News Monger

LES SILLARS, HOST: From WORLD Radio, this is Doubletake. I’m Les Sillars.

GUMP: Hello. My name’s Forrest Gump. Do you want a chocolate?

SILLARS: One of the things I love about the very best podcasts is that they’re unpredictable. Surprising. Just like life.

GUMP: My mama always said, life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.

So in the spirit of Forrest Gump, we invite you back here each week for the next few months. Open up that podcast app. And see what you get. Every episode I think you’re going to say to yourself, I did not see that coming.

For those who are new to Doubletake, we tell stories about interesting people encountering big ideas. Like all our work at World News Group, the goal is to offer biblical insight, original reporting, and great storytelling.

Welcome to season four of Doubletake.

Quick note here–this episode is not for kids.

[MUSIC]

The media law class I teach at Patrick Henry College is half about the law and half about journalism ethics. We always discuss one particular scenario when we cover the topic: “invasion of privacy: publication of private information.”

Here’s the scenario: You’re a reporter in a small town. You find out that a prominent member of the community has done something horribly embarrassing, even grossly immoral. But not illegal. He’s well known and respected. Beloved, even. Maybe it happened a long time ago. But the story is true. And when it comes out, it will utterly destroy this person’s reputation.

Do you publish that story? The legal and ethical answer is, it depends. On who the person is. On what he did. On how long ago it happened. And whether the story is of “public concern.”

State law varies, but here’s a summary: If you publish something about a person’s private life, you can be sued for “invasion of privacy” if publishing the material would be “highly offensive” and is not of “legitimate public concern.”

The courts have ruled that some pretty trivial things are “of legitimate public concern.” There’s a good reason for that. Because of the First Amendment, the courts are very reluctant to punish the publication of truthful information legally obtained.

Today on Doubletake, WORLD Senior Writer Kim Henderson has the story of a Christian reporter who faced exactly this scenario: Craig Monger. His name means “trader,” someone who deals in or promotes something, and he works in news. For a conservative outfit called 1819 News in Alabama. A southern state. You know–football, politics, and the blues.

And in 2023 Monger and his editors had to decide whether to run a truly explosive story. One that would prompt a round of pearl-clutching from the high priests of the Church of Journalism. Send shockwaves through a community. And end with gut-wrenching consequences.

Except, whatever you’re imagining, the story Monger uncovered is worse. Way worse.

Here’s Kim.

[MUSIC]

MONGER: Everything, as you can see, our giant gas tank, because no county water, sewage or anything. We run on a well, and we own about two acres that way, and the rest of this up front . . .

KIM HENDERSON: Craig Monger lives in a modest home at the end of a long dirt road in rural Prattville, Alabama. It’s quiet there. The kind of place where you can hear a car coming long before you see it.

On the morning we meet, Monger welcomes me with a smile, then ushers led me into his living room. He’s six foot three, broad-shouldered. But he settles easily into the couch, like he’s spent a lot of time there.

In fact, he was sitting in that exact spot on a fall night in 2023 when his phone lit up.

What happened next changed his life forever.

MONGER: I got the message in our newsroom group chat that said, “I have one for, I think it was an industrious reporter, or some like a reporter who's, you know, got some grit.” So I sent a meme that was someone raising their hand in a classroom.

Monger’s boss often sent story opportunities that way, on the Signal app.

MONGER: That's pretty much how we would communicate. So people just it's always going off. The group chat’s always going off.

Monger learned the tip came from a source that had given him other leads. And this time, the tip came with visuals. Two photos.

MONGER: One was of Mayor Fred “Bubba” Copeland, and the other was of a person in essentially drag. Could have been a woman, for all I know.

Copeland was the mayor of Smiths Station, Alabama, a sleepy town near the eastern border of the state.

Monger’s boss spelled out the assignment.

MONGER: We're being told this is the same person. We need you to find it out.

Monger started with the social media forum Reddit. He viewed Copeland’s pictures and read the posts that went with them.

MONGER: At first I couldn't believe it. I'm like, this just can't be the same person, because they did look radically different. The female version and the male version looked different, but also similar.

Monger kept digging, this time on Instagram, and then on a few adult websites. He compared the photos, but he wasn’t completely sure. Was it the same person?

By that point, Monger’s wife, Miriam, had joined him on the couch. They pulled up public Facebook pages belonging to the mayor and his wife, and they made a discovery.

MONGER: Pictures that Miss Brittani Blaire, the pseudonym of the mayor, was being taken in the same home as the pictures of the mayor and his wife, and the mayor, as in his female persona, was wearing his wife's clothes.

By day, Bubba Copeland was a family man, the head of a city government, a business owner, and, get this, a Baptist preacher. But the bald 49-year-old led a secret life online.

MONGER: Here’s another example. It’s his wife wearing that shirt, and then that's him wearing that shirt in front of and you can see he's in front of his doorstep. So remarkably uncareful, considering what he was doing.

But the revelations didn’t end there. In time, Craig would learn that Copeland was communicating with minors online, encouraging them to “transition.” He was also writing graphic erotic fiction.

Monger didn’t know it yet, but his investigation was about to explode.

And the fallout would raise a difficult question: Where should a journalist draw the line between private life and public interest?

[MUSIC]

MONGER: Okay, as you can see, my humble abode . . .

Monger’s home office is small and orderly. One window, one whiteboard. One Samurai sword.

MONGER: This was an impulse buy. Nothing else in this office is an impulse buy, except for that.

Maybe so, but several bookcases are filled to the brim and overflowing onto the floor.

MONGER: Over here we sort of have the general theology section . . . History of the Christian Church by Schaff, that is one of my favorites . . . Institutes of Biblical Law by R.J. Rushdoony. That was very, very significant for me growing up. And here we go. Oh, The Everlasting Man by G.K. Chesterton. I would say that that is probably one of my favorites.

Monger is a complex character. Raised in China as a missionary kid, no college education, former truck driver. But in his mid 20s, he became a Christian, and suddenly he was blessed with a voracious reading ability.

As a result, he has interests that seem as out of place as his slicked-back hairstyle and love of nicotine.

MONGER: Here, this is one of my favorites, George Herbert. It's a collection of his English poems. He was a Christian, an English Christian poet, and possibly the best poet to ever live. And I know that that's saying something, but I believe it thoroughly.

Monger took an unconventional path into journalism. He was working in data communications when a fellow church member, Bryan Dawson, launched a statewide news organization. A conservative brand called 1819 News.

MONGER: He's trying to get a team together, people to do, to carry out this mission. And he's like, man, you'd be surprised. It's the Bible Belt. It's Alabama. There's not a lot of, you know, young conservative Christian journalists and he was sort of drawing a blank.

Dawson thought Monger might have potential.

MONGER: The first editor we had at 1819, Ray Melick, who's a bit of a legend in Alabama journalism, he very kindly agreed to have me on.

Monger got a grammar book and studied it. He took typing lessons. But he admits he was pretty clueless at first.

MONGER: I honestly didn't know what a press release was . . . I started reading books on journalists . . . I was a news reader, so I did have an idea of, generally, what people are looking for.

But a few months later, Monger's editors thought he was good enough for a special assignment—covering the state legislature. So he went to a thrift store, bought a suit, and hit the ground running.

MONGER: I'm finding who's on what committee, who's chairing this committee. I'm trying to remember people's faces . . .

And he’s starting to feel intimidated.

MONGER: . . . surrounded by a lot of wealth, a lot of power, and a lot of snobbery in the journalistic class and in the political class too, because we're the new kids on the block, and we're a bit, we're kind of troublemakers.

Monger is referring to his organization, 1819 News. “1819” is a nod to the year Alabama gained statehood.

MONGER: We show up, and we immediately kind of put their feet to the fire. And so there was very quiet, and sometimes not even so quiet, contempt.

Monger says he bumped shoulders with a lot of politically-biased reporters at the state capitol.

MONGER: I would see something presented on a bill, say, and I would know exactly what had happened, and then I'd read their story and be like, I was there, and that didn't happen that way. . . . They know how to tell the truth while lying, which is incredibly dangerous.

But Monger brought something to the table he saw lacking in those reporters.

MONGER: Fearlessness. Not really thinking about damaging my career, because this wasn't really my career. [He laughs.] And so I was, you might say, reckless, but I would just say unbowed in the face of potential disaster.

Monger wrote about controversial bills and policies. He exposed an abortionist who ran a birthing center and a public school teacher who "covertly" supplied students with LGBTQ+ materials. They were the stories his boss would describe as the ones “no one else would touch with a 10-foot pole.”

Monger faced plenty of pushback, and he grew a thick skin. It prepared him to take on the Bubba Copeland investigation.

MONGER: I can see that very clear. God, obviously. The arc of my journalistic story is, when you look at it in hindsight, you can see it kind of culminating to a moment where that was a decision that we had to make on whether or not to run that story.

[MUSIC]

The offices of 1819 News are in an old train station in downtown Birmingham, but they’re outfitted in modern style. Moody colors. A spiral staircase. Dramatic lighting. Ashley Carter gave me a tour.

ASHLEY CARTER: That's our break room. We have a podcast studio. Bryan has 1819 News, the podcast, which airs weekly, and this is where the magic happens.

Carter is vice-president of finance and special events. They’re having a special event tonight, and the office is buzzing.

CARTER: This is our board room, where we're going to have the board meet today and do some special things for Tucker Carlson, who is our keynote speaker for our gala this evening.

The gala is 1819 News’ biggest fundraising event of the year. The outlet is completely donor funded. Ashley says that’s important.

CARTER: There's no advertising dollars. There's no big corporations giving us money ... because what happens is they start giving you money, they start controlling what you write.

At a time when many media outlets are tanking, 1819 News is thriving. They have a website, a magazine, a radio show, a podcast, 22 people on staff.

Bryan Dawson is the president and CEO of 1819 News. He says they take a holistic approach to journalism.

BRYAN DAWSON: We're hard news, and politics is a big chunk of what we do. But we also have the Fred and Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal, which is nothing but writing stories about everything from architecture to stay at home moms.

When Dawson came on the scene in 2021, conservatives in Alabama were tired of left-leaning journalism produced by major outlets. He says they wanted a news source they could trust. And they wanted one that was rooted in Alabama, not in out-of-state conglomerates.

Donors were ready to back that idea.

At least eight stepped forward and pledged a quarter of a million dollars each for three years. Enough to get 1819 News off the ground.

Dawson says his reporters’ main job is highlighting problems.

DAWSON: There's something about putting a spotlight on something that either stops it from happening or allows people to go in there and make the changes necessary.

Dawson points to one of Craig Monger’s stories as an example. Monger wrote about a group of Alabama parents who objected to sexually explicit material in the children’s section of the public library.

DAWSON: The library board meeting blamed the city council, and the city council said, No, it's the library board. And the moms, you know, and parents were like, Will someone please just get the porn out of the kids section?

Conservatives later took control of the library board.

[MUSIC]

But Dawson knew Monger’s story about Bubba Copeland was going to be even more combustible. He remembers a heavy conversation he had with Craig’s editor about it.

DAWSON: How it could affect his life, how it could affect our organization. We knew that, and so we take what we do here very seriously. We aren't whimsically, just like bombastically, like a tabloid throwing stuff out to be sensational. We see it as our job to tell the truth, so that we can have a free and flourishing Alabama.

Monger remembers that time, too . . . he and Dawson and others at 1819 debated whether to run the piece.

MONGER: We went through this for hours, talking, going back. It wasn't clear cut and dry for us.

Monger says the story went through a lot of revisions. He was sending it back and forth to his editor.

He conferred with an attorney. Should he be concerned about a lawsuit?

MONGER: He's like, it's public. He's posting this stuff on the internet. There's nothing really he can come after you with . . .

In the midst of the wrangling, Monger talked with Bubba Copeland by phone. Multiple calls, and he recorded them all. Alabama is a single party consent state.

The first time, Monger called him at the mayor’s office in Smiths Station. Copeland immediately put him on hold.

MONGER: And it's a minute of silence. And that minute, I cannot explain to you how long that minute was. It was an eternity. I'm sitting there, mute. I'm trying to catch my breath. I'm just breathing, trying to maintain composure, because this is a very heavy, heavy moment.

When the mayor came back, Monger got straight to it. He asked him point blank: Is this you on Instagram and Reddit, going by Brittini Blaire?

MONGER: And he says, “No.” I said, “So this person that talks about transitioning, talks about transitioning drugs, posting pictures of themselves in boudoir situations, this isn't you?” He goes, “No, I've never heard of this.”

But eventually Copeland confirmed what Monger had uncovered was true.

MONGER: He's like, “Well, why would you want to do a story about that?” And without even a even a bit of hesitation, I said, “Because you're an elected official in the state of Alabama and the pastor of a Baptist church, talking about transitioning, posting provocative pictures online for anyone to see. It says public. I was able to see it, and I'm giving you an opportunity to talk about that.”

Monger says Copeland got emotional. He did, too. But something snapped Monger back into focus.

MONGER: He said, “It's something that I've stopped doing. I haven't done it for months,” and he gives a time on how I stopped doing it. And I am immediately, while he's saying that, I'm looking at his profile. I'm seeing the last comment he made was, like, a week ago.

As Copeland begged him not to run the story, Monger kept pressing for an explanation. Why was Copeland doing this?

MONGER: So it was a lot of repetitive, coming along to the same thing. “This is just something I do for fun. It's goofy, it's silly, it's nothing.”

Monger says Copeland insisted the stuff online was just him playing pretend.

MONGER: He says he was not transitioning. He was not taking the drugs that he said he was taking. He was not engaging in frivolous sex with other men . . .

Copeland tried to stop the story from being printed. He called friends in high places. He even got his local sheriff to contact 1819 News. He was desperate.

MONGER: He would say, I'll do anything. I'll give you anything, etc, etc. Now, with my editor Jeff, there was an explicit offer of money to not run the story.

Ultimately, the leadership at 1819 made the decision to run the story. Monger says it basically boiled down to one thing: They had to shine the spotlight. Copeland’s actions affected the public, whether he admitted it or not.

MONGER: I am a member of a community casting my vote, or, much more importantly, placing the care of my eternal soul under your authority, I have a right to know your character. Now it would be different if me, as Craig the journalist, was going in, you know, sticking a lens through a curtain and like trying to get surreptitious pictures of what he did behind closed doors . . . These were things that he was doing publicly. And anyone with access to the internet can find these things. You made the decision to put them there. This says something about your character. And if I were a member of your community, I would absolutely want to know.

Still, Monger didn’t sleep that night.

The piece posted on 1819’s website the next morning, November 1, 2023. Normally, the outlet pushes their big stories on social media. Monger usually discusses his work on a local radio station. This time, he didn't.

MONGER: We felt the weight of this story, and we felt obligated as journalists to do it. But we weren't, you know, we weren't waving pom poms.

He says they could have written and shown way more than they did. This was graphic content they were dealing with. Transgender pornography.

MONGER: We weren't cruel in this. The potential for cruelty was there. There are pictures that I intentionally did not include because they were not relevant to the story, and they would have functioned only to embarrass him.

[MUSIC]

First Baptist Church Phenix City sits in a part of town that looks like it may have seen better days. Everything seems faded, in need of attention . . . including a fountain that bubbles beside the two-story brick sanctuary. Inside is where Bubba Copeland used to preach, and his father-in-law for 30 years before him. That was his first father-in-law. His second wife’s father is also in ministry. He leads worship in another Alabama town.

But the website at First Baptist, Phenix City makes it clear that the church moved away from its historic Baptist roots in 2024. That would have been after Copeland’s story made the news.

Here’s some of what’s posted on the website.

“Over the past 20 years, our church family became more diverse, and our core beliefs increasingly differed from many of the statements in the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message. In July of 2024, First Baptist Church unanimously voted to disaffiliate with the Southern Baptist Convention. At present, we are a diverse congregation representing all ethnic groups and essentially all walks of life.”

AUDIO: [HYMN SINGING]

Craig Monger’s story exposing Bubba Copeland’s online activity published on a Wednesday. That night, First Baptist Church Phenix City livestreamed its regular midweek service. Here’s Copeland behind the pulpit.

COPELAND: Congregation, Church, Facebook, I've been an object of an internet attack. An article that was written about my capacity as the mayor, capacity as a pastor. The article is not who or what I am. Yes, I have taken pictures with my wife in the privacy of our home in an attempt of humor, because I know I'm not a handsome man, nor a beautiful woman either. I apologize for any embarrassment caused by my private personal life that has come publicly. This will not cause my life to change. This will not waver my devotion to my family, to serving my city, and serving my church. I'm thankful for the grace of God, the willingness to forgive. I have nothing to be ashamed of. A lot of things that were said were taken out of context.

The team at 1819 News watched that live stream in dismay. The attempt at humor. Copeland’s lack of repentance.

MONGER: We realized that any concept of him being truthful or acknowledging the extent of what he had done, that was completely out of the question.

But the full scope of Copeland’s activities was just coming to light. After the story broke, an upset father contacted Monger. He said Copeland, without permission, used photos of his children in posts. The posts promoted transitioning.

MONGER: That these were local children in his community that he was posting never crossed my mind. That was a level of sick that I had not considered . . .

Others who saw the story contacted Monger with new leads concerning Copeland.

MONGER: Phone’s blowing up . . . I'm trying to distinguish between people giving me helpful info, people giving me, you know, telling me to kill myself, people just saying, kudos, etc. It was then that I found the extent of his fantasy fiction that he was writing.

And that’s when the journalistic investigation of Bubba Copeland took a definite turn.

MONGER: One of the stories involved him working as a manager at a grocery store, looking at women in the surveillance coverage video. Well, as I finally now have contacts in the area, I'm finding out that he actually does own a grocery store, and at that point I realized, I wonder what else in these stories are actually real?

Monger dug deeper and found the names of real businesses and real people in Copeland’s writings. The worst was a violent story Copeland wrote about killing a female and assuming her identity.

MONGER: The story involved him getting plastic surgery, taking on the identity of this woman, so he could eventually sleep with her husband and then kill her. And I find this woman's name, and I find the name of her business, and I give her a call, and to this day, that was the most gut wrenching phone call of my life. When I say that this lady was distraught, that's an understatement. She was not okay.

The woman and her husband were friends of the Copeland family. Copeland had named her and described her in his erotic slasher fiction.

MONGER: If I came across this and decided never to write a story, I still would have given her a call. That's not okay. That's dangerous, when someone is having this level of fantasy about you and your life.

This new layer of information, coupled with Copeland’s dismissive explanation to his church, prompted Monger to write a follow-up stories. But the investigation was starting to take a toll on the young journalist.

MONGER: I realized I was taking multiple showers a day, which wasn't a common thing for me. I'm a Christian man. I don't frequent porn sites. I don't frequent any of these sordid avenues that I had to go down in order to track down the story. And it can stain the soul in a way that I don't think is healthy.

[MUSIC]

At the Smiths Station Government Center, residents needing new car tags take a number and head to the left. The mayor’s office, where Bubba Copeland worked, is to the right. For a sleepy town of 5,000, Smiths Station boasts solid facilities, well-kept parks, and a big Love’s truckstop on Highway 280. Many locals attribute that to Copeland’s seven years as mayor. Before that, he served two terms on the Lee County School Board.

When I visited the town, a worker at the sandwich shop told me Copeland used to come there for lunch. The new mayor doesn't. She said she misses Copeland and the festivities he organized.

WOMAN: Christmas tree lighting. We had people all over when Bubba was here. We had cars everywhere.

I also met Lisa Deason. She lives near the heart of Smiths Station. Dusk was falling when she invited me to grab a seat outside her home. She shared memories from years she spent working under Copeland. She stood by his side when a tornado tore through the town in 2019.

LISA DEASON: He went and met the president. And I said, “That's you. That's what you need to do. You leave me here, and let me coordinate the volunteers to get them out there and help these people.” And that's how we did it. It was just the way we worked.

But in 2018, Copeland came to Deason with a confession. She was his communications director, and he thought she should know that someone had confronted him about his online hobby.

DEASON: He showed me a picture, and it was him dressed, you know, with a wig and nothing vulnerable, nothing nasty, nothing, nothing … and that's what he showed me, and I said, “Bubba, what you do is your business.”

Before they finished their conversation, Deason asked him if he’d removed the photos from the internet. Copeland assured her that he had.

DEASON: And I said, “Good. Then I'm not too concerned. You know, if it does come up, we're just going to have to be honest.”

So five years later, Deason wasn’t exactly surprised when Copeland told her 1819 News was doing a story.

DEASON: . . . and said, What can I do to stop this? You know, this is my private life.

She says he seemed suicidal. Deason blames 1819 News.

DEASON: They didn't have to expose him like that . . . He should have been the one to admit it without all of the controversial bashing and exploiting and all that kind of stuff.

Two days after that conversation, Deason found herself helping Copeland write his resignation letter to his church and another letter to the community. She thought it was a positive step.

DEASON: I said, you cannot be quiet. You've got to own up to this . . . He knew that the church was going to get heaped, Christianity the, you know, baptism. I mean, Baptist faith people were just, you shouldn't be a preacher, you know.

Deason sent both letters to Copeland mid-morning. He was supposed to send one to the church at 4 and post the one to the community on his social media page.

DEASON: Well, by four o'clock he was missing, not answering the phone, all that kind of stuff. The church letter never got turned in.

Copeland’s family, community members, even law enforcement officers . . . they were all out looking for him. Deason happened to be in Copeland’s yard when he pulled up and dashed inside his house.

When he came out, she tried to keep him away from his vehicle.

DEASON: He was like, “I gotta go. I gotta go. I gotta go.” And I was like, “Bubba, please. No, you can't do this. Please. Don't do this.” . . . His eyes were, he was not there . . . they looked traumatized or something. He didn't look like he’d been crying, he didn't have swollen eyelids or nothing. He just looked like someone I didn't know.”

Deason couldn’t stop him. She was one of the last people to see Copeland alive. It wasn’t long before the police scanner reported an emergency near the county line. A gunshot wound to the head.

DEASON: I drove to the scene, and when I got there, I just sat beside the road and cried forever. And his mama, they had to help her to her vehicle. He was laid in the road with a blue tarp over him, and there were so many people. And it was just sad. So sad.

[MUSIC]

Ninety miles away, Craig Monger was at home, trying to recuperate from a difficult week.

MONGER: One of my sources shoots me a text and says, Hey, I'm hearing that Bubba killed himself.

Monger says he had trouble processing the news, but he shouldn’t have. Copeland’s son told reporters his father had threatened to commit suicide for years. He even threatened it during calls with Monger.

What’s a journalist to do in such cases?

MONGER: Can anyone just prevent a story from being published by saying, ‘Hey, you know, if you publish a story, I'm going to kill myself.’ . . . He said that to me with his wife sitting next to him, when I was on the phone call, by the way, and he was saying it to everyone, and law enforcement was made aware of it. And at that point, it's like there's not much more you can do.

But the backlash after Copeland’s suicide was swift. Threats and hate mail flooded in from across the globe, especially from within the trans community. LGBTQ advocates condemned what they described as a “forced outing.” Former Alabama Senator Doug Jones also denounced 1819 News, arguing the articles unfairly targeted a widely respected community leader.

Monger could see the writing on the wall.

MONGER: I knew immediately that this was going to get spun into “right wing person causes transgender mayor to kill themselves.”

Hundreds of messages filled Monger’s Twitter and Facebook accounts. They included photos of his children and his address.

MONGER: On the Facebook page, under the story. Here's the address. Hope nothing bad happens,’ that kind of thing . . . I'm gonna rape your kids, I'm gonna murder your family, I'm gonna burn your house down . . . you don't want to take it seriously, because it's the internet, but also it's like, all it takes is one crazy person.

[MUSIC]

MONGER: Everything that you see to make this very rustic chicken coop was just recycled. We didn't have to buy anything pull it all out of the woods from the previous tenants.

The Monger property is secluded.

MONGER: So, and yeah, the chickens were a gift . . .

CHILD: Here, the baby chicks like that. [Craig: They do?] They do.

The kids have plenty of land to explore and animals to enjoy.

MONGER: Do you know how many chickens we have? [1234, and five?] A few more than that, buddy, at least four.

But even in this secluded spot, they didn’t feel safe after the Copeland tragedy. Monger sent his family away.

MONGER: As you can see, we have some security measures here, some cameras and stuff that came after—should have been done before. But after the threat started happening, we became a little bit more secure.

Even Monger’s extended family suffered. His sister-in-law was a hair stylist.

MONGER: They would just bomb her business page with vile comments. My brother's business, for weeks, they dealt with people, you know, posting bad things on their social media, giving them poor reviews on Google, which can negatively affect your business. They were calling my mom.

The 1819 News headquarters faced threats, too. It was a tense time all around. But Monger says his colleagues had his back.

MONGER: Not one of those team members flinched, and that's worth way more than I think people think in this day and age.

Meanwhile, 1819 News was also taking a beating from major media. Most coverage focused on the ethics of “outing” public officials.

ANNOUNCER: . . . The town’s mayor committed suicide after a week-long campaign by a conservative newsite to out Copeland as a trans woman . . .

ANNOUNCER: Over the course of several days, 1819 News has endured its fair share of ridicule and outrage and criticism - all of it pretty well earned for the way they did this.

MONGER: The Daily Mail, New York Times, Washington Post, Al Jazeera was writing stories about this.

[MUSIC]

Paul Stith loves a good Mexican restaurant. His favorite in Auburn is El Ranchero. Over a plate of burritos, he gave me his take on the Copeland tragedy.

PAUL STITH: The people who crucified this young reporter, if Mr. Copeland had been doing some things that were understood and defined in their world as hurtful to the community, if he had been stealing their money, or something like that, they would have been raging if he had not exposed it. But in this situation, because there are things that don't fit that definition for them, they feel like that he's committed a wrong . . . We need an external standard, which is God's law, so that we know how to function in a culture and in society.

Stith is pastor of Grace Heritage Church in Auburn. Some members of his congregation live in Smiths Station, some teach school there.

He thinks people knew about Copeland’s secrets. But they operate by the principle of the scale.

STITH: . . . that balancing scale picture in your mind of, “But look at all the good things he does. Look at all the ways he contributes. Look at the barbecues, look at the going and doing and taking care of people in the moment of need, in the crisis. And those are those public aspects of ministry that anyone can do. You don't have to be a believer to do those things. You just have to care about, that guy's got a tree on his trailer, and I've got a chainsaw . . . that's not the church, and it's not even the measuring stick of a believer.

Craig Monger agrees. He says if First Baptist Phenix City had acted as a true church, it would have addressed Copeland’s sin.

MONGER: If you cannot do that for someone who is so clearly debauched, so clearly lost in this haze of sin, then you're barely a social club. And I wish—I mean this sincerely—I wish someone in that church would have loved him enough to say, stop it.

But that wasn’t Monger’s job. He’s a journalist.

MONGER: And that was a frequent criticism I got. Well, why didn't you Matthew 18 them? And it's like, well, I'm not a like, I'm acting as a journalist. What am I supposed to say? Do this, or I'm going to run the story? Then I actually would be guilty of some sort of blackmail type situation.

[MUSIC]

On May 5, 2025, the Pulitzer Prize Board announced its award for Feature Writing. It went to Esquire Magazine.

PULITZER ANNOUNCEMENT: For a sensitive portrait of a Baptist pastor and small town mayor who died by suicide after his secret digital life was exposed by a right-wing news site.

The story was called “A Death in Alabama,” and it was all about Bubba Copeland, the victim.

It was Esquire’s first Pulitzer.

Monger couldn’t believe the irony of it.

MONGER: It's not often that a journalist's work wins a Pulitzer Prize. It's even less often that that work results in a Pulitzer Prize for someone else. And that's honestly how I felt.

A few months later, 1819 News held its annual gala. Monger may not have won a Pulitzer, but he did get his organization’s top award: The Albert Patterson Courage Award.

DAWSON: On to this year's awardees. This one is a doozy. So a couple of years ago we see the tip from a reliable source . . .

Bobby and Julie Monger were there to see their son get an award for the Copeland stories. The aftermath of the tragedy was hard on their family, but they know Craig is doing what he loves.

JULIE MONGER: It's important work, and he's very passionate about it.

BOBBY MONGER: We can be watching Alabama play Auburn, and he's talking about politics. So, and being from, if you're from Alabama, you understand how big that is.

The gala was a swanky event. Monger was decked out in a tux for his acceptance speech, Miriam by his side.

Andrea Tice, a radio host for 1819, was at my table. She came to 1819 from another Alabama news group. Her bosses there let her go when they didn’t like her COVID-era stories that questioned national response.

She says there’s nothing like the journalistic freedom at 1819 News.

ANDREA TICE: Nobody's telling us what we can or cannot cover or look into or talk about . . .. I've never been told that I've covered something that has upset a donor, and therefore I need to retract it, or go lightly, or anything like that.

Supporters willingly fund this kind of journalism. Paul Claborn attended the gala. He gives more than $12,000 a year to the organization.

PAUL CLABORN: They're supported by folks that want what journalism used to be, real news without any slants.

[MUSIC]

Back at his home, Monger admitted the gala award meant more to him than he thought it would.

MONGER: It felt like a vindication . . . something that I can always look at and tangibly remember the weight of what I do, but also the fact that it matters. It matters and it felt good. It did feel good that other people knew that it mattered too.

More than two years have passed since the Copeland stories were in the news. Monger has since gotten a raise. And a national-level journalism job offer, which he declined.

He still gets threats and hate mail.

MONGER: Actually, I can read the one that I just got this morning. Let me see. It's from Butch Boy. “I hope you never sleep. You will live the rest of your pathetic life hunted by your conscience.” I think he meant haunted. God bless him. “Hell is waiting for you.”

He jokes about it, but that’s a lot of hostility. Monger just lets it go.

MONGER: As far as the decision that we made to run the stories that we ran, I wouldn't do anything differently. I wouldn't do anything differently at all. And I think that it was a story that needed to be told.

[MUSIC]

SILLARS: Kim Henderson reported and wrote this story, and I produced it.

To read Kim’s story about 1819 News publisher Bryan Dawson in WORLD Magazine, which is also a great piece, go to wng.org. There’s a ton of great content there. Check it out. And if you don’t follow The World and Everything In It, WORLD Radio’s daily audio newsmagazine, I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Finally, word of mouth recommendations are one of the most effective ways podcasts grow their audiences. So if you’re listening to an episode and you happen to think, Hey, so-and-so would really enjoy this, please, send them a link. It’s one of the best ways to support this program.

I’m Les Sillars. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next time.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.