The decision comes in the wake of an ongoing campaign of speech suppression by the government against dissident outlets. The media outlet has announced its transition to a Substack-based publication, marking a new chapter in its journalistic journey.
Big League Politics was established in 2017 by former Breitbart.com staff members, and a year later, it was acquired by Mustard Seed Media, owned by Riley O’Neal of North Carolina. O'Neal's political background includes involvement in the Ron Paul presidential campaigns of 2008 and 2012, according to Gateway Pundit. The site was managed by O'Neal and a rotating roster of editors, typically transitioning out after a year.
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The closure of Big League Politics follows a similar fate met by other significant outlets such as VDare.com, which shut down last month after a multi-year legal harassment campaign spearheaded by New York Attorney General Letitia James. Despite never being charged, the legal costs associated with fighting an open-ended investigation led to the bankruptcy of the immigration reform outlet.
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This pattern of targeting conservative media outlets is not isolated. Major left-wing billionaires have been implicated in funding frivolous civil litigation against Fox News, Rudy Giuliani, Alex Jones, OAN, Newsmax, and the Gateway Pundit. The dubious criminal prosecutions of executives at the Epoch Times also suggest a clear intention to bankrupt these dissident outlets.
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During its seven-year tenure as a national media outlet, Big League Politics broke several major stories and exposés. Despite the mainstream media's reluctance to acknowledge or praise conservative media outlets, Big League Politics had several publications recognize their role in breaking original news. For instance, The Wall Street Journal acknowledged BLP as the original source of the Gov. Ralph Northam controversy in 2019.
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BLP also gained recognition for their DetroitLeaks story when Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel threatened the publication for publishing audio files that revealed Detroit election workers were being trained to lie. Nessel demanded the story be deleted, leading to the removal of one of the site's major news stories. "The cost of litigating it just wasn't worth it, so it got deleted," said a former BLP writer.
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Big League Politics faced substantial censorship and suppression. It was shadow banned on Twitter and its content was difficult to find unless its exact name was typed out. Even after Elon Musk, a known free speech advocate, bought Twitter, the suppression continued unchanged, according to BLP's former writers. The site's Facebook traffic was anemic, and its content was not spread to its fans' timelines, a common experience among many conservative media outlets.
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By the end, most of its web traffic was coming from email list rentals and sends, one of the last options for sites and political dissidents who have been otherwise deplatformed elsewhere. "Billionaires are bankrupting conservative media for sport, the government is attacking your existence and demanding your hot and spicy content is suppressed, far-left social media company owners are gloating about their commitment to free speech while your voice is cut off, and every service provider is being harassed to drop you," said a former BLP insider.
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The government's ongoing illegal mass suppression of conservative media is currently being litigated in the Missouri v. Biden case. However, the case suffered a setback this summer when Justice Amy Coney-Barrett refused to permit an injunction against the government from continuing to suppress conservative speech as the case works its way through the courts.
The legacy of Big League Politics is challenging to assess, particularly due to the rampant and illegal government censorship and collusion with Big Tech to attack dissident media on social media sites. Despite these challenges, former BLP writers argue that their content had a significant impact. "I think we were doing really good work, not just from a journalistic standpoint, but our human rights-based dissident journalism helped avert World War III by disproving falsehoods and war propaganda that were being pushed by the mainstream media and world government," Jordan Epperson, former BLP Author, told the Gateway Pundit.
However, some writers were critical of the site and suggested that at least some of the blame includes how the site was managed and run. "You’d sometimes get paid 8 months late. If you got locked out of your account, you could be screwed for months. There wasn’t a big incentive to release scoops. The editors were getting frustrated, and you never knew how long it would take to get a story up on the site," said one frustrated former writer.
The new iteration of the outlet is on Substack, and the site claims over 2,000 current subscribers. This is a substantial decline from its prior traffic, say insiders. On its worst days, the site was averaging 5,000 viewers they say, and on its best days was reaching half a million views. Now it will have to rebuild its audience one-by-one and hope that another Big Tech platform won’t destroy it for reporting something that company dislikes. The future of dissident journalism in America may very well mirror what Big League Politics is currently experiencing.
