Let me hold the floor for a moment for a TPM personnel announcement. Many of you who are regular readers of this site have also become regular readers of TPMmuckraker.com, the site we launched almost a year ago “dedicated to chronicling, explaining and reporting on public corruption, political scandal and abuses of the public trust of all sorts.”
Next Wednesday, 
January 31st will be co-Muckraker Justin Rood’s last day at TPMmuckraker.com and TPM Media. But you’ll still be able to benefit from Justin’s muckraking tenacity since he’s moving on to a job as a producer for ABC’s investigative unit and its blog The Blotter.
Now, needless to say, we’re very disappointed to see Justin go. But I’ll note a hint of pride that the Muckraking venue that Justin and Paul Kiel have created over this last year was one where Justin’s abundant investigative skills could be so visibly on display.
When I raised money for what would become Muckraker back in November and December 2005, I said I wanted to hire a reporter or reporters who could focus on internet-based muckraking full-time. And I took a lot of time picking through all sorts of different resumes looking for people who I thought had not just the knack and flair and persistance and hunger for investigative journalism but people who could also make it work in the blog format. A more difficult combination than it probably seems. And I really don’t think I could have found two better people than Justin and Paul, each of whom have brought a unique and complementary set of skills to the project.
Justin has just that mix of fun and feistiness and crankiness and persistence that mark all the great investigative journalists I’ve known. Justin brought TPMm a wealth of Washington sources that have helped us break numerous stories over the last year. And not just the glitz ‘quotable’ sources or behind-the-scenes spoon-feeders, not even primarily those, but the less visible ones who lurk in the less glamorous world of document-dumps, earmarks, FOIA hounds and all those sundry subterranean operators, often motivated by better-left-unmentioned beefs, who nevertheless know the real scoops.
So let me thank Justin personally for all his hard work and all he’s help us build. We wish him well.
If you’d like to thank Justin, wish him well, or just get on his case, shoot him an email at the comments address up there on the upper right hand of the site.
