieces have been last resorts to gin up much needed revenue. We don’t necessarily like that anymore than our more serious readers do, but it is important to understand what we are doing here. The TLR you see is not a finished product. We are doing what we can to survive and grow with our sights set on much grander horizons.

An All-Star Team

TLR is proud to host content created by many of the popular names in liberty. YouTube sensation Julie Borowski, hip-hop performer Eric July, conservative rebel Lauren Southern, and The Modern Libertarian, Grant Phillips, have all contributed here. Incredibly talented writers like Casey Bennett and Joey Clark have provided remarkable depth. Knowledgeable experts like Josh Guckert and Matthew Crist have allowed TLR to delve into issues surrounding laws and the courts. Other jewels include the talented and engaging Avens O’Brien and Micah Fleck, who offer a more left-libertarian perspective.

Keep your eyes peeled for stuff from up and coming talents like Chris Johncox, Lina Bryce and Elias Atienza as well as TLR sponsored animated shorts by Seamus Coughlin.

Our team is diverse and full of remarkably talented individuals. Here’s the kicker: because we are a start-up and because revenue is tight, all of these remarkable individuals contribute here without compensation. Yes, they see the value in accessing our large and growing audience; but none of them would be here if they didn’t believe in what TLR was doing.

Diverse Perspectives, Objective Analysis

Another thing that makes TLR unique is the diversity of opinions we offer. TLR’s mission is to inform and also generate discussion. As a magazine we are not in the business of deciding what is and what is not libertarian. We allow our writers to make the case themselves and we always welcome rebuttal pieces when writers disagree with each other. We understand that liberty is about individualism and that individuals who cherish liberty may come to very different conclusions about which candidates and what policies would best serve liberty.

Often TLR is accused of being biased or of pushing whatever candidate we like (most often we are accused of giving support to TLR’s founder Austin Petersen who has actually received very little coverage overall). The truth is TLR’s writers are free to opine on newsworthy issues however they want. We have run positive pieces on Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, Jim Webb, Martin O’Malley, Gary Johnson, John McAfee, Austin Petersen, and even Donald Trump. Many of these candidates have also seen their fair share of criticism at TLR.

Do we make mistakes? Of course. We are a mostly volunteer team with limited resources that depends on getting traffic to survive — that means occasionally the rush to get a story out first can cause haste and lead to errors. But when we do make a mistake we own it. Recently, we accidentally ran a piece declaring Glenn Beck had endorsed Austin Petersen for president. When we actually got to listen to the entire audio we discovered this was an error — Beck did say Austin was “his guy now”, but stopped short of a full endorsement. We then ran a retraction. Of course, to our critics, this is proof of a dastardly conspiracy.

Our critics expect us to carry stories quickly, without advertisements, and to always be accurate. We do strive to get stories out quickly, provide minimal ads, and to maintain accuracy as much as possible. But we do not have a team of fact checkers and independent sources (yet), so occasionally mistakes will happen. The difference between TLR and other online news sites is we will own our mistakes.

Integrity

People may scoff at TLR because we run listicles or viral videos, but every news organization has some way of appealing to non-news readers as a way of increasing revenue.

Does TLR have integrity? Absolutely.

Consider how easy it would have been for Austin Petersen to have hired someone to serve as Editor-in-Chief who would cover whatever he wanted them to. He easily could have found a supporter of his campaign and given him the job with instructions of giving him maximum coverage. Instead he hired me, an avid Ted Cruz supporter with a much more conservative world view. He never steered my editorial scope nor did he try to influence how I did my job. TLR even ran one piece which was very critical of Austin.

When it comes to editorial direction, my job is to steer writers toward popular stories or help them to shape their work. I don’t tell my writers what positions we are taking as a magazine or shut down ideas I disagree with. I can assure you, somewhere around 70% of what TLR publishes I disagree with in some way or another. But I am not here to make TLR my personal blog. I may be the manager of this establishment, but the cooks are the ones coming up with the fare.

Just the Beginning

TLR is succeeding, our presence is unmatched online. We are the only exclusively online libertarian news magazine that has a wide reach, including Google News placement. TLR is changing the game and it would not be possible without all of our readers, our subscribers, our sponsors, and our talented staff. We have great things planned for you, and even if it takes longer than we hope to get there, we won’t give up.

Please consider buying a subscription to help us get there sooner.