Here's why we do this
| Hey, | You might already know this, but I just did a survey and found that many of our readers don't know why we started Upward News. That's on me. So here it is. | My parents left everything they knew in 1991. They were Soviet — born into a system where the state decided what was true and the press existed to enforce it. They came to America, desperate for the opposite, for the freedom to think for themselves and achieve the American dream. | I watched them love this country the way only people who have lived through real oppression can. | When I watched American media start pushing this country toward the same kind of ideological conformity they fled — party lines over facts, stories engineered to produce obedience rather than tell the truth — it felt like I was seeing something I'd been warned about my whole life. I knew where that road goes. | I saw my friends fall for it. So, I left a career in tech and started Upward News because I didn't know what else to do. | Brandon, our managing editor, got here a different way. | He grew up with CNN on every night. By college, his worldview was fully formed — built entirely by one side, and it led him to the front row of Bernie Sanders rallies. Then, in October 2017, he started reading sources he'd always been told to distrust. Within a few months, he realized that everything he thought he knew about the other half of the country had come from people who opposed them. He'd been told what conservatives believed by people who wanted him to think they were wrong. | What he found changed how he understood media, information, and honest reporting. That's why he came here. | That changed how he understood media, information, and honest reporting. That's why he came here. | We got here from completely different places. But we're both building Upward News for the same reason: to keep you informed with fearless, honest reporting when the media ecosystem is failing us. | Next time, I'll tell you about the semester that almost sent me down a completely different road. It only took one charismatic professor. | Till then, | Ariel |
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