AMERICA, July 6, 2026 — Issues & Insights, a commentary site founded by the journalists behind the great IBD Editorials Page (RIP), announced that it canceled its relationship with online ad networks, including Google’s AdSense, and is now 100% reader-supported.
“Since our founding in 2019, we have been blessed with many loyal and generous readers,” the team said. “We tried working with ad networks, and have found them to be increasingly frustrating and intrusive, while producing little revenue. That’s particularly true of Google’s AdSense network, which routinely demonetizes content that strays from the company’s leftist politics, on the spurious grounds that such content is ‘unreliable’ or ‘offensive.’ So, today, we are declaring our independence.”
Below is the text of the I&I Declaration of Independence that the editorial team issued (a copy of the original is above).
If you’d like to support I&I, please click here.
The unanimous Declaration of the editors of Issues & Insights
When in the Course of Journalistic events, it becomes necessary for one small organization to dissolve the bands which have connected it with Big Tech, and to assume among the Powers of the internet, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of their readers requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all journalists are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable abilities, that among these are Reading, Writing, and the Pursuit of the Truth. That to secure these rights, publications are launched, deriving their just powers from the consent of the readers.
That whenever any Form of Internet Giants becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the publisher to abolish those ties and to institute new forms of remuneration, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness — namely, the support of their readers.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that publications long established (7 years ago) should not be changed for light and transient causes. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such relationships, and to provide new sources of revenue for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of Issues & Insights; and such is now the necessity which constrains us to alter our financial situation.
The history of Big Tech is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over online publications. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
Big Tech has refused to allow freedom of speech, which is most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
It has punished websites that publish viewpoints contrary to the Woke agenda by use of demonetization.
It has refused to allow ads on webpages unless the publisher relinquishes the right to speak the truth about climate change, COVID, and many other topics that are inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
It has used vague, unusual, policies that are distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing publishers into compliance with its ideological biases.
[And so on and so forth.]
We, therefore, the editors of Issues & Insights, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good readers of this website, solemnly publish and declare, That this page ought to be a Free and Independent Site; and is Absolved from all Allegiance to Big Tech, and that all political connections between it and Google, etc., is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as a Free and Independent and 100% Reader-Supported Site, I&I has full Power to say whatever we want and to do all other Things which an Independent News and Opinion Site may of right do.
And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the Protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Issues, our Insights, and our Sacred Honor.
Signed,
Support Independent Journalism
Issues & Insights was founded by seasoned journalists from the IBD Editorials page. Our mission is to provide timely, fact-based reporting and deeply informed analysis on the news of the day — without fear or favor.
We’re doing this on a voluntary basis because we believe in a free press and because we aren’t afraid to tell the truth, even if it means being targeted by the left.
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John Merline
Veteran journalist John Merline was Deputy Editor of Commentary and Opinion at Investor’s Business Daily. Before IBD, he launched and edited the Opinion section of AOL News, and was a member of the editorial board of USA Today. He’s been published in the Washington Post, National Review, Detroit News, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Forbes, and numerous other publications. He got his start in journalism under the tutelage of M. Stanton Evans.
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