Recommended: ‘Growing Pains for Talking Points Memo’
I learned a lot from POLITICO correspondent Michael Calderone’s May 2, 2009, post about New York-based blogging journalist and businessman Joshua Micah Marshall’s highly regarded Talking Points Memo, which I read often. See “Growing pains for Talking Points Memo.”
According to Calderone, Marshall used journalistic raw material provided by the Bush Administration, beginning in 2000, to turn “Talking Points Memo into an online news force with 11 full-time employees and a major, mainstream journalism award under its belt.” Writes Calderone:
Now comes the hard part. With his bete noir back in Texas, Marshall will have to come up with new targets for his aggressive brand of journalism. More challenging still, he'll need to shepherd Talking Points Memo through the sort of morale problems and growing pains that are familiar to anyone who's lived through the adolescence of an Internet start-up.
Calderone said, “In conversations with POLITICO, current and former TPM staffers have spoken of a grueling pace, constant pressures for content, and strict enforcement from the site's managing editor, a former TPM commenter and lawyer based in Missouri. The work environment has been described as a "boy's club," and indeed, several women have left TPM after working there for just a few months.”
With the kind of competition TPM is up against, I can’t blame Marshall for get the most out of his staff. He has to do it to keep the business going and the money to pay salaries and other expenses coming in. According to Calderone, “Most of TPM's reporter-bloggers make between $24,000 and $40,000, according to sources, and those who survive at TPM clearly earn their keep.”
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