Editorial
Founding Editor & Publisher
Jon Ajinga
Writer, editor, and independent publisher. Denver, Colorado.
Reach the editor through our contact form.
Jon Ajinga founded The Freethinking Times in 2026. He edits all published work, manages the platform, and writes on regulation, institutional power, and the history of ideas. He is the sole person with editorial authority over what appears in this publication.
Letters
Letters to the editor are received and reviewed by the founding editor. All correspondence should be sent to our contact form or submitted via the letters form. A selection is published in the Letters section.
Contributors
The Freethinking Times publishes work from independent contributors. Contributor bios and article histories are available on individual author pages. We are currently accepting pitches, read the guidelines before submitting.
Transparency
We believe mastheads should be honest about who is making editorial decisions and what their interests are. This page is updated whenever the structure of the publication changes.
The Freethinking Times has no institutional investors, no parent company, and no advertising relationships. It is reader-funded, supported by readers through voluntary contributions. No portion of reader support goes to any outside party; all contributions fund the publication's operating costs and journalism. We will disclose any change to this arrangement prominently.
Full details of how the publication works, what it costs, and how it is built are available on the Transparency page.
Our Symbol
The pansy is not an arbitrary choice. The English word pansy comes from the French pensée, meaning thought. The flower has carried that meaning for centuries.
Shakespeare's Ophelia distributes pansies with the line: "There's pansies, that's for thoughts." The Victorians used it in the language of flowers to signify remembrance and meditation. Philosophers of the Enlightenment era, the period whose spirit most informs this publication, were often depicted surrounded by the flower in allegorical portraiture.
The pansy's distinctive "face", the dark radiating markings on its lower petals, has long been interpreted as the flower looking inward. It is a fitting image for a publication committed to the examined life: scrutiny of power, interrogation of received ideas, and the willingness to follow an argument wherever it leads.
The violet and purple of the pansy carry their own history: the colors of wisdom, independence, and intellectual courage. They are not the red of revolution or the blue of established order, they occupy a considered space between.
We chose the pansy because it is small, overlooked, and persistent. It grows in difficult conditions. It has been a symbol of free thought in periods when free thought was dangerous. That lineage suits us.