I was perusing the front page at Talking Points Memo this morning and noted that it’s almost 100 percent dedicated to two subjects: Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida and the hold on the Johnson & Johnson vaccine due to concerns about blood clots in a very tiny percentage of women. These are two subjects I haven’t discussed and probably would never discuss.
The issue with Gaetz is that he’s a backbencher in the House of Representatives–one of 435 members–who has very little power or importance. I may have noted his more odious behaviors a few times on this blog, but probably as part of my coverage of a broader story. His media profile is higher than his congressional one, but it still doesn’t amount to much. If a member of the House or Senate leadership, or an important committee chairman or ranking member, were facing possible felony changes for sex trafficking, I’d find it newsworthy for its potential to shake up the power structure in Washington. If a possible presidential candidate were caught up in a similar scandal, I’d cover it because of its obvious impact on the future of the country. But Matt Gaetz could voluntarily retire tomorrow and it’d have about the same impact as him being convicted of taking an underage girl across state lines for sexual purposes.
I do understand that this is a bad story for the Republican Party and that’s there’s some mileage to be made by sticking it in Republicans’ faces. But that isn’t my mission in life or for this blog. I’d consider it an unwelcome imposition on my readers if I turned this place into a breathless 24/7 report on the latest in Gaetz’s legal woes. Maybe the readers of Talking Points Memo feel differently, but I doubt it.
The J&J vaccine story is certainly a worthy topic. It’s an important story from several angles, including the underlying science, the wisdom of the Biden administration’s response, its possible impact on the speed with which we can control COVID-19, and its potential for ramping up or tamping down the publics’ willingness to take vaccines in general.
It’s not that the story is being closely followed by TPM that surprises me but that it’s making up about 50 percent of the site’s content. There’s just not that much to say. There’s a precautionary hold on the vaccine. The decision is under review. A decision will be made that balances risks, and that decision will be made by people with more expertise than I possess or would ever claim to possess. Again, people might want to know the latest status of the story, but there isn’t a lot that merits editorial comment from non-epidemiologists.
Maybe TPM has its finger on the pulse of the country and knows exactly what it’s doing to draw eyeballs and win subscriptions. It’s far better at both of those tasks than I’ll ever be. And maybe that’s a problem I should think about. Should I be choosing my topics with more of a focus on traffic and subscriptions?
I’d rather focus on what I do best, and that’s never been seizing on the hottest story and beating it to death.
I wholly concur and tend to write about things that I think are important, but not necessarily the headline of the day – which you can always read about elsewhere. I will be interested to see what your readers think.
As someone who gets most of his political commentary through RSS feeds of TPM, WaMo, and (now) Progress Pond, I feel compelled to share a little of my experience. I seem to like a balance of the broad and the in depth. I enjoy my dose of Gaetz schadenfreude at TPM, but I don’t go looking for more of that elsewhere…reading time is limited. I enjoy the breadth of commentary topics that Martin and Nancy bring, but I find myself skimming/skipping 80% of the WaMo material because the articles are longer than I usually care to tackle. Still, I like knowing it’s there in case I choose to dive deeper. I’d say keep doing what you find interesting…you guys are smart and good writers; sharing what you find interesting is interesting to me, and the length of your pieces seems to suit my attention span sweet spot. That may not be good advice for commercial success (Josh has forged an admirable subscription base). But I found that once I had some exposure to your work, I wanted more of it.
“And maybe that’s a problem I should think about. Should I be choosing my topics with more of a focus on traffic and subscriptions?”
Maybe? Probably not? Whatever you do, for god’s sake don’t go the Raw Story route because that’s all they think about there—traffic and subscriptions—and as a result the writing is total pandering garbage.
I think you (and Nancy) should be writing for the Washington Post, the Atlantic, the New Yorker, and any number of large publications.
Well, I’ve been coming to this place for a long time. And I’ve also been a member at TPM for a long time, though not as long as here. In the early days of bloggerdom I bounced around dozens of different places in a day, never spending much time on any single one. Everyone was just blasting out their particular takes on dozens of different topics, and it was hard to really digest much that added to my understanding, it mainly just fed my need at the time for a liberal point of view on current events. Eventually, my daily route was pared to a handful of blogs, and now it’s down to three or four, with this site being the main one for at least the last 10 years. And the reason for that was really twofold. On your original site, the community was very diverse in their points of view, and often challenged the narratives here, which really helped me work through issues in a deeper sort of way than I would have been able to do just by a sheer volume of reading on the topics at multiple blogs and sites. The comment threads were often rich with information and perspectives that I might never have considered if I hadn’t taken the time to go through them. It became a sort of oasis in that regard. Secondly, your writing was never simply a regurgitation of conventional wisdom, repackaged and repurposed with your particular spin on the details, which seemed to characterize so many political blogs. The writing here didn’t just tell the the “what” of things. It also told me the “why”, and always provided a very unique and detailed substantiation for the topic you were addressing. If it was necessary to understand a tangential topic first in order to fully appreciate what you were saying, a link or reference to it was almost always provided, so that I could go there and educate myself to more fully appreciate your deeper analysis. That was something, in my experience, that was very rare on blogs, and much appreciated by me.
I go to TPM several times a day and will often find an article or two that appear interesting, and that I will read. Rarely, however, are they the ones rehashing the news headlines of a story. The ones that interest me the most are the ones analyzing the back story and the context of an issue of importance. I find some stories there informative, though I rarely will go back and reread something looking for detail that I missed or depth I overlooked, which I often do with articles on this site. Of course, if I want the latest salacious gossip on Gaetz, I can go to HuffPo or some other politi-tainment site for that.
I would hate to see you change your course on how you write here, or to repurpose things in a way that elevates eyeballs and subscriptions above the depth and quality of the content, though I fully appreciate that staying the course might not be the most economically beneficial route to go. I mooched off this site for a very long time, and I wouldn’t blame you for a nanosecond if you felt compelled to find a greener pasture using a different tack. What you, and now Nancy, produce here is kind of rare for a blog, which is what makes it pretty special. Not sure exactly where a person would go to get something comparable.
Maybe it’s just due to some hard-earned experiences I’ve had as a working adult, but there is a lot to be said for sticking to your areas of expertise. You and Nancy both bring something to the table that is unique, and I trust that each of you knows what you’re talking about when I read your latest posts. There’s something to be said for not chasing the latest headlines. Then again, you know what your expenses and subscription income look like better than I would. Hopefully you can come up with a way of boosting your readership/subscription base. I really hope you stick to what you do best.
I’ve been reading TPM almost everyday for 15+ years and now subscribe as it delivers top-notch (admittedley left-leaning) political journalism with the added bonus of Josh Marshall’s insightful editorial posts. I’ve been reading your takes almost everyday for 15+ years and now subscribe because you deliver political punditry and editorial commentary that’s entirely unique and absolutely second to none. Like some other commenters note, I’d love to see your takes picked up at the W. Post or elsewhere, but for selfish reasons alone I beg you to never stop writing what, and the way you do. Bottom line? Keep doing what you do because, as the Carly Simon Bond song says, nobody does it better.
Interesting commentary.
I have been a loyal reader (and now subscriber) to Talking Points Memo for the last 2 decades. I enjoy the focus on certain stories that I don’t get elsewhere. Although, at this moment, it may be Gaetz and J&J heavy on the front page, I don’t think that fairly represents the topics covered over a period of a week or month. TPM covers scandals, for sure, but also voting rights, theories of electoral politics, and had a spectacular series by Josh Kovensky on Ukraine as examples.
I came to this site because you and Nancy LeTourneau are interesting writers who focus on other topics of interest. In fact, I have about 10 websites that I read routinely, including the Times and WaPo, to get my news and information. I find the sites, viewpoints, and information complementary.
Personally, I find WaMo boring now and will not likely be supporting them much longer. That is the nature of this new media landscape: well-defined niches or niches in development that will attract enough business to stay afloat or will not. The best parallel I can draw is what’s happening in popular music: business fragmentation with a few standouts who get most of the attention but with many mid-level folks who can do just fine with a fanbase of ten or twenty thousand people.
I go to TPM, Daily Kos, and here daily. When I go to TPM I usually only read the stuff Josh Marshall writes personally because he provides analysis similar to yours- explanations of the undercurrents of important political issues, though I’d say your analysis is significantly superior. I want to read about significant events from a realistic left/progressive perspective. You cover that exceptionally well. I’ve wondered why you, and this place, don’t have a higher profile because your work is so obviously high quality. Maybe you need a well thought out twitter campaign or something? I also think you would bring a lot to publications like The Atlantic or WP, if that is at all a possibility.
Hmmm… do you have a retrousse nose? 😉
When I go to a restaurant, sometimes I am in the mood for a cocktail… tonight it will be the wine.