TPM Reader SW:
I have been a reader (and meager contributor) since 2002, and hit you several times daily. However, I think more and more of the stories you do (and do and do and do, like the Pittsburgh face carver of limited talent and imagination) are better over-covered by, say, the Huffington Post. (Yes, it’s important to tell how the McCain campaign sleazed its way through this one– that’s the important story, and it must be told, and you did that well.) You have a great platform to educate people who need to be educated, and more importantly, want to be educated (unlike say, the Fox/Drudge clientele). Better, you people have the means and talent to educate your intelligent readers.
I spit out my coffee when I read this story yesterday. I had not heard that the banks who are getting the $250,000,000,000.00 (with twice as much still left to come) Treasury just gave out are not being told by Secretary Treasury Paulson to lend it to Joe Sixpack to buy his boss’s business, but to buy other banks. What an effing outrage!
Joe Nocera’s article details how Treasury has been lying since this crises began, just like an oily subprime lender, selling us something we don’t need or want by telling us it’s something else. If this article is true, our taxes are financing J.P. Morgan’s and Goldman Sachs’ 2008 executive bonus fund.
Can you please get word of this excellent article out?
Keep up the good work.
TPM Reader LP replies …
SW says more education, less anything else.
I say TPM already does a great job of balancing this, with lots and lots of critical info and analysis and measured opinion, with a small bit of relevant but less-deadly-serious articles to help keep me and I’m presuming most readers able to move on to the next deadly-serious article without getting “serious” indigestion. There’s only so much density and mass one can digest at a time.
I think it also helps attract new and keep old visitors coming back. A lot of journalists who come to this site, I’m guessing, wouldn’t have the investigatory dedication or love of inquiry to often visit a more dry and academic site, or a site with a more staid demeanor.
Personally, I work online and TPM helps me stay awake, become much better informed, stay passionate about politics, and laughing each and every day. This is why I visit briefly usually every one to two hours. It’s really quite an informative and serious enough site as is.
