Talking Points Memo

Today Josh wrote a post noting that the number of Haitian immigrants to arrive in Springfield, Ohio in recent years may be significantly less than the figures — ranging from 12,000 to 20,000 — that city officials had often cited. That would put it at considerably less than the 30,000 number you could hear on Fox News. Yet this claim of a deluge of non-white newcomers is central to Donald Trump and JD Vance's thirsting for unrest and violence in Ohio. Within that post Josh explains why he has reason to believe that figure is closer to 10,000, and embedded within his explanation is lesson about journalism itself. The critical work was down by a statistically savvy group of writers at a new publication called The Downballot. Josh writes:

If you're interested in how they came up with this number, definitely give it a look. It's an interesting survey just in terms of how one can look at, triangulate and draw information out of different forms of public data. It's also a reminder of the importance of smart, independent publications. Publications like the Times, the Post, the Journal and a bunch of other places have tens and often hundreds as many journalists as The Downballot, but this piece of digging went undone.

Josh continues:

You need a lot of different kinds of publications, with different sizes, editorial outlooks, unique skillsets to have a broadly informed news environment and citizenry.

I rarely encounter anyone who disagrees with the need for a diverse media ecosystem. Nonetheless, the ecosystem has undoubtedly become less diverse over time. There are simply fewer publications, and many of the publications who remain compete over the same stories while others go unexamined. This ed blog post from Josh is in many ways a classic TPM blog post. It brings to the readers reporting they may have otherwise missed. Sometimes TPM does this through original reporting, sometimes through highlighting the work of others who don't have the same reach as the behemoths. But always with the same objective: help the reader better understand the world as it really is. We hope you'll support us in that mission.