This is a post about TPM. So that’s just as a heads-up. It’s not about the news of the moment. It’s inwardly looking about this website.
On Friday, I did an interview tied to our 25th anniversary celebration. It should be out closer to the date of the anniversary in mid-November. Toward the end of the conversation, the interviewer asked me if I thought TPM had stayed true to the vision I originally had for it and, if so, what that was. I began by referencing a point I’d made earlier in the interview which was that it couldn’t be true to the original vision because I didn’t have any clear sense of what I was trying to do at the beginning. But pretty quickly I did. When I thought about the site and its continuity I realized there are three things that make up TPM. Oddly, in the interview, I only mentioned two of them. I probably just lost my train of thought. It was toward the end of an hour-long interview. But I wanted to share with you what those three things are.
One: You can’t cover political news well unless you’re familiar with and care about the substance. You can’t cover a piece of new health care policy legislation if you don’t have a solid grounding in health care policy. And you can’t do it well if you don’t care about the outcomes. You can’t cover a Hill story or a campaign well if it’s just a game. Your investment doesn’t need to be partisan. But it should be real. You can’t possibly chart the incremental developments in a story without a basic grasp of how those developments connect up to civic or human outcomes. Otherwise you’re inevitably skimming over the surface, trying to write a novel while being indifferent to the human condition.
Two: Good political reporting should be something you’re dying to read. It shouldn’t be a chore. Headlines should punch you right between the eyes. The story should be as captivating and entertaining and fun as the substance is important. If it’s boring that’s because it’s boring, not because it’s too sophisticated for the audience. TPM should be a thinking person’s tabloid, engaged and engaging. We’re not above and never want to see ourselves as above our audience.
Three: Fundamental honesty with readers. That starts with not lying to our audience. But hopefully that’s a given. What it means to me is that the delta between what we know as editors and reporters and what our readers can learn from reading our pages should be as small as possible. We won’t share rumors we can’t confirm or the identities of confidential sources. And the nature of editing means we focus on what is important and substantial, not every quanta of information we came across. But there shouldn’t be a deeper, insider understanding of the story that isn’t there in the story itself. If we have a set of assumptions or commitments we bring to a story, we should be open about those — not because it’s some admission but because it gives readers a deeper understanding of the story. We should also share what we don’t know as much as what we do. That can mean entertaining hypotheticals and giving readers as much visibility as we can into the process and mechanics of reporting. We did these things originally because it’s the way I like to write about and report political news. But the process of doing this — sharing what I didn’t know in advance — invites reader participation and tips, making the audience into a reporting arm of the publication. It also builds trust and loyalty, which is why TPM has a wildly committed, loyal readership, and why we were able to build a membership business, which is why TPM still exists today.
As I said, I didn’t include all three. So I wanted to do that here. But it was only with the question, which I hadn’t thought of before in that way, that these answers crystallized in my mind. So I wanted to share them with you.
