Talking Points Memo

"Journalism" is many things. It's breaking news, it's analyzing the news, it's curating the news, it's aggregating the news, it's contextualizing the news, it's commentating on the news. It's reporting, it's investigating and it's debunking. Every news outlet has its own idiosyncratic approach to "doing journalism." 

What is TPM's? What have we been trying to do for the last 25 years?

If we could boil it down into one phrase, it might be "to enhance the reader's understanding of the world in which they live, specifically the political world." When we break news and we slap "exclusive" in the headline, it's not merely self-congratulatory — it's a signal that hey, here is a piece of information that will help you better understand the world and, for now, you can only find it right here. When we write a deeply reported piece about some goings-on with the Supreme Court, it is to help readers better understand the world. When Josh and Kate record the podcast, they are aiming to help listeners better understand the world.
 

This may all sound trite and obvious, but I don't think it is. Journalism at its best is a complementary and cooperative endeavor. In a perfect world you have a number of publications covering just about everything. There would be some overlap because redundancy is good in the information business — some, but not all, issues are open to various interpretations. Sometimes one outlet may miss something another picks up. But the general idea would be an industry made up of publications that are sort of all moving as one in the pursuit of a better informed and better educated population such that people could make intelligent decisions about how to go about their lives.

But for all sorts of reasons from ideology to the prevailing business environment in which we find ourselves, this is clearly not what exists. When journalism is more about making a profit or working to advance the ideology of its corporate or otherwise wealthy benefactors, then the notion of a unified industry working together falls apart. Now, breaking news is more of a business venture to attract eyeballs. Headlines are derived to drive traffic for advertisers. In fact, entire sections of news may be deemed "money-losing" and shut down altogether despite tangible benefit to communities. 

TPM is not the only organization that thinks of its business operation as supporting its journalism. But the number of outlets where this is the case is dwindling. We hope you'll support us, which means, as always, supporting good journalism.