Today, on the eve of the inaugural, TPM is launching a new politics blog, TPMDC.com. It’s the successor to TPM Election Central. Our team covering the Capital under the new administration will be Elana Schor, who joined our team earlier this month, covering Capitol Hill, Matt Cooper, formerly of Time, Newsweek, et al., covering the White House and the rest of the Obama administration and Eric Kleefeld, a veteran of our 2008 EC team, covering the political world from TPM Headquarters in NY.
First, let me welcome Matt Cooper to our TPM team (you can see his introductory post here). I’ve been a fan of Matt’s for years. And we’re excited to mix Matt’s 20+ years of experience covering Washington, with all the insights and sources that entails, with the new approach to reporting we’re working to create. We think both will add to the other.
We plan to hire one more reporter-blogger for the site; and David Kurtz and I will also be reporting and editing for the site.
The premise is simple. Though the phrase is endlessly overused, tomorrow is genuinely a new day in American politics. A new Democratic president, expanded Democratic majorities in the House and the Senate no longer encumbered by its earlier dependency on incumbency and legacy of solid South. And all of this beginning in a climate of genuine national crisis. We want to understand it. And we believe we are uniquely placed to chronicle the story.
As we have in every other project we’ve undertaken, we’re doing this in partnership with you. We need your tips, your insights and your critiques. So if you’re in the new administration, keep us posted on what you think is happening. And same to all of our reader-sources on Capitol Hill. And most importantly for our readers not residing within the Capital Beltway, we need your insights and perspective. We want to dig into the details of what’s happening, understand the complexities and messiness of the city without becoming captive to its often insular mentality. In it but not of it.
On a personal note, TPM began just over eight years ago as a blog written from Washington. I moved to New York at the end of 2004. And it was from New York that we started growing TPM as an actual news outlet with multiple reporters in 2005. I’m still a little surprised at how much it’s grown. And we have ambitious new plans for 2009.
So please visit the new site, take its measure, let us know your reactions and help us make it the best site covering the new Washington there is.
