''Talking Points Memo'' (''TPM'') is a liberal political news and opinion

blog A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is an informational website consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries also known as posts. Posts are typically displayed in Reverse chronology, reverse chronologic ...

created and run by

Josh Marshall Joshua Micah Jesajan-Dorja Marshall (born February 15, 1969) is an American journalist and blogger who founded ''Talking Points Memo.'' A Modern liberalism in the United States, liberal, he presides over a network of Left-wing politics, progress ...

that 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. By 2007, ''TPM'' received an average of 400,000 page views every weekday.

Growth

''Talking Points Memo'' was founded as a political blog in 2000 by

, who until 2004 was the site's sole employee. In 2005, TPM Media LLC was incorporated, and the company began to grow with more employees and spinoff websites. By 2009 it had 11 employees, and, having previously been funded by ads and reader donations, received

angel investment An angel investor (also known as a business angel, informal investor, angel funder, private investor, or seed investor) is an individual who provides capital to a business or businesses, including startups, usually in exchange for convertible debt ...

s from a group led by

Marc Andreessen Marc Lowell Andreessen ( ; born July 9, 1971) is an American businessman and former software engineer. He is the co-author of Mosaic, the first widely used web browser with a graphical user interface; co-founder of Netscape; and co-founder and ...

. In 2009, ''TPM'' opened a Washington, D.C. office and joined the White House press pool along with several other progressive news outlets to cover the

Obama administration Barack Obama's tenure as the 44th president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 2009, and ended on January 20, 2017. Obama, a Democrat from Illinois, took office following his victory over Republican nomine ...

. The site introduced a subscription service, TPM Prime, in 2012, which by 2017 had over 21,000 subscribers, and by December 2020 had nearly 35,000 subscribers.

Reception

Robert W. McChesney Robert Waterman McChesney (; December 22, 1952 – March 25, 2025) was an American professor notable in the history and political economy of communications, and the role media play in democratic and capitalist societies. He was the Gutgsell En ...

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 George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician and businessman who was the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Bush family and the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party, he i ...

's efforts to privatize Social Security, which the blog opposed; and "bitch-slap politics" to refer to the

Swiftboating The term swiftboating, also swift-boating or swift boating, is a pejorative American neologism used to describe an unfair or untrue political attack. The term is derived from Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (SBVT), the organization responsible for ...

of 2004 presidential candidate

John Kerry John Forbes Kerry (born December 11, 1943) is an American attorney, politician, and diplomat who served as the 68th United States secretary of state from 2013 to 2017 in the Presidency of Barack Obama#Administration, administration of Barac ...

. McChesney and Nichols compare the site's style to the

muckraking The muckrakers were reform-minded journalists, writers, and photographers in the Progressive Era in the United States (1890s–1920s) who claimed to expose corruption and wrongdoing in established institutions, often through sensationalist publ ...

Upton Sinclair Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. (September 20, 1878 – November 25, 1968) was an American author, muckraker journalist, and political activist, and the 1934 California gubernatorial election, 1934 Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party ...

. The more social aspects of the site, which invite

crowdsourcing Crowdsourcing involves a large group of dispersed participants contributing or producing goods or services—including ideas, votes, micro-tasks, and finances—for payment or as volunteers. Contemporary crowdsourcing often involves digit ...

, were compared to ''

La Follette's Weekly ''The Progressive'' is a left-leaning American magazine and website covering politics and culture. Founded in 1909 by U.S. senator Robert M. La Follette Sr. and co-edited with his wife Belle Case La Follette, it was originally called ''La Foll ...

''.

Tom Rosenstiel Tom Rosenstiel is an American author, journalist, press critic, researcher and academic. He is the Eleanor Merrill Visiting Professor on the Future of Journalism at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland. He was ...

, director of the

Project for Excellence in Journalism The Project for Excellence in Journalism was a tax-exempt research organization in the United States that used empirical methods to evaluate and study the performance of the press. The organization's director was Tom Rosenstiel, a professor of ...

, in 2009 said "''TPM'' is really an advocacy operation that has moved toward journalism." Guest bloggers have included

Matthew Yglesias Matthew Yglesias (; born May 18, 1981) is an American blogger and journalist who writes about economics and politics. Yglesias has written columns and articles for publications such as ''The American Prospect'', ''The Atlantic'', and ''Slate''. I ...

Robert Reich Robert Bernard Reich (; born June 24, 1946) is an American professor, author, lawyer, and political commentator. He worked in the administrations of presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, and he served as United States Secretary of Labor, Se ...

Dean Baker Dean Baker (born July 13, 1958) is an American macroeconomist who co-founded the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) with Mark Weisbrot. Baker has been credited as one of the first economists to have identified the 2007–08 United S ...

, Michael Crowley, and, briefly, vice-presidential candidate

John Edwards Johnny Reid Edwards (born June 10, 1953) is an American lawyer and former politician who represented North Carolina in the United States Senate from 1999 to 2005. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the vice presidential nominee under ...

. Beginning in the summer of 2006, many weekend postings were provided by

anonymous blogger An anonymous blog is a blog without any acknowledged author or contributor. Anonymous bloggers may achieve anonymity through the simple use of a pseudonym, or through more sophisticated techniques such as layered encryption routing, manipulation o ...

''DK''. On November 11, 2006, ''DK'' was revealed to be attorney David Kurtz, who now posts openly under his name. In 2007, ''TPM'' won a

George Polk Award The George Polk Awards in Journalism are a series of American journalism awards presented annually by Long Island University in New York in the United States. A writer for Idea Lab, a group blog hosted on the website of PBS, described the awar ...

for Legal Reporting for its coverage of the 2006 U.S. Attorneys scandal, becoming the first online-only outlet to receive the award.

Related projects

TPMCafe TPMCafe was a center-left blog portal created by Josh Marshall as a spin-off blog to his popular ''Talking Points Memo''. It debuted on May 31, 2005. TPM Cafe featured a collection of blogs about a wide range of domestic and foreign policy issue ...

- a "spin-off" blog also created by Josh Marshall, is a companion website that debuted on May 31, 2005. This site features a collection of blogs about a wide range of domestic and foreign policy issues written by academics, journalists, and former public officials, among others. * TPMmuckraker - a new blog that was founded when Marshall expanded his operation where journalists working for the TPM collective, such as Paul Kiel and Justin Rood, investigate political corruption. * TPMDC - founded in January 2007, the ''Horse's Mouth'', is a blog authored by Greg Sargent with a remit to cover how Washington politics was covered by the major news outlets, that moved home from ''

The American Prospect ''The American Prospect'' is a daily online and bimonthly print American political and public policy magazine dedicated to American modern liberalism and Progressivism in the United States, progressivism. Based in Washington, D.C., ''The America ...

'' to the TPM Media family. Sargent had begun writing for TPMCafe in July 2006. In 2008, Sargent stopped posting to the ''Horse's Mouth'' blog and began posting to a new blog called TPM Election Central, which focused on covering the 2008 elections. In 2009, TPM Election Central was renamed TPMDC, to cover politics from Washington, D.C., and Marshall hired journalists based in Washington to report for the blog. * TPMLiveWire - is a spin-off established in September 2009. * TPMIdea Lab - is a blog established in January 2011 to cover science and technology. * TPMPollTracker - is an aggregator of various polls about incumbents taken by polling agencies. * TPMPrime - is a paid members-only section offering long form articles, and interactive discussions with journalists and political figures. The four blogs (Talking Points Memo, TPMCafe, TPMMuckraker, and TPMDC) are published by TPM Media LLC.

References

{{reflist American political blogs Online magazines published in the United States Internet properties established in 2000 Opinion polling in the United States Liberalism in the United States