We’re kicking off a major new project that is part of bringing new readers into the TPM community. It’s very important to the future of the site. I think you’ll find it interesting. It builds on something we’ve done for a while but takes it to a new level.
If you’re a student we want to give you a free TPM membership. This isn’t a free trial or an upsell. It’s a full membership for one year, renewable as long as you’re a student, at no charge. No strings attached. You just have to be a registered student. You can be full-time or part-time.
Do you know a student – probably a young person but they come in all ages – who might enjoy a TPM membership? Well, let them know about our offer. Are you a teacher and have students who might enjoy and be enriched by getting a free TPM membership? You can either let them know about our program or contact us to help you with signing up a whole class or whatever group of students for TPM memberships. Whichever of these categories you’re interested in, you can start right now by clicking at this link.
A note on eligibility. You can be a student at any accredited academic institution – grade school to graduate school. You don’t have to be full-time. Not everyone in school can afford to attend full-time.
We fund these memberships with contributions to The TPM Journalism Fund. Each contribution of $60 or increment of $60 creates a membership token in our system which we then distribute to students as noted above. We have tokens currently. But we are going to be asking members to contribute to the Fund if they are able because we plan on distributing these memberships at greater scale.
There are a couple reasons why we do this.
One is that we don’t want to cut people off from access to what we publish because of a financial barrier. Not all students have limited funds, but it tends to be part of the package: Few people are flush in school. (That’s also why we have free memberships for those in financial need – funded again by The TPM Journalism Fund.)
But we are also doing this because a publication not busy being born is busy dying. We are building a new generation of TPM Readers and many of those will be students who are just making their way in the misty forests of politics and news, establishing tastes, forming opinions, finding welcoming communities, establishing relationships of trust with publications. In so many words, making sense of the world. As most of us can attest, these early choices and bonds can be formative and establish patterns that last years into the future. This is one part of our plan to build those bonds.
Do you have a son or granddaughter who might be interested in TPM? Are you a college professor who has students who might be? Or, well, you’re just a college sophomore who didn’t realize you could be the owner of a brand new TPM membership just for the asking? In each case, just click this link.
And if you’d like to help us fund this with a contribution to The TPM Journalism Fund, just click right here.
