During the course of 2012, the founder and editor of TPM, Josh Marshall, realized things weren’t working. The company had taken some investment money in 2009 with the intention of growing. However, by three years later, it was clear that the company was spending too much money and making too little. Without a serious “retrenchment,” the company’s future was in jeopardy.
Fascinating reading. Proud to be a member, I am.
IIRC, there’s the old NASA story of the groundskeeper saying that he was 'putting a man on the moon." If only more forms thought that way–if they can come up with a reason other than consumerism.
One possible dark cloud…how fractionated will our news become? I pay for only 3 firewalls right now: NYT, WaPo, and TPM. I donate to a couple others but do not subscribe. Will news providers become hyperspecialized?
to build a sustainable business that is laser focused on serving it’s readers
In addition to all the things that makes TPM great, this member cares about grammar and spelling. (It should be “its,” no apostrophe.) Happy new year.
I was a relatively early Prime and then Prime AF member. I’ve never regretted participating in supporting a great news organization. Good luck for another 20 years.
I had a moment of regret this morning when I read that Rudy had beaten The Duke to be the Goldenest Duke. I became absolutely hooked on TPM during the Duke muckraking years. He was my Congressman and a complete and total jacka$$. Rudy has nothing on the DukeStir. 
Really interesting article about TPM’s history. 
I remember Josh talking about some of these things as he redirected the focus to being membership driven, but not quite to this detail. I’m certainly happy that you guys made it and I hope that your success continues for another 20 years.
I think it’s OK to blow your own horn a bit on the 20th anniversary. And it’s a perfect time to look back and analyze what worked and what didn’t. But definitely, a good time to toot your own horn. Very well deserved. 
I loved reading this because it reminds me of Peter Drucker’s “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”.
The fact that TPM has focused on establishing a common interest with all its stakeholders is what has made it possible for it to thrive; its membership-driven strategy is only its latest iteration as a publisher. It will continue to evolve and adapt as times and circumstances change. But its collaboration with the TPM Union, its continued focus on readers and great journalism will make sure everyone is rowing in the same direction, regardless of the weather.
Happy 20th everyone!
I’ve been a regular reader since about '03. I resisted becoming a member for a number of years, but finally joined up three years ago. I have not regretted it, even though my ad blockers had long kept the reading experience perfectly pleasant. The journalism alone is worth it, and the community of writers and readers is the sharpest around, notwithstanding the regular copy editing fails. (Really, they’re mostly just charming at this point.) Keep it up, keep safe, and here’s to a fantastic 2021.
I wish most news outlets would adopt a micropayments system. I subscribe to TPM and four other publications, but several times a month I run into paywalls elsewhere, at the LA Times, Boston Globe, NY Magazine, Gannett and Advance newspapers, etc., etc.
I don’t want 30 or 40 subscriptions! But I’d happily pay 50 cents or whatever per article at those other publications when there’s something I want to read – if there was a quick and easy way to do so.
I’ve read a lot of Drucker, so probably not a coincidence! 
It’s a very good discussion. And I agree with you. I frequently bump into a paywall when I need to read a specific article. I’d happily pay more than 50 cents. But there’s no reason for me to subscribe since I’m not and won’t become a regular reader. I think the challenges are a) Every pub really wants to get you for the full subscription, for obvious reasons. The other thing is that most publications, or at least the smart ones, are very leery of locking themselves into someone else’s system. Those aren’t deal breakers. But I think those are the reasons we haven’t seen it yet. Possibly a better way would be to have a very light payment system (that doesn’t involve any lock in) and then you could do one off by maybe apple payments or paypal or whatever. there too though there are some lock in issues.
I found TPM via a shout-out from Bill Moyers. Somewhere about 2013, during one of his shows, he stated that TPM was always a first-read and must-read daily.
I’m with you on this. Nearly every day I spot one silly error or another here on TPM that a dedicated copy editor should be able to rectify. It’s especially infuriating given the otherwise fantastic journalistic work done here. Reading great articles with poor copy editing is like eating a filet mignon with plastic utensils.
True, but I can say the same of every news source I read on a daily basis – and many of them are far more egregious.
American culture, as a whole, has been moving away from the written word as an art form, for quite some time.
I must constantly temper my OCD with a realization that the voracious and ever-accelerating demands of “the market” for instant delivery, of everything from consumer electronics to news content, is here to stay.
(Host to Guest: “In the 30 seconds we have left, can you explain why discussion of complex topics has become so superficial?”)
Disappointing to a grammar-and-style extremist like me, but manageable, and hardly an indictment of TPM.
(The cathartic release from regularly excreting sardonic droppings in the comment section more than compensates.)
While I do admire a lot of the journalism, I’m one of the folks who are here primarily for the community found in the comments section, and as an IT guy by trade the holes and unfixed bugs (some of which were reported literally years ago) drive me nuts. I’ve suggested in the past that Josh try some “targeted financing”. this could encompass specific areas of journalistic research (e.g. elections, background on specific congress people who need to be exposed to the light, etc) but in my case I’d gladly pay a lot more for a dedicate programmer to do a fix-up pass on the commenting system.
I saw an piece a while ago asking folks to comment on some possible areas of research, so why not a “call for ideas”, followed by a call for funding for the winning entries, with the understanding that we need to hit a set funding mark to get the work done…
Congrats on being ahead of the trend away from advertising and toward direct reader revenue. I’m glad you guys saw it coming and executed well.
What makes me sad is that the pivot-to-subscription model is probably only going to work for early-adopters like TPM. I for one have subscription fatigue and am pretty well not open to giving anyone else monthly access to my bank account. Put another way, I don’t believe infinite substacks are the future of journalism.
So for the sake of journalism I hope that some form of ad-supported publishing becomes once again viable down the road.
This is an admirably clear outline of TPM’s history as a business. Often people look only at products and miss the underlying story of how they came to be, to expand, to improve, and the lives engaged in that work. This, in particular, is a really good story about a really good product, TPM. As I look back the various strategic shifts outlined here come more into focus with the sometimes hard to explain behavior or messaging of the site itself. Clearly there was more intention behind certain acts, like membership, that the messaging carried. I was a late adopted to membership because I did not understand what TPM was doing or why. What I can now see as a carefully thought through action appeared like a sudden shift for somewhat foggy reasons.
I do like the thread of ‘reader focus’ through out the strategic evolution. As an early thought leader and practitioner of customer focus, particularly as facilitated by tech innovation and the Web, I appreciate the thinking and the practice. It would be interesting to know a bit more about how TPM practices that–is it informal messaging from readers, is it structured survey mechanisms, is it focus groups, is it simply initiative testing and result evaluation? That, I think, is another dimension of the TPM story that is worth telling.
“I pay for only 3 firewalls right now: NYT, WaPo, and TPM”
I subscribe those same three plus the Atlantic. While NYT and WP are doing fine, I no longer subscribe to our regional paper, Boston Globe which I was literally weaned on, nor do I subscribe to any NH papers where I now live or even local rags. So I have a deep and abiding concern for local and regional journalism beyond NYT and WP.
I think I was among the first 500 subscribers here. Started following TPM in 2006 or 7 for its coverage of the sordid Justice Dept. fandango under Bush and Gonzales.
Thanks so much for publishing a primer on the journalism business. I was a starry-eyed idealist working for a mid-sized daily when the bottom began to fall out of the newspaper business, effectively taking me with it in 2007. I and several of my former colleagues have been trying to figure out how to build a serious, economically sustainable news organization out here in the northern Indiana desert, and I’m thinking the TPM model would be a great one to follow. Congratulations on the big anniversary! Here’s to many, many more!
I too miss the ‘old’ Boston Globe, and look to the Post, Times, and TPM for my daily paywall reading. I think the Globe decided it had to become something else to survive at all. No more thick papers picked up late Saturday night and filled with local ads. I think it’s still experimenting with what it wants to be and what it can be. I see it now as a regional paper focused on the ‘metro’ area and, of course, sports. Diminished, but I tell myself batter than nothing - and it does have occasionally a worthwhile in-depth series.
Josh. THANK you for resisting the ‘video’ strategy!
