Talking Points Memo

I'm not sure precisely when it started, but for the entirety of my professional career, and stretching back to when I was still a journalism student, our field has been going through a reckoning about "objectivity" in journalism. The rules that took hold in prior decades, which seemed to many eternal and without origin, stipulated that journalists' task was to entirely remove their perspective from reporting and to present just the facts. Any hint of subjective analysis, interpretation, or deduction was, this thinking went, strictly forbidden. Journalists in this sense were not so much human beings doing a job aided by their faculty of reason so much as recording devices.

TPM's never been like this. As we state in our mission, "The goal of our journalism is neither balance nor objectivity but accuracy, fairness and a fundamental honesty with our readers and members at all times."

Our founder Josh Marshall was recently interviewed by the Columbia Journalism Review to discuss TPM's 25th anniversary, which is coming up in November. He was asked if TPM has stayed true to its founding vision, a question that Josh said was difficult to answer because in the early years of the site he wasn't quite sure what he was doing. In a subsequent post about the interview — TPM has never shied away from meta self-reflection — he said there are at least three things that make up TPM.

1. You can't cover political news well unless you're familiar with and care about the substance.

2. Good political reporting should be something you're dying to read. It shouldn't be a chore.

3. Fundamental honesty with readers.

Josh expands on all of these in greater detail. It's worth reading the full post. If you've ever read our mission statement, these ideas all appear there as well. But it's the first point that I want to elaborate on here.

We used to break out our reporting on DC into its own section, "TPM DC," and that section had its own tagline: "In DC, not of it." It's a motto we still keep in mind, even if it doesn't appear on the site. Among the reasons we are not "of it" is the tendency for DC news outlets — and increasingly, any mainstream news outlet that covers DC at all — to vomit all over themselves in a misguided attempt at appearing "impartial" or "objective." "Objectivity" is located somewhere between the various poles of American politics. (The problem here should be obvious: the poles of American politics, and whatever midpoint exists between those poles, don't necessarily have a fixed relationship, or any relationship at all, with the truth.) In the formulation of many DC publications, politics is a sport with winners and losers. The political parties are akin to professional organizations. The consequences of legislation and policy making are not really the point. Being in power is an end in and of itself.

Compare that vision of the world with how Kate Riga reports on what lies ahead with regard to trans rights this Supreme Court term:

"There, they hope to win permission to discriminate against trans people even more broadly, as they goad the Court to state decisively that trans Americans do not get heightened legal protections […]

"The Court's docket will fill further when the new term begins, likely with many cases stemming from the Trump administration's dismantling of the federal government, its imposition of armed federal troops in blue cities, its extralegal ICE raids and detentions. And for many terms now, the Court has embraced its role as frequent culture warrior on the topics that most inflame its political allies, dealing them wins on gun rights, abortion restriction and the disenfranchisement of minorities. But this term's focus on anti-LGBTQ, specifically anti-trans, attacks reveals the extent to which the Court is walking in ever-tighter lockstep with the cultural right and devoting precious docket space to its current fixations."  

TPM's journalism is guided by a basic principle: Politics affects real people. Laws and policies and court decisions have real world consequences, and the consequences are not a mystery. Government actions make people's lives better or worse. Feigning impartiality in the name of objectivity simply results in dishonesty and a lack of transparency with readers. At TPM, we care about what the government is doing because what the government is doing affects people. That's the entire point of journalism, and it's what makes TPM TPM.

TPM is turning 25 and we hope you can celebrate with us! We're still finalizing the details, but wanted to make sure you saved the date. Tickets will go on sale very soon.

The Show 

Thursday Nov. 6th, 6:30pm to 12pm 

Metrograph
7 Ludlow St, New York, NY 10002

25 Years of TPM with TPM Staff & Alumni

The Josh & Kate Riga Podcast

Cocktail reception

The Party

Friday Nov. 7th, 8pm to 12pm

Bogart House

230 Bogart St, Brooklyn, NY 11206

Eating

Drinking

Celebrating 

Interested in sponsoring the show? 

Contact Joe Ragazzo: joe@talkingpointsmemo.com

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TPM had an exclusive earlier this week: The University of Michigan will stop providing gender-affirming care for minors as it comes under legal pressure from the Trump administration. You can read it here. It's a great scoop about an important subject from two great reporters, Kate Riga and Josh Kovensky.

In my experiences, journalists and people who work in journalism have something of a blindspot when it comes to the general public's understanding of different sorts of news products. Even "news products" is kind of jargony. What is opinion and what is news, and in which of those buckets does "analysis" fall? Is an editorial board part of the editorial team? (It's usually not.) Do bloggers just live in their parents' basement? (Sometimes, but that is nothing to be ashamed of anyway!)

Talking Points Memo has original reporting, we have analysis and we have Josh Marshall, who eschews categorization almost as a point of personal pride. But all of our journalism adheres to a basic philosophy: We want our readers to know as much as we do. When we know facts, we report facts. When we can connect a series of facts and draw an implicit or explicit conclusion from those facts (analysis) we provide that analysis. When we have ideas about how things should work or could work and we think those are good ideas, we share those ideas (commentary). When we think something is interesting, even if we're not sure what it means, we'll tell you about it.

Journalism is often about precision. How can we be as accurate and concise as possible? Sometimes "being accurate" is about transparency with regard to how something is framed. Sometimes the best sorts of stories are those that are asking questions rather than providing answers in an effort to focus the readers' attention on the issues and concerns that are most urgent. Sometimes the best stories are those that say, "pay attention to this thing over here." Precision begets clarity and clarity begets understanding, and helping our audience to better understand the world is our primary objective at all times. We hope you'll support us on this mission. Whether you primarily read something from the site or listen to a podcast or follow us on social media, everything is funded and made possible by our members.

TPM is shipping up to Boston! For our final on-the-road event of 2025, we're joining our friends at STAT News for an evening of conversation and drinks at Lamplighter Brewing Cambridge Crossing.

The night will begin with a discussion between TPM Founder Josh Marshall and STAT News co-founder Rick Berke. After that, there will be an open bar and a chance to chat with staff from both TPM and STAT.

We hope you'll join us! Capacity is limited so please get your tickets as soon as possible if interested. 

Date 

September 25th, 2025

Time 

6:30 - 9:30pm EDT

Discussion will begin at 6:45

Open bar all night. Behave yourselves.

Location 

Lamplighter Brewing Co. - CX

110 North First Street Cambridge, MA 02141

Ticket Information

$28.52 (inclusive of tax and fees)

From time to time we hear feedback that takes the following general form:
 

"I love the podcast! Oh you have a newsletter? I didn't know!" 
 

"I've been reading the site since the very beginning! Oh, you have a podcast? I didn't know!"

"I love the Morning Memo…oh there's a whole website? I didn't know!"

You get the idea. We're approaching our 25th Anniversary here at TPM, and something we're very cognizant of is adapting to the times and meeting our audience where they are, without abandoning what works. The Editors' Blog — akin to TPM's evolutionary brainstem, the forerunner, the OG — is still going strong. Complementing the incisive, original analysis and commentary in the Ed Blog is the original reporting from our editorial staff — something that has differentiated TPM from so many other digital media outlets over the last two-and-half decades. 

But not everybody clicks over to websites these days, which is a lamentable fact but a fact nonetheless. So we have newsletters like David Kurtz's Morning Memo, a morning round up of all the most important political news you'll need to start your day, and Nicole Lafond's Where Things Stand, a nightly evaluation on the day that was and where it leaves us. Because in our heart of hearts, we all long for the days of outlandish magazine budgets, we publish The Weekender, which is has more of a leisurely, laid back magazine vibe to get you from Saturday to Monday, when we all get up and enter the Terrordome that is American Politics once again.

We're told that in 2025 media thrives off parasocial relationships, so every Wednesday The Josh Marshall Podcast featuring Kate Riga gives TPM aficionados the opportunity to hang with Josh and Kate who analyze and comment on the important goings-on in the political world. (After a summer hiatus, the pod returns August 20th—great time to check it out!)
 

There are people for whom the site, newsletters and podcasts are not enough. They crave even more. It is for these folks that we launched our events series. This year, we had live podcasts in Washington D.C. and Chicago. We have an event coming up in Boston, where we'll be partnering with STAT News. We've hosted a couple happy hours in New York and one in DC. And later this year, we'll be celebrating our 25th Anniversary, which is sure to be our biggest and best event yet.
 

You can read most of the site for free. You can sign up for the Morning Memo and Where Things Stand without being a member. You can listen to the podcast anywhere you get podcasts. But even though so much of what we offer is available to everyone, it is all made possible by members and reader contributions. We try not to be a strictly transactional operation. We hope people will support us because they can and because they want to, not because we force it. (We like to think we're doing a good job because our renewal rate is around 90%) So, we hope you'll support us and all the things we do.