EDITORIAL: The Redneck Revolt story that almost wasn’t

Jordan Green worked the story for a year, bouncing it back and forth to his editors at the national magazine as they made notes and he added string.

Green’s been covering far-right groups since the beginning of his career, and the emergence of the alt-right after Trump’s election had infused his expertise with value, as his freelance work began appearing in national publications like the Guardian and the Nation.

The Redneck Revolt pitch was different because this time, the armed militia came from the left and not the right. The RR folks stood against white-supremacist militia in Charlottesville and through North Carolina, an incredible grassroots movement that turned the prevailing narrative — that people on the right are pro-gun and people on the left are afraid of them — on its ear.

Ultimately — after a full year of research, writing and editing — that deviation from the conventional wisdom, combined with the new anti-gun sentiments sweeping the country after yet another high school shooting, is why the story got spiked.[pullquote]Where the ‘mainstream’ media tends to service a narrative and police any subtext that strays from it, here in the alternative press we go where the reporting leads us, whether we like the destination or not.[/pullquote]

In the alternative press, we are lumped together with the mainstream, media all the time — and all too often we take the bait and defend our colleagues breaking stories at the New York Times, Washington Post or any of a number of journalistically serious glossy magazines.

But here’s a key difference: None of those publications would run Jordan Green’s piece on the Redneck Revolt. But two altweeklies are stepping up to put this out there. Both Triad City Beat and INDY Week in the Triangle are publishing the Redneck Revolt story this week — special thanks to Editor Jeffrey Billman, who helped edit the piece — and not only are we proud to bring it to you, we agree that not to do so would amount to journalistic malpractice.

Because where the “mainstream” media tends to service a narrative and police any subtext that strays from it, here in the alternative press we go where the reporting leads us, whether we like the destination or not.