Internet years move so fast that it’s easy to forget a certain mid-aughts cliche: Anyone writing digital-native news was surely a pajama-clad blogger sequestered in their parents’ basement. TPM helped change that — even if Josh sometimes did wear shorts to the office.

TPM’s coverage of the U.S. attorney firing scandal in the mid-2000s helped put the site on the map, and it was the first digital news operation to earn a George Polk Award in 2008. The next year, Time magazine named TPM one of the top blogs of 2009.

All that attention paid to a scrappy startup was bemusing to the small staff hammering away at the time, most of them from a modest office in Manhattan’s Flower District.

“I think it was a little bit humbling, I hope it was a little bit humbling, 15 years ago to realize that the guy with his blog could actually do stuff. You didn’t have to be a New York Times reporter to be someone to call up and ask questions,” said Sean Flynn, a GQ correspondent who profiled Josh in November 2007 with the auspicious headline “Give This Man a Pulitzer.”

One way TPM distinguished itself from its mainstream media peers early on, and throughout the U.S. attorney coverage, was its embrace of the audience — understanding that a group of well-informed and highly engaged readers might know more than you do, and could be brought into the editorial process.

“Another thing that occurs to me that was novel about Josh’s approach was treating smart and informed readers as sources,” said Quartz CEO Zach Seward, who profiled TPM for Harvard’s Nieman Lab in 2009. “Prior to that, in general, a source was someone with inside information and an expert is somebody you call up for domain expertise. I think TPM kind of blurred that.”

Flynn also pointed to TPM’s embrace of the audience.

“It’s a self-selecting audience, very well-educated and smart and very engaged, but he had the lack of ego just to embrace that,” Flynn said of Josh. “There are people out there who know things and my job is to pull things together. Put it into context.”

“Josh finding, again, that sweet spot, sure I can just let everyone run wild in the comment section or I can take these tips and information and piece it together.”

The U.S. attorney investigation wasn’t the result of one single blockbuster scoop or magazine-length feature. It was constellation of stories that over time painted a picture of political corruption. That iterative approach was born of the blogosphere and gave the story legs over time. It also cemented an editorial approach that continues today, from following Trump’s bonkers post-election antics as he attempts to undermine the next administration, to the President’s efforts to exclude undocumented immigrants from the decennial census count.

“I’ve always given Josh credit for inventing a new way to iteratively attack a big story,” former New Republic editor and Columbia Journalism Review contributor Gabriel Snyder said.

“All these things investigative reporters always did when they were sitting in a newsroom, the internet allowed you to share that,” Snyder added. “The benefits of sourcing that way, it was a true way of being able to start publishing on the story without knowing what the full story was going to be.”

Snyder said he has referred to several TPM stories — including the reporting on disgraced former lobbyist Jack Abramoff — as a model for how to chip away at a sprawling story.

“It really was this template for how you can bridge the gap between sort of the daily blogging format and the impact of the three month investigative reported piece,” he said.

Josh’s humble attitude and approach belies the impact TPM had on the journalism world when blogs were still considered the ugly stepchild to newspapers and TV networks.

“He always very chill, very modest about what he was doing,” Flynn said. “He’s a guy who uncovered what arguably was one of the biggest scandals, domestic scandals, of the Bush years. That was happening in plain sight but nobody else picked up on that.”

I’ve been told the morning shift bond is strong. But alcohol is stronger.

Kate Riga and I had been working on the morning shift together for a few weeks in the spring of 2018 before we made newfound-friendship plans to embark on the endlessly unsatisfying journey of finding an affordable bar near the TPM New York City office for a good old fashioned happy hour. The first attempt was Cafe Champignon on 22nd and 7th. We could afford one glass of wine. Again, endlessly unsatisfying.

Continue reading “Subpoena Colada: TPM Knows How To Drink” →

When Justice Department leadership asked Paul Charlton, then a U.S. attorney in Arizona, in December of 2006 to submit a resignation from his post by the following month, it did not cross the longtime prosecutor’s mind that the request might have had to do with an investigation into a Republican House member his office was leading.

Continue reading “The 2007 Story That Brought TPM Into The Major Leagues” →

Talking Points Memo is not the perfect name for a news website. No one here is going to argue with you about that.

But we’ve had it for 20 years and it’s not changing now.

The name started as an inside joke between Josh Marshall and himself.

During the Clinton impeachment, the so-called origins of the “talking points memo” — a supposed list of talking points that Monica Lewinsky gave to Linda Tripp — was a holy grail for conservative investigators.

Josh tells the story here:

Six days after the 2000 presidential election, at 3:37 p.m. EST, TPM came into being with a few surprising words: “As if things couldn’t get any weirder, did you notice the name of the lawyer who made the Republicans’ unsuccessful arguments before that federal judge today?”

Looking back now, it seems like there must have been something that came before that post. As if things couldn’t get any weirder than what? What federal judge?

But there wasn’t anything else. That was the start of TPM, at the height of Florida recount chaos. The first post began in the middle of a conversation that the next post, published 13 minutes later, continued.

It’s a conversation that has now continued for 20 years.

(You can find that first day of blogging in a close-to-original form here, courtesy of the Internet Archive.)

There was a bit of backstory, told in the video above. Josh Marshall had some experience with political blogging, something that was still in its very early days. He had done a sort of proto-TPM thing at the American Prospect, where he was Washington editor. That’s a position that was “less grand than it sounds,” in the words of Joshua Green, who was a reporter at the Prospect at the time. He described it in an Atlantic post a decade ago noting TPM’s 10th anniversary.

An image lodged in my mind from those days is walking into Josh’s office one Monday around lunchtime and finding him sound asleep on his couch in the same clothes from Friday and surrounded by about 30 empty two-liter bottles of Pepsi One (not exaggerating). Point is, he operated on his own clock.

The content of that first post wasn’t as out-of-left-field either as it may seem now, at 20 years’ remove. The conversion Josh was apparently jumping into mid-thought would have been familiar to any politically astute reader: The country was in the throws of a national crisis. Some long-time TPM readers have written to us about that early period, during which they refreshed the site endlessly. By the time the Bush v. Gore decision arrived on Dec. 12, 2000, TPM wasn’t going anywhere.

Josh Marshall tells the story of TPM’s origins in the video above.

A partial and continually updated glossary of Josh Marshallisms (or, more broadly, TPMisms).

appreciate the congrats: What you say when you’ve done something really awesome. An homage to Trump’s memorable response to the Pulse nightclub shooting: “Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism, I don’t want congrats, I want toughness & vigilance. We must be smart!”

the Aqua-Duke: The boat on which Randy “Duke” Cunningham lived, owned by defense contractor Mitchell Wade. Also, more formally, known as the Duke-Stir.

Bamboozlepalooza: The George W. Bush administration’s attempt to privatize Social Security, early in its second term, while refusing to level with the public about the impact of what it was doing. Also, the insistence that the wildly unpopular idea was, in fact, broadly popular.

the Brittle Grip: The growing insecurity of the very wealthy, even as the yawning gap in economic and political power between the rich and poor continues to widen.

the Comey myth: The public perception of James Comey as an apolitical man of independence and integrity. Comey is the chief author of the Comey Myth.

the Conscience Caucus: Those Republicans in Congress who resisted George W. Bush’s administration’s attempt to privatize social security.

the Dead Ted Bounce: A brief period during the 2016 Republican primary during which Ted Cruz, despite his generally agreed upon unlikeability, appeared to have more popular support than Trump because of his campaign’s superior ground game.

the DeLay Rule: The GOP once prohibited anyone indicted for a felony from serving in a leadership position; the DeLay Rule allowed them to do so right up until the day they were convicted. The rule, coincidentally, was rolled out after former House majority leader Tom DeLay was indicted in Texas for an alleged money laundering scheme.

detecting a black hole: Astronomers cannot see black holes directly; instead, they map them by measuring their effect on surrounding matter. We don’t know the facts or motivations at the center of many Trump administration scandals, but we can understand their size, scope, and magnitude by how everything they touch bends around them.

dignity wraiths: Men and women of once-vaunted reputations who have been reduced to mere husks of their former selves through their association with Trump.

dominance politics: A political attack meant to show an opponent’s lack of toughness or strength by demonstrating that they are either unwilling or unable to defend themselves; a politics derived from the inherent appeal of power and the ability to dominate others. (Formerly known as “the bitch slap theory of politics.”)

the Fainthearted Faction: A segment of Congress made up of those Democratic senators and representatives who appeared willing to go along with George W. Bush in privitizing Social Security.

feral dweebs: Those who make up the unending stream of white supremacist, incel and conspiracy theory-addled mass shooters or would-be mass shooters.

militant ignorance: Trump’s enthusiastic and aggressive lack of self-awareness about his ignorance.

the nonsense debt: The problem faced by a GOP establishment that has for years fed its voters garbage now that said garbage has been weaponized, more effectively, by libertine billionaire Donald Trump and his cadre of con artists. (Related term: “the hate debt.”)

phoney-baloneyism: Former presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s primary ideology.

the rump: The weirdest, most fire-breathing portion of the GOP. Embodied at different times by different spokespeople and movements, including the Tea Party, the Freedom Caucus, and, later, Trumpism.

Schrödinger’s bus: A situation in which a foundational instability is created by people simultaneously being on President Trump’s team and under the bus depending on the context. (See also: “underbusing.”)

Schrödinger’s DHS secretary: A legal defense employed by the Trump administration that posits that Chad Wolf may or may not have been legally appointed as acting DHS secretary, but that, in the event that he wasn’t, FEMA administrator Pete Gaynor was actually the acting secretary and subsequently ceded his position to Wolf and that, regardless, the acting DHS secretary’s orders are legal.

tire-swinging: When a reporter has gotten way too cozy with a politician, and their reporting becomes insipid because of it.

the Trump Dignity-Loss Event Horizon: The point of no return for a person who once enjoyed public respect, beyond which they are caught within Trump’s orbit and become a dignity wraith. (See also: “dignity wraiths.”)

Trump’s Razor: According to Trump’s Razor, the stupidest possible scenario that can be reconciled with the available facts is also, most likely, the truth.

the Trump Attack Haiku: A Twitter-based, 140- or 280-character insult haiku pioneered by President Donald Trump. It tends to follow this form: Single clause declarative sentence, single clause declarative sentence, primary adjective/term of derision. Note that not every attack haiku follows the exact metrical progression.

underbusing: A common Trump administration tactic for shifting blame to one’s rivals within the administration.

Up-Is-Downism: When a political operative declares the opposite of what is true to, in fact, be true.

the weaponization of military sacrifice: The way in which Trump and his supporters frame dissent of all sorts as an attack on people who have sustained injuries or lost their lives in defense of the country.

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