Welcome to Free Expression
A message from the editor.
You may know me from the Opinion pages of the print paper, where I have been an editor since 2017. Earlier this year I scrapped with Vice President JD Vance about free markets, which may have caught your attention. I suppose there is a slim chance you read my 2018 book on Gen X, or my 2022 book on economics.
What you may not know is that in a past life I was an actor. There’s nothing like the excitement of an opening night. But the launch of Free Expression feels more like the opening day of a baseball season than the start of a Broadway run. Every day promises something at once entirely familiar yet unique.
That’s what you can expect daily from Free Expression: nine full innings of the game you love, played the way it should be played—with grit, passion, a healthy respect for tradition, and almost no performance-enhancing drugs.
The Free Expression newsletter will address questions and controversies arising from the culture. We won’t ignore Washington and Wall Street, but we’ll cast a wider net.
The media landscape is crowded these days. We know that. Online influencers and content creators are pushing into spaces once occupied by traditional journalists.
Despite all this, we believe there’s a place for us.
Free Expression is a new house built on an old foundation. For more than a century, the writers and editors crafting the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal have assumed the best about our readers. You’re sophisticated and curious. You’re hungry for information and new ideas. You’re comfortable with complexity.
Above all, you’re smart enough to hear an argument and decide for yourself.
Subscribing to Free Expression could be the best thing you do this holiday season. Today you’re getting a column from Kyle Smith. Before the week is out you’ll get columns from Matthew Continetti, James B. Meigs, John J. Miller and Louise Perry. They’ll come straight to your inbox each morning, along with a little something spicy from me. You’ll also meet my talented assistants on this project, Jack Butler and Mary Julia Koch, who are fired up and have lots to say.
In coming weeks, you’ll hear from columnists Ben Sasse and Meghan Cox Gurdon, plus other regular contributors. We’ve got so much great stuff lined up for you to read, watch and listen to, you may end up wondering how you ever lived without it.
Free Expression will go places and do things that WSJ Opinion hasn’t often gone or done before. I hope you come along for the ride.
Mr. Hennessey is editor of Free Expression, a daily newsletter from WSJ Opinion.