Louisiana is one of the most storied, complicated, beautiful, wounded, powerful, misunderstood places in America.

It is a state of contradictions: abundance and poverty, genius and neglect, joy and grief, corruption and courage, memory and myth. It has shaped the nation’s politics, culture, foodways, music, laws, racial history, environmental future, and imagination in ways far larger than its size would suggest. But too often, Louisiana’s story has been told by people who flatten it, exploit it, romanticize it, or look away from the truths that make it matter.

Imagine Louisiana exists to tell a fuller story.

I write about Louisiana’s past and present with a commitment to evidence, context, accountability, and possibility. This publication is rooted in the belief that journalism should do more than chase the outrage of the day. It should help us understand how we got here, who benefits from the way things are, what has been hidden or distorted, and what kind of future we still have the power to build.

For $10 a month, paid subscribers receive full access to the Imagine Louisiana archives, every new subscriber-only piece, and exclusive content written for the people who make this work possible.

Your subscription is not just a way to read more. It is a way to sustain independent Louisiana journalism that is willing to dig deeper, remember more honestly, and imagine more boldly.

Why subscribe?

Imagine Louisiana is for readers who care about the truth behind the official story.

It is for people who know that Louisiana cannot be understood through headlines alone. It is for people who want reporting and essays that connect politics to history, policy to power, corruption to culture, and memory to the future. It is for people who believe that our state’s problems are not inevitable and that our stories deserve to be told with rigor, clarity, and care.

As a paid subscriber, you get:

Full access to the complete Imagine Louisiana archive.

Exclusive subscriber-only essays, investigations, notes, and commentary.

Deeper historical context on the people, places, myths, scandals, movements, and decisions that shaped Louisiana.

Independent reporting and analysis from a writer whose work has helped expose corruption, racism, hypocrisy, and abuses of power across the Deep South.

A direct way to support journalism that is rooted in Louisiana, accountable to readers, and free from the pressures that too often distort political and historical storytelling.

At $10 a month, your subscription helps me keep researching, reporting, writing, and publishing work that treats Louisiana with the seriousness it deserves.

What this publication covers

Imagine Louisiana is about the stories that still shape us.

That means investigating the powerful. It means revisiting the historical record when it has been buried, sanitized, or deliberately misrepresented. It means explaining how decisions made in courtrooms, capitols, boardrooms, churches, schools, police departments, and local governments affect the lives of ordinary people. It means paying attention to the overlooked places and people who rarely get the first word but often understand the story better than anyone else.

This publication explores Louisiana politics, history, culture, race, power, public policy, corruption, memory, and imagination. It is written for people who want more than conventional wisdom and more than partisan noise. The goal is to tell stories that are useful, truthful, and alive.

Because Louisiana deserves journalism with a memory.

And it deserves journalism with a future.

Why I do this work

I was born and raised in Alexandria, Louisiana, near the center of the state, often described as the crossroads of Louisiana. That geography shaped the way I see this place. Every corner of the state is within reach. North Louisiana, South Louisiana, Acadiana, New Orleans, Baton Rouge, the Delta, the piney woods, the river parishes, the prairies, the coast: each has its own history, its own mythology, its own wounds, and its own claim on the larger Louisiana story.

My career has taken me through law, literature, politics, public service, and journalism. But the throughline has always been the same: a belief in the power of storytelling to reveal truth, challenge power, and expand what people believe is possible.

I founded CenLamar.com in 2006, one of Central Louisiana’s first digital platforms for political commentary and investigative reporting. In 2017, I founded The Bayou Brief, Louisiana’s first nonprofit digital newsroom offering statewide coverage of politics, culture, and history. Over the years, my reporting has exposed political corruption, challenged official narratives, confronted racism and extremism, and helped bring Louisiana stories into the national conversation.

Imagine Louisiana is the next chapter of that work.

It is a publication built around the conviction that Louisiana’s history is not dead, that its present is not inevitable, and that its future should not be left to the same people who have profited from its failures.

Independent journalism depends on readers

Imagine Louisiana is reader-supported because independence matters.

The stories that most need to be told are often the ones that powerful people would rather bury. They require time, research, judgment, context, and persistence. They require freedom from advertisers, political patrons, corporate owners, and institutional caution. They require readers who understand that serious journalism is not free to produce, even when it is made freely available to the public.

A $10 monthly subscription helps keep this work going.

It allows me to spend the time necessary to investigate, analyze, write, and preserve the stories that matter. It gives you full access to the archives and exclusive content. And it helps build a community of readers who believe Louisiana deserves better than shallow coverage, recycled myths, and cynical politics.

Subscribe for $10/month

For $10 a month, you will receive full access to the Imagine Louisiana archives and exclusive subscriber-only content.

You will be supporting independent reporting, historical research, political analysis, and longform storytelling about one of the most fascinating and consequential places in America.

If you believe Louisiana deserves journalism that tells the truth about the past, holds power accountable in the present, and dares to imagine a better future, I hope you will subscribe today.

Louisiana’s story is still being written.

Help me tell it honestly.

Subscribe for $10/month.