Would you like to

Would you like to read on-location TPM coverage <$NoAd$>from the Democratic and Republican conventions?

Well, here’s your chance.

TPM’s readership is more than twice the size it was last October when we last did this. So newer readers won’t remember. But we first did this last October 26th when we put out a call for reader contributions to fund a reporting trip to New Hampshire. The funding part of the experiment was overwhelmingly successful and … well, you have to be the judge, but I thought the reporting part of it went well too.

(You can see most of the results from the TPM archives of the third and fourth weeks of January.)

In any case, the pitch this time is really pretty much the same as last time. So let me quote from that post from October 26th …

The normal way to do this would be for me to go to one of the publications I write for, get them to pick up the tab (hotel room, transportation, etc.), and write it up for them.

But that would mean saving most of the reporting for some magazine or website or newspaper and not doing much or any of it for TPM. And, frankly, I think blog coverage is much better suited to covering something like the New Hampshire primary than magazines or newspapers. Because it’s really about moment-to-moment reports, running commentary, and a lot of other stuff that doesn’t easily fit into the rubrics of conventional journalism. Besides, you want to know what’s happening while it’s happening, not in a lazy summing-up a week after the votes have been counted … I want to dedicate this trip entirely to blog coverage so I want to fund it with reader support, reader subscriptions. That’ll be part of the experiment too — whether this kind of independent journalism can come up with the resources to fund high-quality on-the-ground play-by-play reporting.

‘Subscription’ in this case doesn’t mean anything exclusive. TPM will be freely available to anyone and everyone who wants to read it, whether they’ve contributed or not, just like always. (And of course many readers have already generously contributed to the general upkeep of the site.) Here I’m using the term in a somewhat old-fashioned sense to refer to putting some money up, not for the general support of the site, but to fund a specific project you’re going to make use of or benefit from.

Now, conventions aren’t like primaries. We know who’s going to be nominated, more or less precisely what time in the evening, on what day, and so forth. But the party conventions are also the only time in four years and certainly the only time during the campaigns when, if not the whole party, then at least most party professionals and activists, get together in one place. So it’s a unique opportunity to get a read on where people are at, how enthused they are, how confident or demoralized, scattered or focused they are just before the race moves into the home stretch.

So there it is. The Democratic National Convention in Boston on July 26th – 29th and the Republican National Convention in New York on August 30th – September 2nd. Travel, basic expenses, accommodations, perhaps a bodyguard for the Republican convention. You get the idea.

We’ll be following up with more details. But if you’d like to contribute and make this possible, you can click here to make a contribution through paypal.

Come on board. I think it’ll be exciting. More details to come soon …