I’ve mentioned a few times recently that we’ve got some big changes coming soon at TPM. So with the good press TPMmuckraker.com has been getting for its reporting on the US Attorney Purge story, let me take a moment to tell you what we’ve got coming.
It’s been about a year and a half now since our reporting here went from being a one man operation to a small team of reporters. That’s when I got the idea to start the site that became TPMmuckraker.com. Needless to say, I really couldn’t be happier with the results.
For its first year, TPMmuckraker.com was primarily focused on the expanding web of congressional corruption scandals. We still think Congress is the big story this year, but in a different way. With the Democrats now in power, how are they running the place? Differently than the GOP barons, or more of the same with a new party ID label after the names? And how well are they performing oversight of the executive branch? We want to see how good a job they’re doing, what they’re finding and — perhaps most important — what we can find that they should be looking at too. So on both counts, we think Congress is the story this year. That’s why we want to put at least one full-time blogger-reporter on Capitol Hill every day to dig into the stuff we think our readers want to know more about, to dig in to stories that aren’t getting the attention they should.
This will be part of a relaunch of the entire site — with a redesigned TPM website with a expanded focusing on reporting and breaking news updated through the day, and daily video segements. We have either already hired or are in the process of hiring new staff to make all this possible. We’ll still have the traditional TPM blog. And with the changes we’re making I should be able to get back to doing more blogging myself, as I used to, which I’m glad about.
To regular readers, I’m eager to hear your comments and thoughts. I’ll be discussing more of the details over the weekend and next week, when we’ll be launching a new (voluntary) subscription drive to help make all this possible.
