Today’s the day we kick off our big ask for the year, the TPM Journalism Fund annual drive. I just called it our “big ask”. But I want to be clear that if you’re a member, you shouldn’t feel any obligation. You’ve done your part to support our work. More than 35,000 of you make TPM possible. But the TPM Journalism Fund plays a critical role in keeping TPM vital, prepared for the unexpected and able to expand our capacity to meet the public crisis of the moment. We truly need your support. What we’re doing today at TPM, responding as we are to public crisis of the second Trump Presidency would not be possible without it. If you’ve heard enough and are able to contribute in any amount, please click right here.
Again, this year we have a very, very ambitious goal: raising $500,000 for the TPM Journalism Fund. (We’re already off to a strong start this morning but the first hours and days are the easiest part so you need to really build up a head of steam.) What does that accomplish? It’s what allows us as a very small organization — a mere seven reporters and three editors, not including me — to lean into investigative reporting, which never really pays for itself. It’s what allowed us to add two new positions this spring: a new editor position (Allegra Kirkland) and a new reporter position (Layla A. Jones).
There are other things that are more complicated to quantify. I’ve mentioned many times TPM’s complicated, sometimes scary but ultimately successful transition from a primarily ad-based to a primarily subscription-based business model. To make that work, Joe Ragazzo (currently on parental leave) and I put in place all sorts of what I guess you’d call crisis financing to make things work. Nothing too crazy and certainly not legally iffy, mind you. But stuff you do because you absolutely have to. Because of the Journalism Fund we’ve been able to spend the last few years unwinding most of those little plans.
TPM has always been run as a very, very small-c conservative operation. We don’t like to take chances, certainly not with our colleagues. We do a lot of planning. It’s no accident that we’ve never laid anyone off in 25 years. Still, when you’re managing something as big as changing an organization’s core business model on the fly, you bind a lot of things together with tape and string and just push things through and figure out new plans as you go. So when I say unwinding that mostly means things like building up cash reserves, paying for things in advance so that the organization as a whole is building up resilience rather than simply surviving. Simply surviving in this journalism era is a big deal. But building in capacity and resilience does more than simply allow Joe and I to sleep easier. It suffuses the life of the whole organization.
So those are all the things the TPM Journalism Fund makes possible: investigative reporting, expansion, stability. If you’re game, we would be so appreciative. You can click right here, and any amount goes a long way.
Thank you from all of us.
