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Talking Points Memo

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For the communications concept, see Talking point.

Talking Points Memo
Main page of Talking Points Memo
as of August 2010
Type of site
Political blog, news, discussion forum
Available inEnglish
OwnerJosh Marshall
Created byJosh Marshall
EditorJosh Marshall
URLtalkingpointsmemo.com
CommercialSubscription and advertising supported
RegistrationFor discussion forum
LaunchedNovember 12, 2000; 24 years ago (2000-11-12)
Current statusActive

Talking Points Memo (TPM) is a liberal political news and commentary website that started as a blog created and run by Josh Marshall. It 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.[1] TPM became one of the first online-only political news websites to launch a membership program in 2012. In 2020, the site had 35,000 members.[2]

Early Years

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TPM was founded as a political blog in 2000 by Marshall, who until 2004 was the site's sole employee.[3] In 2005, TPM Media LLC was incorporated,[3] and the company began to grow with more employees and spinoff websites.[4]

In the mid-2000s, the company launched a series of additional projects under the TPM umbrella. One of them, TPMCafe, was a "spin-off" blog that debuted on May 31, 2005. This site featured a collection of blogs about a wide range of domestic and foreign policy issues written by academics, journalists, and former public officials, among others. Guest bloggers included politicians, such as then-senators Sherrod Brown, Bernie Sanders and John Kerry and at-the-time future senator Elizabeth Warren; journalists, including Ezra Klein, Dahlia Lithwick, Paul Krugman, George Packer, Ed Kilgore, Glenn Greenwald, Jonathan Chait, Peter Beinart, Emily Bazelon, Matthew Yglesias, and Michael Crowley; activist Aaron Swartz; policy experts, including Robert Reich and Dean Baker; and novelists Anne Lamott and Jonathan Franzen.[5][6] TPMCafe has been described as a "social gathering place for readers to share news and opinion," and a precursor to social media.[7]

During this period, TPM also launched TPMmuckraker and TPMDC. TPMmuckracker expanded on Marshall’s work, with journalists working for the TPM collective, such as Paul Kiel and Justin Rood, investigating political corruption. TPMDC, founded in January 2007, was staffed by Washington-based journalists and covered politics from the capital. It hosted "the Horse's Mouth," a blog authored by Greg Sargent with a remit to cover how Washington politics was covered by the major news outlets, which had moved from The American Prospect to the TPM Media family. 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 went on to serve as an editor for the site.

By 2007, TPM received an average of 400,000 page views every weekday.[8]

Coverage

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During George W. Bush’s presidency, TPM closely covered the administration’s effort to privatize Social Security. The site also distinguished itself in 2006 for breaking a series of stories related to the U.S. Attorneys scandal.[9][10][11] In 2007, TPM won a George Polk Award for legal reporting for its coverage, becoming the first online-only outlet to receive the award.[12] In 2009, TPM opened a Washington, D.C. office and joined the White House press pool to cover the Obama administration, along with several other progressive news outlets.[4][13]

In 2019, TPM was among the first outlets to uncover President Donald Trump’s pressure campaign on Ukrainian president Volodomyr Zelensky.[14] In 2021, TPM was the first outlet to note that Trump had removed the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, BJay Pak, as part of his effort to substantiate false claims of voter fraud.[15][16]

In 2023, TPM was the first outlet to report that Congressman George Santos had made charges on donors' credit cards without their permission.[17] Santos later plead guilty to charges that he had done so.[18]

TPM is noted for its coverage of the political fringe, including militias, white nationalists, conspiracy theorists and similar groups, stating that it considers them to be “greater drivers of American politics than mainstream news coverage allows.”[19][20][21] In 2015, TPM was early to identify Trump as a serious contender in the Republican presidential primary.[22]

Business

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After relying on advertising for its first decade of existence, TPM introduced a subscription service, TPM Prime, in 2012. Between 2016 and 2017, the site’s membership doubled.[23] In 2020, the site had 35,000 members.[2] By 2025, TPM was almost entirely member-supported, drawing more than 90 percent of its revenue from members.[20] The site offers free memberships for students and those who cannot afford to pay.[24]

TPM’s staff unionized with Writers Guild of America, East in 2018.[25] In 2025, TPM had 18 employees, with teams of reporters in New York and D.C. Marshall serves as editor in chief.[20]

Reception

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Historian Rick Perlstein in 2024 praised TPM’s coverage of conservative activists, comparing it favorably to that of the New York Times. “If you are interested in how the American right went insane, TalkingPointsMemo.com is your actual publication of record, compiling a bountiful archive of the ways ‘extremism’ and ‘mainstream’ merged in the history of the Republican Party from the dawn of President George W. Bush to the present,” he wrote. “It was born, in 2000, at a time of new vessels and styles of writing about American politics.”[19]

Editor Ben Smith in 2012 approvingly described Marshall's investment in original reporting during a time when other digital media outlets were leaning heavily on aggregation. “I think that the investment in original reporting is something he chose to do pretty early when a lot of other people were thinking aggregation was the future,” he said.[26]

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;[27] and "bitch-slap politics" to refer to the Swiftboating of 2004 presidential candidate John Kerry.[28]

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.[27] Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, in 2009 said "TPM is really an advocacy operation that has moved toward journalism."[4]

References

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  1. ^ Cohen, Noam (February 25, 2008). "Blogger, Sans Pajamas, Rakes Muck and a Prize". The New York Times. Retrieved December 29, 2024.
  2. ^ a b "The Business of TPM". TPM – Talking Points Memo. December 31, 2020. Retrieved July 2, 2025.
  3. ^ a b Seward, Zachary M. (December 2, 2008). "TPM sees room for growth through geotargeted advertising". Nieman Lab.
  4. ^ a b c Carmichael, Karen (2009). "Capital investment: Talking Points Memo launches a Washington bureau, augmenting its reporting firepower". American Journalism Review. 31 (5): 8.
  5. ^ "The Early Days Of TPM Cafe". TPM – Talking Points Memo. December 29, 2020. Retrieved July 2, 2025.
  6. ^ "Elizabeth Warren and TPM, Behind The Music!". TPM – Talking Points Memo. Retrieved July 2, 2025.
  7. ^ Niles, Robert (March 20, 2007). "Lessons from 'Talking Points Memo' and the U.S. attorney scandal". Online Journalism Review.
  8. ^ Glenn, David (September–October 2007). "The (Josh) Marshall Plan". Columbia Journalism Review. Retrieved September 8, 2007.
  9. ^ McLeary, Paul. "How TalkingPointsMemo Beat the Big Boys on the U.S. Attorney Story". Columbia Journalism Review. Retrieved July 2, 2025.
  10. ^ Kirchner, Lauren. "Talking Points Memo". Columbia Journalism Review. Retrieved July 2, 2025.
  11. ^ "Josh Marshall on the Internet's Role in the Firings of Federal Prosecutors". BillMoyers.com. Retrieved July 2, 2025.
  12. ^ "Awards History | Long Island University". www.liu.edu. Retrieved July 2, 2025.
  13. ^ Calderone, Michael (October 30, 2009). "TPM joins the pool and makes a splash". Politico.
  14. ^ "Did Giuliani Squeeze The Ukrainian Government For Political Dirt?". TPM – Talking Points Memo. Retrieved July 2, 2025.
  15. ^ "EXCLUSIVE: Atlanta-Based U.S. Attorney Abruptly Departs Office Sooner Than Expected". TPM – Talking Points Memo. January 4, 2021. Retrieved July 2, 2025.
  16. ^ "Fighting for Democracy Itself". BillMoyers.com. Retrieved July 2, 2025.
  17. ^ "Campaigns Linked To Santos Left Donors Feeling Ripped Off After Questionable Credit Card Charges". TPM – Talking Points Memo. January 14, 2023. Retrieved July 2, 2025.
  18. ^ "Eastern District of New York | Former Congressman George Santos Pleads Guilty to Wire Fraud and Aggravated Identity Theft | United States Department of Justice". www.justice.gov. August 19, 2024. Retrieved July 2, 2025.
  19. ^ a b Perlstein, Rick (June 19, 2024). "The Independent Media Hustle". The American Prospect. Retrieved July 2, 2025.
  20. ^ a b c "About". TPM – Talking Points Memo. Retrieved July 2, 2025.
  21. ^ Says, Psyclone (December 22, 2020). "We Laughed At Jade Helm 5 Years Ago. We Shouldn't Have". TPM – Talking Points Memo. Retrieved July 2, 2025.
  22. ^ "Seriously, Literally, Etc.: Why TPM Saw Trump As A Serious Contender Back In 2015". TPM – Talking Points Memo. December 28, 2020. Retrieved July 2, 2025.
  23. ^ "With 11,000 subscribers, Talking Points Memo says its paid product has helped stabilize its business". Nieman Lab. Archived from the original on May 26, 2025. Retrieved July 2, 2025.
  24. ^ "Memberships". TPM – Talking Points Memo. Retrieved July 3, 2025.
  25. ^ "A TPM Union Is Born". TPM – Talking Points Memo. December 18, 2020. Retrieved July 2, 2025.
  26. ^ "Can Josh Marshall Take TPM to the Big Time?". Digiday. March 15, 2012. Retrieved July 2, 2025.
  27. ^ a b McChesney, Robert W.; Nichols, John (2010). The Death and Life of American Journalism. PublicAffairs. p. 91. ISBN 978-1-56858-700-4.
  28. ^ Marshall, Josh (August 19, 2004). "Well it seems there". Talking Points Memo. TPM Media. Retrieved January 8, 2023.
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