| | |

The Manatee Herald begins a new chapter and you are invited

Tales from the Mark Side: The Conservative Voice in Manatee County

The Manatee Herald begins a new chapter and you are invited

By Mark Young

mark.young@manateeherald.com

Driving under the influence is no laughing matter, but in the case of Nancy Pelosi’s husband’s recent DUI arrest, well … It is a little funny.

I, for one, think all charges should be dropped against Mr. Pelosi simply because if I was married to that lunatic, I’d pretty much stay drunk.

You really can’t blame the guy, but I wonder if we got the whole story. Nancy was out of town during this incident so I have to wonder if Paul was finally making a break for it and needed a liquid courage to make his escape.

Did anyone check to see if Paul’s trunk was full of luggage? Enquiring minds want to know.

But we’ll move on because there are more important discussions that we need to have today. I’d like to say that today is a special day, but bittersweet to say the least.

Today marks our 75th visit together, which is a little surreal in and of itself, and it also marks our first official visit under the new ownership at the Manatee Herald.

September will mark one year since Manatee Herald founder Dennis Cooley approached me about joining this endeavor.

It was just a couple of weeks or so after myself and the Bradenton Herald parted ways following the paper’s corporate master – McClatchy – showing me that their support of Biden overshadowed what little support they have for American veterans.

That breakup – as has been explained – was a long time coming after I witnessed firsthand blatant anti-Trump bias for more than four years.

After almost 26 years in the business, I honestly had no desire to do it anymore. Put me on the back of a garbage truck or stocking shelves at Walmart and I was planning on a drama-free, blissfully happy existence.

But Dennis made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. He offered me the truth and a path to provide this community with editorials and news that is unapologetically Conservative while adhering to the fair and balanced principles that are at the core of actual journalism.

I’m not necessarily talking about this space we share. This is an opinion space, and he offered me this space to speak the truth in a different way.

That doesn’t mean everyone agrees with me, although you should. Perhaps I don’t always bring the truth in the most sensitive, delicate way, but that’s not who I am and is not why I’m here.

If you call yourself a Conservative and find yourself in need of a safe space when I speak those truths, well … maybe it’s time to do a little self reflection.

Providing news with a Conservative retrospect, as well as free-speech opinion columns, has been Dennis’ vision for the Manatee Herald. Believe it not, Dennis hasn’t always agreed with the way I speak the truth even when he knows it is the truth.

But he believes in free speech even when I’m a little too in-your-face with the way I speak the truth. That’s not going to change, by the way. So we don’t always share the same opinion, but we share the same Conservative values.

Even when we disagree, we are still friends.

It’s a lesson, I think, that other Conservatives in this town can learn about constructive criticism, whether it’s me offering it to our elected officials or our elected officials offering it to me.

When the truth shines itself upon you, it’s liberals who scramble for the shadowy safe spaces like cockroaches. Conservatives stand their ground. It doesn’t mean we agree on any given topic, but we must remember that we share enough common values to move this relationship forward.

Like any relationship, we’ll have our fights, but we are still family. We still share a common goal and we stand shoulder to shoulder on the same battlefield to move this great country forward with shared Conservative values.

You can call me every name in the book, and a lot of people do, especially liberals. I’m as thick-skinned as they come and when I say I don’t care what you think about me, I mean exactly that.

I don’t say that to sound insulting. I just don’t budge from my convictions when I know them to be firmly planted in the truth.

But we can have our fights, too, learn from them and move forward knowing both sides of an argument have been told. We can walk away from that argument like a liberal, all mad and sad, or we can learn from one another or simply agree to disagree.

That’s how Conservatives handle debate.

So in short, I couldn’t resist jumping onboard with Dennis because his vision of the Manatee Herald is everything I have longed for a newspaper to be.

We still have a lot of work to do. We still have a lot of growing to do. We have little capacity in the here and now to provide saturation coverage of Manatee County.

With your help, we’ll get there. Without your help, we probably won’t and you can continue to get your news from the Bradenton Herald, Bradenton Times, Sarasota Herald-Tribune and Bay News 9, all of which are slaves to the liberal agenda.

Why would anyone pay for a liberal news source? But then again, why are there even liberals? Neither makes sense.

So as we move into the future under Bob Spencer, the Manatee Herald’s new publisher, let’s try to keep in mind that we are on the same team.

If I find myself disagreeing with a local Conservative and feel the need to call him or her out, think of it as being in an NFL training camp. There will be fights because we are passionate about what we do, but we also all have the same goal in reaching the Super Bowl.

The real opponents are on the other side of the ball.

I look forward to working with Bob and helping in any way I can to grow this endeavor because it’s important for this community to have, not only an alternative source of news, but an alternative to the liberal dominated news sources in this area.

Bob and I have met once and have spoken a couple of times. I know he shares a similar vision. I also know he and I will not always agree with how I bring the truth forward.

But when it comes down to it, isn’t that America at its core?

So I welcome Bob as the new publisher. I thank Dennis for his vision, friendship and a strong belief in what I’m trying to accomplish for the Manatee Herald in my own way.

I know Dennis will be staying around for a while so this isn’t a complete goodbye to my friend just yet as he sets sights on a higher form of public service.

As we transition, remember that what we are doing here represents what this country is all about. So with every visit to the Manatee Herald, I welcome you back to America, and perhaps for the first time in a very long time, I welcome you back to American journalism.

As always my fellow Patriots, stay vigilant, stay aware and stay informed.


Similar Posts