Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: What's up, guys? Welcome to another episode of the Parish Circuit. I'm Stuart Amadon with David Riley in the house today. Also special guest. You guys are in for some fun times today. We have Brian Dawson from 1819 News in Alabama. Brian, thank you for coming on with us today, man.
[00:00:17] Speaker B: It's my pleasure. Thank you for the opportunity and trust me, with your platform to not get you canceled.
[00:00:24] Speaker A: Well, we, you know, we invest in some cancel free services, so we should be able to. We should technically be able to say whatever we want, but we'll find out how this actually goes down.
[00:00:33] Speaker B: Yeah, I'll press your test.
[00:00:36] Speaker A: So, Brian, you guys established 1819 news. We're working on building a similar platform here in South Louisiana called the Parish Circuit. We're chasing this idea of a truly free press that engages with events that are happening in and around our.
Our area and our state as a whole. And just talking about them, because what we found, as I'm sure what you have found as well, is that people don't do that. The news does not really get reported, at least the things that are really relevant. And if it does get reported, it gets reported with a bent. Right, Dave?
[00:01:11] Speaker C: Right, right. Or in a way that doesn't necessarily make it any clearer to the regular
[00:01:15] Speaker A: audience what's going on. Yeah, it doesn't talk about the whole truth. So, Brian, you and I met.
Oh, man, I can't remember now. It was at Trinity Con, probably like three years ago. I think you were there.
[00:01:26] Speaker B: The Doug Wilson.
[00:01:28] Speaker A: Rich Lusk.
[00:01:29] Speaker B: Rich Lusk. Okay. Well, I mean, I know the Trinity conference with Rich, but I didn't know who was the speaker. Oh, yeah, I was the speaker last year. Before that it was Doug. And those are the only two I've been to.
[00:01:37] Speaker A: Yeah, no, it was the Doug one. That's right. And then last year you worked with my guys, was the team producing video content. You did some interviews with them while they were there.
So I think this is a great thing for us to just kind of bring to the forefront. Brian, let's talk about this. Why is local media important today?
[00:01:59] Speaker B: Well, that is a big, big, big question there, sir. I will see if I can take a bite of that elephant here.
I think the way I would frame it up is, as we have seen, the decentralization and democratization of mass media on the national scale.
You've seen the effect that it's had on the political conversations nationally.
So national and geopolitical news, the monopoly has been broken up. Right. And what you've seen from that monopoly Being broken up, obviously, Elon buys Twitter, turns it into X, Tucker leaves Fox.
And even before that happened, you had Joe Rogan and podcasting.
The cost to do a podcast at the same level, Fox produces their show, and that still be like a super high level podcast. You can build a studio for like $100,000 and do that. If you don't want it as nice as Fox's, you can do like a $35,000 studio and still have a world class studio, you know, or you could do like a $10,000 studio or something like that.
And you know, before that it was like five or six million dollars to build a studio like that. And so the, the barrier for entry to get in is, you know, they say the, the, the best thing and the worst thing about podcasts is is that is there zero barrier for entry? There's so many people.
Everybody has a podcast now. But what I think that does is that you're now competing. And the way that you're competing now is who is going to tell me the truth in the most entertaining way and who do I trust. And so everybody has. And what's really wild on the national and geopolitical side of things is, you know, one of the biggest news, you know, providers out there is comedians.
[00:03:54] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:03:54] Speaker B: It's like, well, that's really interesting. But I mean, you look at Dave Smith, you look at Tim Dillon, you look at Theo Vaughn, these are actually news sources for people.
And you know, with the creation of content, you know, people can easily fall into headline, clickbaity stuff. And then, you know, you may build a quick audience really quick or really fast, but it's gonna dissolve because there's no substance there. But the goal when you're creating content, if you're gonna take the time and the money and the effort to produce content is because you want to inform and educate.
And there's a agreement that basically happens if you want to inform and educate, you have to be able to entertain and engage. And I believe that's the reason that it's kind of a Patrick bet David's. His company is called Infotainment.
And it's this concept of being able to tell people something that you want them to know in a way that they want to hear it. Right. And so I don't know, it's just, I could rattle on about this forever. But point being, there has been between podcasting, being on the rise, between Elon Musk buying X, between Tucker leaving Fox, it is just. And then with Elon buying Twitter now, Facebook doesn't Censor anywhere near like they used to.
We went from having, you know, for the first three years, we had like 10,000 Facebook followers. Now we have 210,000.
So Facebook has been forced to compete with X. And so they've. Now they're not, you know, censoring a whole lot. I make the joke when Mark Zuckerberg started injecting testosterone and doing Brazilian jiu jitsu, all of a sudden my ratings went up.
But it's true. And so now there's.
But the point I want to make is that at the national and geopolitical level, we are having political conversations that would have been so far outside of the window of orthodoxy in which you're allowed to talk about real conversations are being thrust to the forefront that are making real changes. And you're seeing, even with the White House official, you know, Twitter page and the things that they're posting, you're like, this is crazy. Well, that happened because the monopoly was broken up at the national and geopolitical space. At the local level, it is still completely owned and dominated by the left. Yes, completely.
[00:06:14] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:06:15] Speaker B: And the. And the only conservative offshoots that attempt to compete with the left dominant media outlets of record at the city, county, state level are usually something spun up by the chamber of commerce that really just does PR and carries water for the power brokers in the state.
[00:06:35] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:06:35] Speaker B: And that usually happens in the red states is where you see that. And so the left has their media outlet. The, the, the lobbying groups and, and, and huge corporations and the state agencies have their media outlet, but the people don't have theirs. And so essentially, that was it for 1819 is we wanted to create a news and multimedia out for the people of Alabama because we didn't feel like there was one.
[00:06:59] Speaker A: Yes. So what pushed you over the edge? What was the moment that happened that you said, that's it. We're doing this?
[00:07:06] Speaker B: I didn't even read newspapers. I knew nothing about journalism.
I got a phone call.
So I'm not going to tell my whole story unless you're just dying to hear the whole story. But I'll get in the professional end. I got 12 years ago, I got into the media world. I had moved here from Colorado to Alabama 12 years ago, didn't even have a job lined up in Alabama. And I was being discipled by a guy who was a big media executive at Cumulus and Westwood One.
And he left Westwood One to go work at this group called USA Radio Networks. And he said, you know, Brian, do you have a job when you get to Alabama. I said, not what I'm really looking forward to. He said, great, you're going to be an affiliate relations manager at USA Radio Networks. I said, that's great, Tim, but what the hell is a radio network and what is a relationship? I had no clue.
[00:07:56] Speaker A: Right, right.
[00:07:57] Speaker B: But it was sales, and I'm good at sales. And I figured it out. Baptism by fire. Sink or swim. And I swam, and I was able to help them repackage one of their products and market it to an audience that was underserved.
And it exploded and did extremely well. And my name got out into the industry from that. And then the gentleman that created Laura Ingram's radio show, a gentleman named Lee Habib, was living in Oxford, Mississippi at the time, calls me and literally I answer the phone from the 601 number that's calling me and he says, hey, this is Lee. I want you to come work for me. I'm like, what in the world? And then I put it together in my head and I'm like, 601 Mississippi, Lee. I'm like, oh, my gosh, this is Lee Habib. This is. This is the guy that created Laura Ingram's radio show. And then he's the vice president. To this day, he's the vice president of content at Salem, where he oversaw Dennis Prager, Hugh Hewitt, Michael Medved, Bill Bennett.
[00:08:47] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:08:48] Speaker B: Charlie Kirk's boss was Larry Elder's boss.
[00:08:50] Speaker C: Right.
[00:08:50] Speaker B: Like, so this guy calls me and is like, I want you to come. That's literally how he, like, I answer the phone. He's like, this is Lee. I want you to come work for me.
And I've got an interesting background that I thought might prohibit me from being able to work at any, like, normal, real places. Again, getting to that some other time. And so I was thinking about that and I'm like, hey, I'd like to learn more about the opportunity. And so he says, well, yeah, you can come stay with me. So I drive over to Oxford, Mississippi, show up to his huge mansion and stay in his guest house. And he tells me about this new project he's working on called Our American Stories, which was basically what he had done is he reverse engineered National Public Radio.
His big thing on NPR was this American Life. He loved the storytelling aspect of npr and that's what caused him to dive in and reverse engineer National Public Radio. His was the desire to tell the stories of America to Americans in a way that wasn't super left leaning. Like this American life is like this extremely well produced audio only. It was the number one podcast in the country for 10 years.
And it's a super well produced audio with sound design story of this gay kid getting picked on in school. You know what I mean? Like, you know, but people just can't get enough of it because it was so well produced. And it's storytelling, and there's something about storytelling, right? And they've mastered that. And he, that's his gift. He is a storyteller. And so he's like, what if we were to do this American life, but make it conservative? And he created a show called Our American Stories. And he pitched me on this and I completely fell in love with it after I listened to it. I'm like, this is incredible. Well, he was one of, he was wanting to bring it to terrestrial radio show, and he was already on 80 stations across the country.
And so he says, brian, I want you to grow my show.
I said, okay, Lee, I don't want to grow people's radio products for the rest of my life. I'd really like to learn the industry.
I'll make you a deal. I'll grow your show if you teach me everything you know. And he's from New Jersey and he just laughs. He's like, all right, kid, you grow my show, I teach you what I know. And so for four and a half years, I sat at his feet learning everything I possibly could about the media industry. And specifically, he taught me about reverse engineering. National Public Radio, he showed me Caleb's model, right? And you'll notice that the two biggest for profit media entities in the country right now are in bankruptcy. Cumulus and iHeart, the two biggest nonprofit media outlets in the world, are sitting on like zero debt with hundreds of millions in assets, if not billions by now. Nprk, love. And so he shows me this whole business model, this whole philosophy behind content. And again, it's content that's not just created to sell erection pills and pillows, which is what conservative media is basically boils down to, right? It's like, it's like angry conservatives talking to other angry conservatives about how angry and conservative they are. And then like in between rants about how angry and conservative they are, they're like, you need gold bars, by the way, have you seen this pillow? Right? And like that, that's conservative media and it's stupid. And it's no wonder we're getting our asses kicked by these people, right? And so he understood it at a deep level from his experience, and he's just, this is what I was sitting under for four and A half years, right. He's just pounding this into my head about how stupid conservatives are about how they do media.
So I don't know what I'm going to do with this information. I have no idea. But I'm just, you know, drinking from a fire hose every day, working for him.
And I took his show from 80 stations when I started in four years, I grew it to 330 stations and we did a deal with Premier and iHeart. And so Premier is the company that owns all of the iHeart shows that like that you're familiar with what would be Rush Limbaugh, right, as a Premiere show.
And I'm trying to think of some of the other ones. It's been so long since I've been out of it. But like, you know, Jim Rome, you know, the biggest shows in the world are owned by Premier Networks and they put them on iHeart stations. That's the way that works. And so we were able to get Julie Talbot at Premiere and iheart to pick up and buy Lee show, which is the biggest thing you can do in the industry.
And I fell into that. It was like I tripped and fell into this biggest thing you can possibly do in the industry. And so that was another feather in my cap. And when that deal went through was around July of 2020, and if you guys remember, July 2020, you know, mostly peaceful protests, some, you know, Summer of Love, mild virus going around, and there was a really big election going on.
And so Lee introduces me to Bernie Marcus, who's the one of the four founders of Home Depot. Bernie is working around the clock trying to get Donald Trump reelected. He's got like 14 different groups that he's funding to get Donald Trump reelected. I joined the team of one of them that was based out of Atlanta called Job Creators Network, and they were doing this massive media driven, get out the vote effort. I and my friend Sarah were tasked with raising $6 million and executing this massive media driven get out the vote effort with Sean Hannity and Ben Shapiro and whoever the Secret Service guy is, can't think of his name anyway. But all those big show show hosts that everybody that knows their names and everything, we ran this thing from July to November with them. Blood, sweat and tears. 80 hours a week, hardest I've ever worked until starting 18, 19.
And I get down to November 3rd, I think it was, and I watched the election get stolen.
And I just became disenfranchised with national media, national fundraising, national politics.
And I went to church shortly after that and my pastor started Preaching on localism. This was the same time that Michael Foster was doing counting before country, right? Like, that was this big theme at that time that was kind of thick in our culture, in our circles.
And I went home and I prayed with my wife. I'm like, okay, God, how can I use my gifts, talents, abilities, resources and relationships to make a difference for my people and place in Alabama? I kid you not. A week later, the president of the Alabama Policy Institute calls me.
He says, hey, we're getting a radio show in Huntsville. Can you tell us what we need to do? I'm like, sure. And he kind of tells me the situation. I give him like a little free consult. Turn left here, turn right there, across this t dot that I is what you do. And he's like, man, that's amazing. Thank you so much. What we really need more than a radio show in Huntsville, is a statewide state focused news and multimedia empire to take out AL.com, which is the left leaning media outlet of record in Alabama.
And I said, I'll do it.
And that's.
[00:15:22] Speaker A: And that's it. And here you are.
[00:15:25] Speaker B: I had no idea what I was doing. I knew nothing about journalism. I knew, like, I was just.
But what I did know is I understood this business model that I, that we could make work because we've seen it work. And so I'm basically just taking that NPR business model, inserting it into a statewide news organization where Lee was, you know, rigorously focused on the storytelling with sound design and all that stuff. I'm focused on the news aspect of what NPR does and the fact that national public radio does $350 million a year and only 6 to 12% of that comes from the government. Everybody thinks it's this fully government funded thing. It's like no university. Well, excuse me, like minded philanthropists is the biggest piece of their pie. George Soros types.
So you have like minded philanthropists, universities, corporations and pledge drives. That's their model. That's where they get their money.
And just to give you a story of what that's like. Ray Kroc, the McDonald's guy, very conservative fella. His wife, not so much. She was a communist and he dies. And so the McDonald's fortune goes to the wife.
When she dies, she leaves something like $200 million to NPR.
No McDonald's ads, no nothing. It was just like, here's $200 million. Go make as many communists as possible. And so they did. Wow. Right? And so that's when you're like, oh my, gosh there's all these Christian philanthropists that want to, you know, preserve their way of life and advance Christ's kingdom on earth and actually preserve a civilization for their children and grandchildren.
And I'm going to teach them how to do that. Right? Ministry, discipleship and evangelism ministries. Not getting it done. Another church plant. I mean, great. Not getting it done. Wells in Africa. Definitely not getting it done. Let me show you how I can actually take those Christian philanthropic dollars and turn it into real political and cultural gains that's going to improve the future for your children and grandchildren. And so that was the value proposition going into this thing, and I had to figure out how to do the journalism thing, and so I hired people for that.
[00:17:25] Speaker A: So this is interesting because the way that we've stood up this particular model with the Paris circuit is we've intentionally tried to lean into a for profit model. But what you're saying with 1819 is you've leaned into the nonprofit model, and that's been super effective for you guys. Do you have. Obviously you have thoughts about for profit model media, because you mentioned that a few times as you went through. You think that's over? You think that's kind of dead?
[00:17:47] Speaker B: Yeah. So I'll. Specifically, in the realm of what we're trying to accomplish, I can't tell you. For the first three years, every conservative I talk to, how do you make money? How do you make money? I don't understand. I don't do anything if I don't make money. And it's like, okay, cool. How's that working out in this realm?
And I tell people, if you get into media to make money, you will never make a difference. Yes, you get into media to make a difference, you will eventually make money.
Okay? But if your goal is to make money, the first controversial story that comes through and you got ads all over your site. And by the way, I have. If I sold all the ad inventory on my site, in my radio shows, on my podcasts, in my magazine. So we're a multimedia organization.
All of the ad inventory, if I sold every bit of it, for maximum sales, I get $170,000 a year.
We're a $2.7 million a year organization, probably gonna hit $4 million this year.
You just, you, you can't do what we're doing on ad sales. It just doesn't work. And then specifically, if all you're doing is running a new site, when's the last time you clicked on one of those stupid ads that pops up and you're like, oh, that's what I need. Click. And then went and bought it. Nobody does that.
[00:18:59] Speaker C: Right.
[00:18:59] Speaker B: So it doesn't work. But conservatives are always like, I'm a free market capitalist. I make money. Look at me make money.
Okay. And then their idea when they want to start a news organization.
[00:19:09] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:09] Speaker B: Well, I was thinking about doing this and I was going to like make this like $4,000 website and like pay this guy like 30 grand a year and then we're going to change the world. And it's like, really? Tell me about that. Man. I can't believe no one's just falling all over themselves to work for you. Amazing.
[00:19:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:25] Speaker B: And so we. And this is what Lee taught me. For whatever reason, conservatives are literally when it comes to winning the culture war, using the tools that the left has used to subvert and steal everything that we built.
[00:19:38] Speaker A: Okay, well, let's talk through this. This is helpful. This helpful for us. So what you're arguing for here, and I'm being convinced, is a shift to a non profit model inside of organizations like this, specifically in media. Because we know I knew going in that media doesn't make money. I've been in the space long enough to just. But my bend towards that was, well, it's just going to eat and maybe one day it'll break even. Who knows? But we'll just pay for it out of the, you know, this. I own a marketing company. We'll just pay for it out of the profits of that. And that's fine because the, the need is present.
But you're advocating for a shift toward. Why not just create a donor base.
[00:20:14] Speaker B: Yeah.
And again, you ha. And. And the biggest challenge. Dude, I'm giving you.
I had no idea what we were talking about. And I'm just giving you both barrels that I never talked to about, like, so this is fun. Like, I'm. Let's go say I'm enjoying myself.
[00:20:27] Speaker A: Let's go.
[00:20:28] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:20:29] Speaker A: I got lots of questions, bro. You better.
[00:20:30] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:20:31] Speaker A: Let's go.
[00:20:31] Speaker B: I'm giving you the straight dope. I'm giving you free. Like, I would charge people a lot of money to have this conversation, but I'm just going to give it to you because I want you guys to be successful and we can talk more.
You go to the average evangelical boomer donor that's sitting on piles of cash and he tells you about his well in Africa. Then he tells you about his campus crusade or whatever and you're like, how's that going?
We got three people saved. I'm like, how much money have you given him?
And again, I was saved by a guy, so I'll just throw that part of the story. I went to prison, okay? I was in prison for five years and two months. I got saved in prison.
Thank God someone funded that prison ministry for that chaplain to come in there who preached the day that I ended up getting saved. So I'm not saying that there's not a need for these ministries. There really is.
But if the goal is to actually fight and win, you have to build institutions that can allow you to freaking win. And so 90% of my job is going to these incredible men who have worked really, really hard and built these businesses that are so profitable and they are so smart and convincing them that their philanthropic investing.
If they. If they looked at their philanthropic investing through the same lens that they looked at their actual investing, they would never invest the way that they're investing. It's like, what is your KPI on your philanthropic dollars? What's the roi?
Right. What are. What are we looking at? And yes. So the challenge is getting.
Getting the average evangelical donor to see and understand that preserving our way of life and advancing Christ's kingdom on earth is the best thing. So rebuilding the ruins of Christendom is the best thing you can do to love God and love neighbor.
[00:22:13] Speaker A: Yes. Yes. Let's go. And we knew this. We knew this for a long time. Abraham Kuyper started a media publication system, started schools, started colleges. Charles Spurgeon did as well. You look at Elijah Craig. He built institutions all over the place in America. The Christians knew this for a long time.
It wasn't until the last hundred years that we conveniently forgot and decided that we were no longer going to engage in culture in this way that we had this weird. Nancy Pearcey talks about it as the distinction between the upper story and the lower story. We separated our.
For lack of a better word, earthly life from our spiritual one, and everything fell apart along the way. But there is this movement to reclaim it, and that's good.
I just never would have thought that I'd be reclaiming it through the mechanism of a nonprofit.
But this is helpful. This is very helpful.
[00:23:02] Speaker B: It's the only way. And here's the thing. I mean, yeah, it's a nonprofit, but if you can be effective and you can win, there's so much philanthropic capital that exists out there that if you can show them that, you're going to get way more of a return on investment. Look at what Charlie did with Turning Point.
So Charlie took a little kind of rinky dink college campus civics engagement ministry and turned it into a movement that put Donald Trump in the office. And he had open access to the Oval Office in Trump's ear. Okay. He was the top advisor of the President of the United States because he started a little nonprofit that turned into a movement that then did all these other things. And the happiest check his donors sign is the biggest one they sign every year. Went to Charlie's ministry because they understood, Charlie's going to take my money and he's going to get us wins. And everybody loves winning. Even if they are completely eaten up with loser theology.
We lose down here. Nobody really likes that. Like, they can kind of like, oh, you know, nobody likes that. Everybody likes to win. And if you can take their money and you can freaking win. Yeah, dude, you'll. And again, I can show you a video, Stuart. I'll show you offline.
I've got all my seven figure donors. So these are guys who've given me a million dollars a year or more. And they're on there with, you know, United States Senator Tommy Tuberville, our Attorney General Steve Marshall, or Lieutenant Governor Will Ainsworth. They're all on this, this video.
And the seven figure investors are saying, this is the best investment I have ever made. This is the best philanthropic investment I have ever made. I, I am. The happiest check I write every year is to Brian in 1819 news. When you figure that out.
Yeah. I have no equity in the company. I'm not going to be able to retire and get rich. But I make, I make plenty of money. Okay. And my journalists actually pay them a living wage, which is a crazy concept.
[00:24:51] Speaker A: Yeah. That doesn't happen. Journalists don't make money. That's why the state has to fund the papers these days.
That's awesome. Let's go.
I'm getting hype. This is awesome. Okay, so then let me.
How do you get into these networks so, like, you're. Somebody's trying to bootstrap something like this? Okay. How do you get into these networks with these donors? Where do you find them?
[00:25:13] Speaker B: It's very tough to bootstrap.
It's very tough to bootstrap. So I was blessed that the president of the Alabama Policy Institute, which is really cool how this kind of story shaped up.
He was an elder at like a super gay church when he was, when I met him. And he's, he's a total man's man. Super cool dude. Extremely successful guy. Multimillionaire. By the time he was 40 wow. And, you know, through this process of helping me start 1819 news, I gave him Michael Foster's book. He would listen to Rich Lusk on my podcast and he's just like, do you have Rich's number?
So I got him hooked up with Rich and now he's a member at Trinity in Birmingham and he's gang banging crac.
Can't get enough. You know, so there's, there's very cool providential things like that that have happened. But when, when the, the Alabama Policy Institute launched 1819 news, you know, API had 33, at the time, 33 years of relationships with the, with the Christian philanthropists that had a desire to see state government, you know, do some good. But API was never able to be effective in a real meaningful way. And so Caleb was like, I can't continue to run around the state looking promising them. I'm gonna get stuff done that I know I can't get done. It's not like the donors were fooled. They would have these huge donors that would give like $10,000 a year to API. Those dudes turned around and gave me $250,000 a year for three years and now five years. Right? So that. But they had the network, they had the relationships, and they said, hey, this thing we're building is actually going to solve all the problems. Let me, let me tell you the problems again. Let me show you how this is the solution and we need you to do this. And so we cast a big vision with people who are predisposed to wanting to be a part of something like this. And so that network existed within the Policy Institute in the state. But there's a bunch of other ways we can talk about. But I don't want to give away all my trade secrets.
[00:27:11] Speaker A: That's fine. You're good. I appreciate the ones that you have given away.
So as you continue to build this, like, what do you, what do you see the future as? Do you see the future as like networks of these existing in states all over the Union building towards the same direction? Like, what do you see the future as?
[00:27:26] Speaker B: All right, here it is. Here's more trade secrets. All right, so what our vision is White Horse King Media Group and White Horse King Media Group is going to be a church planting organization, except instead of planting churches, we are going to plant statewide state focus news and multimedia companies. And why we're doing that and matters so much more than what we're planting.
Our why is because the enemies of Christ have levied a hundred year broadside going back to The Bolshevik revolution to today and their attempts to move west. They had to move west. They couldn't do it through tank plane and traditional warfare. They had to do it by cultural subversion. And they've hijacked media, information, entertainment. They've hijacked seminaries and churches. They hijacked the Democrat party. They've hijacked schools specifically, that's the big one. They've hijacked universities and public schools. So there's a, there's a. The enemies of Christ have levied a broadside against Christ, against his people and the civilization that his people have built. And so we are building an organization that can fight back and win. And so that's our why. And White Horse King Media Group has figured it out. And we're going to go state by state, red state, purple states, and build these out across 38 states in 10 years is what we're hoping to do.
[00:28:48] Speaker A: Let's go.
[00:28:49] Speaker B: I'm going to take my executive team here at 1819 and we're going to move into the executive suite of this new organization.
And 1819 will have an executive director and you know, you know, kind of a replacement executive team that will operate it here. But we'll be in Tennessee, we'll be in Texas, we'll be in Florida, we'll be in Kansas, we'll be in Louisiana, we'll be in Mississippi, we'll be in Missouri, we'll be in, you know, Idaho, you know, da da da da da, and on and on. And so our goal is what we've done is to a certain degree, it's pulling a rabbit out of a hat and what we built. And I know a lot of people who are trying to do what we've done and they've not been able to do it. And even if I gave you the playbook, it would still be like I still. There's just an element of everyone's gonna need help doing it and I have, I know how to do it.
[00:29:37] Speaker A: Well, there's also an element of strong leadership. Like if you have strong, defined, knowledgeable and capable leadership. That's. There's something about that. Just having the playbook of an institution doesn't work if that's all you're running. Depends on the person who's in front.
[00:29:50] Speaker B: Exactly. So, yeah, so that's, that's the vision. And so. But the vision here in Alabama is for 1819 news to be the premier news outlet news organization in the state. We want brand saturation in every, every square inch of the state. We want to go from 2.7 million to 4 million to 10 million here. We want, we want to be the most powerful organization in the state. To heck with the Chamber of commerce. To heck with the teachers union. To heck with, you know, all these other associations and everything else. 1819 is the ultimate power broker in the state and it's ran by people who love Christ. And the only thing that we want is to see Christ's civilization restored starting in these borders of Alabama.
[00:30:29] Speaker A: Let's go all day long. All right, Brian, you got somebody listening to this podcast that's thinking about starting something like what you're doing, what we're doing on a hyper local level. Town focus, county focus, parish focus. Where do they start?
[00:30:42] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, investment. That's. You got to have money. That's it. I mean, you can try and, you know, do. And I've seen some guys do some really incredible stuff. There's a girl who reached out to me from one of the Carolinas, I can't remember. South or North Carolina, I think it was. I think it was South Carolina. And she's doing really like, she, like what she's done is actually really impressive. I'm actually like, geez. She kind of started as like a C3, C4 watchdog, but again. And there's a, there's another guy in Tennessee running, the pamphleteer. And all that is is a Nashville based publication. Super based dude. Like when I go into Tennessee, he's going to run Tennessee. Great guy, but the same thing. I talked to them and I'm like, what's your budget? He's like $70,000 a year. And I don't pay myself a salary. I'm like, you can't do it. You've got to figure out how to create a vision that's so big and create a network of people who can fund it in a value proposition, pitch, whatever you want to call it, that drives capital into this vision and then deploy that capital in such a responsible way that you're getting wins and then you're selling those wins back to a donor base that you're monetizing.
And so it has to have money. This thing will not go if it is not funded, period.
But the, the two people, I've seen the same. It's the same story. I've got about $70,000 a year and it's. Hey, that. I mean, that's actually Admiral. It's more than most people I've seen trying to do this. And they're still getting some really good wins. But I'm like If you're going to do this long term, it's long hours, it's long night, it's long days, it's long nights. It's like, and you need to be paid for what you're doing. And if you can turn those scalps that you've gotten, it's not the greatest term in the world, but it is the impact that you've gotten.
And turn that around and show it to people who like that impact and say, I can exponentially increase this with investment.
That's it. So it starts with the capital. But, I mean, the other thing that people are missing that we have in the CRC is courage in a Christian ethos. Like, that's what is the secret sauce at 1819 NEWS. It's courage in a Christian ethos. It's people who absolutely fear Christ. Like Stonewall Jackson.
It says, I, oh, my gosh, I'm losing my favorite quote. He said that my religion teaches me that I'm as safe in battle as I am in bed. The Lord knows the number of my days. And if all men believe such, they'd be equally as brave. We're not scared of anything except God. That's it.
[00:33:04] Speaker A: Let's go.
[00:33:04] Speaker B: And it requires that level of courage to go and expose these perverts in public schools, to expose these corrupt politicians that everyone is scared to death of. And you're just walking them up and metaphorically punching them in the face.
No one's willing to do that. And you display that kind of courage, you create a following really quick. And they're like, wow, these guys aren't scared of anything.
And so whatever you do, make sure it's done with Courage in a Christian ethos. And we are unabashedly right wing. And we're telling people, hey, we have to get back to the way things were until basically five minutes ago when we lost our mind.
And we're like, well, you're unashamedly right wing. And it's the whole conquest, second law of politics. Any institutional organization that isn't avowedly right wing will soon become left. So, yes, we are avowedly right wing. We plant our flag. This is who we are.
Well, what is right wing? That sounds. It's like, okay, marriage is between a man and a woman. You can't cut kids penises off and call them a girl. Like, can't kill your baby in the womb.
[00:34:00] Speaker A: It's odd. Or, that's right.
[00:34:02] Speaker B: You can't kill them in the living room either. Not in the womb or the living room. Can't kids. It's crazy, crazy nut jobs where taxes aren't fantastic. Big government sucks. Like this isn't, you know, like it's not. Anyway, so, so that's it.
You have to if this is going to work. Because we kind of started out, we didn't really know that. I knew, I read Pat Buchana of the west and that just like pumps through my veins.
But I was like, ah, maybe we need to be like a Wall Street Journal of Alabama. We tried that for about three months and we're like this is not going to work.
We like this isn't. Nobody cares about this.
So you have to be aggressive. You have to be going after the cultural issues of the day. You know, the people of Louisiana, 75% of them believe the same way about, you know, 90% issues.
[00:34:47] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:34:47] Speaker B: And so those are the issues that you go after. Every single public school system in the country is filled up with Marxists who are trying to steal the hearts, minds and souls of our children that are probably having sex with the kids that are probably the Drainy or Drag Queen Story hour and the library books and you know, all of that kind of stuff. And the stuff at the universities, I mean that's probably the thing I'm most proud of is actually there's a lot of things I'm proud of that we've been able to do. But we've gotten there was recently in response to our reporting we have a full blown dedicated investigative journalist team that all they focus on IS K through 12 education and higher ed. And we have brought such exposure to what was going on at the universities that the Tuesday before Thanksgiving last year, the two biggest schools, Auburn and Alabama, sent their trustees down to Montgomery, which is our capital, to meet with our legislators and say what the hell do we do about 1819 news? That was the topic of conversation.
[00:35:45] Speaker C: Let's go.
[00:35:46] Speaker B: And what came out of that, that was HB 580 and HB 580 said that all state, state funded schools have to dissolve their faculty senates and they, they, they need to put a process in place to fire tenured professors with cause. Auburn University immediately, first school to jump immediately dissolves their faculty senate. They're setting up that process. They're getting picketed by the, the professors union or whatever and they're going to be the most conservative school in the country in five years. And they're, they're doing the hard work of getting the rot out. And so you want to talk about how do you fix your state for us? Auburn more Than half of the kids that go to Auburn come from Alabama and they stay at Alabama when they graduate. They stay in the state of Alabama when they graduate. So that's kind of our crown jewel institution in the state. And they are fired up and trying to do this. That's how you fix your state.
[00:36:35] Speaker A: Excellent, Excellent. Brian, thank you so much for coming on the show today. I really appreciate you giving your time like this.
You and I will talk more about this later on. As times go, I feel amped and convinced of some shifts, so we'll be making some.
[00:36:53] Speaker C: Can I ask one quick question?
[00:36:54] Speaker A: Please do,
[00:36:57] Speaker C: Brian.
What have you found success in trying to reach, like a boomer, maybe a traditionally conservative Republican boomer who still watches CNN and watching Fox News? Well, but not always. Let me put it this way. They trust the. They trust the neutrality of the press. Right?
[00:37:22] Speaker A: The neutrality of the press
[00:37:25] Speaker C: in our court systems, in our media, kind of across the board. Have you had success in kind of reaching maybe that type of person or maybe. Yeah, if that makes sense. No.
[00:37:38] Speaker B: So there's people who are predisposed to being able to be pushed over.
And so it's kind of like the Tim Keller thing where like in his dying manifesto, he's like, the future of the church is gays and minorities. And it's like. That's an interesting strategy. That's an interesting strategy. But what I see is the fields that are like white for harvest right now, pun intended, where the most effective evangelism I'm seeing is disaffected white young men who have been told that they're, you know, the worst thing that's ever existed and they've been beaten and they can't get into college and they can't get jobs because they're being discriminated against by all these institutions and they're black pilled and they're listening to Nick Fuentes and they're watching Andrew Tate.
And you go in there and evangelize that guy. It's not really hard to show them why they shouldn't be listening and watching those guys. And let me show you some other guys that you should be watching that are saying the good things that those guys are saying. You can get over here, but you can actually get better stuff. And those fields are ripe for harvest. Right? And so the same thing with the boomers.
You just have to. I mean, they have to be winnable. And if they're watching cnn, it's immediately off the table. Like there's just no hope.
If they're watching Fox News,
[00:38:45] Speaker A: it's a little better.
[00:38:47] Speaker B: But, yeah, I get you.
You know, the.
The in the. And the trick really is, is, like, if they're getting their national news from those sources, whatever, show them how the news sources they're getting locally are poisoned.
[00:39:03] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:39:03] Speaker B: And it's really easy to do.
[00:39:04] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:39:05] Speaker B: Yeah. And so that's my kind of move with these guys. Like, let's, like, local is the strategy. We can't fix D.C.
we need to fix here. Let me show you the problems that we're having here and how no one's trying to solve it and how this will. And so that's been my strategy. And 90% of the people who fund 1819 news are boomer evangelicals. They are. And so I love them to death. But it is. It's just a real thing that so many of them came from an era where they felt like they could trust the information that was been given to them by. On tv.
But there's a lot of them who. Who have kind of learned to know better. And those are the people that I kind of go after.
[00:39:43] Speaker C: Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. Well, thank you.
[00:39:45] Speaker A: Yeah. So keep track of the wins and convince people that it matters. Brian, thank you again so much for doing this. We appreciate you.
We'll follow up again later on as we continue to try to build this thing in Louisian.
Guys, thank you all so much for listening to another episode of the Parish circuit. You can go to the parishcircuit.com to find more blogs, stories, articles, podcasts, all those things, and help us build what Brian is building in Alabama right now with 1819 NEWS. Help us to build this out more and more in St Legra parish, south Louisiana, and Louisiana as a whole. Brian, thanks again so much for coming on 1819news.com.
Anywhere else that you would send your people.
[00:40:25] Speaker B: Yeah, you can follow me on Twitter. I have no idea what my handle is, so just put in Brian Dawson 1819 logo on my thing. I think it's like at Brian 1819 or something like that. Something like that, yeah. Follow. Follow me on X, follow me on Facebook, but go just follow the 1819 News channels. So 1819 News, the podcast, is a podcast that I host. I would encourage you to follow there and then all of the 1819 channels. Facebook, Instagram, all of those places, and you'll be able to see our stories and engage with our content and kind of see what it is that we're doing and why it matters.
[00:40:58] Speaker A: Excellent. Brian, thank you so much again. Appreciate your time, guys. Thanks so much for listening and we'll see you all next time.
