Editors’ Blog

I got another note from TPM Reader NS this morning. He expresses rightful frustration with the way that elite media continues to focus on Trump’s recent antics as an extended tantrum or flawed strategy when it is much more appropriately seen as a mental and cognitive state which is manifestly unfit for holding public office. Trump is also not morally fit for office. But that’s different, and that’s always been the case. The normal rejoinder is that Trump’s mental fitness is sort of irrelevant since most of us already know that and his supporters don’t care. Those conclusions are mostly true as far as it goes. But it represents a failure of journalistic logic which is remarkably widespread in media today. Put simply, that reasoning is mainly above the pay grade of journalism. It’s not the job of journalism to adjust the editorial choices or insights of daily news coverage based on driving electoral or public opinion outcomes. It’s to cover the news. There’s no single way to cover the news and no single, objective version of what constitutes the news. But that reasoning about impact is not an appropriate one and it is deeply damaging to journalism in myriad ways.

Here’s NS …

I got an email last night from a reporter doing a piece on Ezra Klein and his prominence in Democratic politics. They asked me how I felt my own piece criticizing his Thunderdome primary proposal held up given recent events and whether I saw Klein’s arguments differently now. It was an interesting question. So I thought I’d share with you what I wrote. I’m not identifying the journalist or the publication. Because I’m not trying to get a jump on them or get in the way of their piece. I’m doing it because it’s a good and interesting question. I took some time to write out a response and I thought you might be interested in seeing it.

Here it is.

A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Kate and Josh discuss the mainstream press’ eagerness to end the Harris honeymoon, Donald Trump’s feverish efforts to get back into the conversation and new polling of the race.

You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.

TPM Reader KJ sent me this in response to yesterday’s Backchannel. At first I thought these might be made up headlines. But they’re each real. I linked them.

It’s fun to split screen this email with today’s headlines:

The New York Times: Harris Is Set to Lay Out an Economic Message Light on Detail

The Hill: Harris is trying to run a no-substance campaign. Does she believe in anything?

The Washington Post: Opinion | Does Harris need a serious policy agenda? Only if she wants to win.

Poynter: Opinion | When will Kamala Harris meet the press?

I’ve come at this debate in my head from a bunch different directions over the last few days. I gave my overarching view in yesterday’s Backchannel. But there are so many different dimensions to it. Kate and I knocked several of them around in today’s podcast. I actually got in a minor spat today with a reporter who I’d dinged for an article description which presented Harris as a sort mystery candidate verging on a Manchurian Candidate, with unknown views and barely detailed ambitions. Are we kidding with all of this?

Thanks for taking a moment to read this post. We are now at a critical stage in our annual TPM Journalism Fund drive. It’s critical that we hit our goal this year which is to raise $500,000 to prepare TPM for what comes next. We’re in the final lap. Late yesterday we surpassed $400,000, which is simply incredible. We’re now at just over $404,000 $409,000 $415,000 $418,000 $420,000 $423,000. But we really need to reach that goal or at least get as close as we possibly can. I’m pumped because the milestone last night means we now have the wind at our back. The Journalism Fund is the critical piece of the puzzle that allows TPM to thrive while virtually all of our peers have retrenched, announced layoffs or shuttered entirely. We rely on you, our readers and members. And again and again you’ve been there for us.

If you’ve been planning on contributing this year and just haven’t found the right moment, please take just a couple minutes right now, hop out of that frenetic routine, and do it now. You just click here and it takes like literally two minutes. Super simple. Any amount helps a lot. Just click right here.

We’re currently just $525 short of $400,000 raised in this year’s TPM Journalism Fund drive. That’s 4/5ths of the way toward our goal. Can you take a moment to contribute this evening and help us reach this big milestone? Just click right here and thank you so much.

Back when a good portion of TPM’s current staff was first getting into journalism in the mid-2000s, there was this idea that the New York Times and the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal were all the things of the past; that world was dying, and whatever was to come next, we were told, was in the process of being born. What would it be? You probably remember some of that era. There was a rush toward digital media startups, with investors pouring money into new outlets.

Now, many of them are gone.

TPM predated this frenzy by a little, and has outlasted it. And our community support is a big part of why we’re still around.

The hope for some in those years was that something new would win the attention of the news-reading audience that the newspapers once enjoyed, and this new thing would be staffed by journalists. That something new, however, did not turn out to be a news outlet, and did not turn out to be staffed by journalists. It was, unfortunately, social media apps.

The reason why many of the digital-native outlets of the aughts and 2010s are now gone or seriously diminished is because people didn’t develop a loyalty to any particular one of these startups, they developed a loyalty to the platforms that delivered those stories and the communities on those platforms: once Facebook, then Twitter, now a wide array of different Twitter-like successors and streaming platforms such as YouTube and Twitch. The news first reported by professional journalists ends up sliced and diced and resurfaced and echoed in some form across billions of feeds on innumerable platforms, some of which you and I have likely never heard of. With the time of easy money gone, we see some news outlets continuing to try and squeeze out the dregs from investors, promising novel newsroom uses of AI or a supposedly savvy editorial position that tells the money-havers exactly what they want to hear, regardless of its grounding in reality.

TPM, fortunately, is different, and it is why we’ve been able to survive as long as we have. We know we’re not going to change the news industry, and we don’t need to. We rely on you, our community of readers. We’re not making some grab for the attention of the social media-scrolling masses. Sure, we’ll take it, but we don’t need it. We have something fairly unique here: a loyal readership and a gradually growing group of members with whom we are deeply connected.

This is why we come to you periodically and ask you to support us. It’s that time now, so please, if you have the resources to do so, we hope you will contribute.

What you get in return is not a tote bag, and not (or not just) a warm fuzzy feeling for having supported us and made us happy. We’re a news outlet doing something unique: community based, community sponsored national political journalism. We are not funded by Wall Street or Silicon Valley, and we do not need to come up with contrivances to keep those masters of the universe sending us their cash. We are funded by you, the people who read us and find us valuable. It’s great! We are proud to be part of this experiment, one that continues year after year.