Talking Points Memo

I was fortunate enough to be in Paris for the Olympics. I witnessed a lot of greatness. So, today, in keeping with that theme of excellence, I'm stealing something from my colleague, Managing Editor, John Light. Today, John wrote a piece titled "What We Are, And What We're Not." Here's an excerpt, which I think serves as a good summary of why you should consider being a member (or contributing to the TPM Journalism Fund).

The reason why many of the digital-native outlets of the aughts and 2010s are now gone or seriously diminished is because people didn't develop a loyalty to any particular one of these startups, they developed a loyalty to the platforms that delivered those stories and the communities on those platforms: once Facebook, then Twitter, now a wide array of different Twitter-like successors and streaming platforms such as YouTube and Twitch. The news first reported by professional journalists ends up sliced and diced and resurfaced and echoed in some form across billions of feeds on innumerable platforms, some of which you and I have likely never heard of. With the time of easy money gone, we see some news outlets continuing to try and squeeze out the dregs from investors, promising novel newsroom uses of AI or a supposedly savvy editorial position that tells the money-havers exactly what they want to hear, regardless of its grounding in reality.

TPM, fortunately, is different, and it is why we've been able to survive as long as we have. We know we're not going to change the news industry, and we don't need to. We rely on you, our community of readers. We're not making some grab for the attention of the social media-scrolling masses. Sure, we'll take it, but we don't need it. We have something fairly unique here: a loyal readership and a gradually growing group of members with whom we are deeply connected.

So there you have it. We hope you'll join.