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Opinion & analysis
The Scene's Midterm Guide Deserves a Second Opinion
The Scene's series has solid reporting and loaded wording. Here is where the framing leans, and the conservative case on the issues on your ballot.
Read the responseOn the ballot: early voting runs through Thursday, Oct. 29. Election Day is Nov. 3.
Judge the Tunnel on the Geology, Not on Who Owns It.
The Southern Environmental Law Center's sinkhole report asks fair questions. Answering them takes data and oversight, and the same standard should apply to the Loop, to AI, and to anything built by someone you dislike.
ICE Is Hiring Lawyers in Nashville. There Is a Strong Case for Supporting Them.
Removal cases require a process, and the government's side of that process requires lawyers. The Scene raises real controversies about enforcement. It does not show that recruiting attorneys is one of them.
The other half of the conversation Nashville should be having.
Every week, the Nashville Scene tells you what to think about the city. We tell you what they're not telling you, locally, with the questions they didn't ask.
More commentary
Browse all topics ↗Kid Rock Doesn’t Need Permission to Speak His Mind. Neither Do You.
We are allowed to have convictions, criticize ideas, and say things that make other people uncomfortable. That freedom belongs to all of us.
Dispatch · Clarksville, TNTrump Showed Up for Tennessee. Clarksville Showed Up for Trump.
President Trump spent about 90 minutes at F&M Bank Arena on Saturday celebrating Middle Tennessee investment, saluting Fort Campbell, and asking Tennesseans to vote. Early voting opens Wednesday. Here is what he said.
Dispatch · ClarksvilleTrump Is Coming to Clarksville. We'll Be There Live.
The President holds a midterm rally in Clarksville this Saturday, an hour up I-24 from Nashville. We are covering it live. Here is how to get a free ticket, when doors open, and why the drive is worth it.
Politics · EconomyNashville Doesn't Have an ICE Problem. It Has a Cheap-Labor Problem.
The Scene's cover story on construction labor is well reported, and its numbers are real. But it asks the wrong question about who the housing economy was quietly built to depend on.
Politics · Frame CritiqueThe Party That Got Fined $270,000 for Its Own Books Would Like to Protect Your Vote
Tennessee Democrats launched an election-integrity program this week and warned that Republicans will "lie, cheat, and steal." It is the same party that paid a federal penalty for misreporting $3.6 million of its own money, and whose former treasurer says leadership pushed her out after she asked for stricter controls.
Politics · EducationWe Teach the Victims of Fascism Without Scare Quotes. Why Not the Victims of Communism?
A new Tennessee law requires 45 minutes of high school instruction on how people suffered under communist regimes. The Scene's coverage put "threat" in scare quotes and led with a teacher calling it "a solution looking for a problem." Around 100 million dead would like a word.
Culture · Frame CritiqueDolly Parton Spent 50 Years Refusing to Be a Political Weapon. The Scene Made Her One in a Week.
Betsy Phillips is right that renaming the airport for Dolly is a rare and lovely moment of Tennessee agreement. Then she spends the rest of the column arguing that the agreement proves conservatives are frauds. Dolly declined the nation's highest honor three times to avoid being used exactly this way.
Politics · Frame CritiqueThe Scene Found Three Versions of the Ten Commandments. It Missed the One Argument That Matters.
Betsy Phillips is right that scripture has competing versions and that a school board shouldn't declare one official. She just used a real technicality to skip the debate she didn't want, and reached for a keep-government-out principle the Scene discards every other week.
Essay · Frame CritiqueWhy Does Everyone Pretend AI Is a Left-Right Fight? Nashville Proves It Isn't.
The polls say Democrats and Republicans both distrust AI and both hate data centers. So why is it covered like a partisan war? Because the split is real at the top and invented at the bottom. And while everyone argued, Metro quietly started deleting the records.
Essay · Frame CritiqueYou Don't Have to Defend Your Great-Great-Grandfather. The Scene's Own Historian Said So.
The Scene's cover story on how Nashville's historic sites teach slavery is careful, humane, and largely right. It also contains a single sentence that quietly refutes a good deal of the politics the Scene spends the rest of the year advancing.
Essay · Frame CritiqueThe Distinction Nashville Keeps Refusing to Make
A government is not a people. Blackburn's ad blurs that line in one direction. The Scene blurs it in the other. And both erase the Chinese dissidents, Hong Kongers, and Uyghurs who were the Communist Party's victims long before they were anyone's talking point.
Politics · Frame CritiqueThe Scene Called Concern About Chinese Land "Racist." Then Quoted a Democrat Raising It.
The Blackburn ad is cheap and coded. But the Scene's column collapses "the Chinese government" into "Chinese people," then cites a Tennessee Democrat attacking Blackburn for going easy on a Chinese land purchase. Both can't be true.
Editor's Note · America 250Reclaiming Pride in America Amid the Voices of Shame
The country turns 250 today. A generation ago a Democratic president said there was nothing wrong with America that couldn't be cured by what's right with it. Somewhere in between, one side traded that gratitude for a grievance. It didn't have to.
Metro · Property RightsThe Art of the Deal Comes to Grassmere Park
Freddie O'Connell filed to seize the data-center site by eminent domain. It is the one government power Donald Trump has spent his whole career loving, now dressed in progressive clothing.
Media · Frame CritiqueThe Scene Gave a Hackberry Tree More Charity Than It Gave Riley Gaines
Betsy Phillips spent 300 words on why a "trash tree" deserves curiosity. In the same column, she declared two named human beings incapable of meaning. The weed got the benefit of the doubt. The people didn't.
Metro · BudgetPhillips Wrote 1,000 Words on the TIRRC Fight Without Saying "TCA 7-68" Once
Sexton raised a statute. Phillips responded with where he sleeps. Neither answers what Metro Council has to. The Scene has now produced two TIRRC stories in five days, and zero of them engage the legal question that started this.
Metro · BudgetBefore Metro Votes $735K to TIRRC, It Owes Nashville an Answer on the Sanctuary-Cities Statute
The Scene framed Sexton and Blackburn as "blasting" the mayor's budget. They asked a real legal question Metro has not answered: how does a $735,000 line item to an organization that publicly opposes ICE cooperation square with TCA 7-68?
Politics · RedistrictingThe Scene Built Four Cover Stories on a Legal Theory a Court Had Already Rejected
The "Seeing Red" package says the Memphis maps are racist, wrong, and "should not be enforced." A unanimous three-judge panel disagreed two days before it ran. Unfair and illegal are not the same thing.
Faith and PoliticsThe Cover Story Calls Traditional Christianity Fringe. In Tennessee, It's Still the Clear Majority.
The Nashville Scene's recent Cover Story profiles progressive clergy as Tennessee's moral voice on Christianity. Evangelicals are 45% of the state. Mainline Protestants are 12%. The framing pretends the majority is the deviation.
Politics · Tennessee DemocratsThe Memphis Outrage Is Choreographed From Washington
The anger is real. The script around it is being written in DC. Motycka's piece accidentally tells you who's coordinating Tennessee Democrats' redistricting messaging.
Politics · RedistrictingTennessee Republicans Aren't Trump Loyalists. They're Just Winning.
Phillips' theory is that the special session proves the TN GOP is in Trump's pocket. The simpler theory: partisan opportunity, not religious devotion.
Politics · Tennessee LegislatureWhat the Scene's Gavel Down Coverage Carefully Avoids
Six articles, one frame: Republicans bad. The actual 2026 session was more interesting than that, and the Scene's own reporting proves it.
PoliticsNashville Scene's Gerrymandering Panic Ignores One Inconvenient Truth
The left suddenly discovered partisan redistricting exists. But only after Tennessee Republicans started winning with it.
Explore the issues
The Nashville Scene has covered this city for forty years. They cover it well. They also cover it from one direction.
Nashville Unseen exists because most cities deserve more than one voice in their alt-weekly aisle. We're not here to attack the Scene's journalism. We're here to add the perspective their commentary leaves out.
That perspective is center-right and locally grounded. Skeptical of progressive overreach and of populist excess. Rooted in Middle Tennessee, focused on Metro Council, the General Assembly, and the policy debates that actually shape our neighborhoods. We steelman before we disagree, we cite our sources, and we end every piece with something a Nashville reader can actually do.
If you're a Nashvillian who reads the Scene and finds yourself thinking "yes, but…", this is for you. Get in touch.
Six rules we hold ourselves to
Steelman before disagreeing.
If a Scene reader can't recognize their own argument in our summary, we've already lost them.
No name-calling.
Of writers, of politicians, of readers. Other people's arguments deserve the same respect we'd want for ours.
Local data over national talking points.
Nashville and Tennessee data beats any think-tank chart. We're writing about this city, not the country.
Action over outrage.
Every post ends with something a reader can do: a meeting to attend, a question to ask, a representative to call.
Corrections published openly.
If we get something wrong, we fix it on the page with an "Update" line. Credibility compounds.
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