American politics website
Talking Points Memo (TPM) is a liberal political news and opinion website created and run by Josh Marshall that debuted on November 12, 2000. The name is a tongue-in-cheek reference to a "talking points memo" that was often discussed during the Clinton-era Monica Lewinsky scandal. By 2007, "TPM" received an average of 400,000 page views every weekday.
Growth.
"Talking Points Memo" was founded as a political blog in 2000 by Josh Marshall, who until 2004 was the site's sole employee. In 2005, TPM Media LLC was incorporated, and the company began to grow with more employees and spinoff websites. By 2009 it had 11 employees, and, having previously been funded by ads and reader donations, received angel investments from a group led by Marc Andreessen. In 2009, "TPM" opened a Washington, D.C. office and joined the White House press pool along with several other progressive news outlets to cover the Obama administration. The site introduced a subscription service, TPM Prime, in 2012, which by 2017 had over 21,000 subscribers, and by December 2020 had nearly 35,000 subscribers.
Reception.
Robert W. McChesney and John Nichols describe the site as taking a "more raucous and sensational" tone than traditional news media. This includes coining phrases such as "Bamboozlepalooza" to describe George W. Bush's efforts to privatize Social Security, which the blog opposed; and "bitch-slap politics" to refer to the Swiftboating of 2004 presidential candidate John Kerry.
McChesney and Nichols compare the site's style to the muckraking of Upton Sinclair. The more social aspects of the site, which invite crowdsourcing, were compared to "La Follette's Weekly". Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, in 2009 said ""TPM" is really an advocacy operation that has moved toward journalism."
Guest bloggers have included Matthew Yglesias, Robert Reich, Dean Baker, Michael Crowley, and, briefly, vice-presidential candidate John Edwards. Beginning in the summer of 2006, many weekend postings were provided by anonymous blogger "DK". On November 11, 2006, "DK" was revealed to be attorney David Kurtz, who now posts openly under his name.
In 2007, "TPM" won a George Polk Award for Legal Reporting for its coverage of the 2006 U.S. Attorneys scandal, becoming the first online-only outlet to receive the award.
Related projects.
The four blogs (Talking Points Memo, TPMCafe, TPMMuckraker, and TPMDC) are published by TPM Media LLC.
References.
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