TPM Steakhouse

I used to beg Josh to do this years ago. I am glad they are finally implementing it. I think all serious sites should do this. I intend to join, even though I rarely comment at TPM anymore at all. I like their stuff and they are mostly pretty good at reporting. It is their answer to moderating their site.

I don't quite get how he's going to keep the trolls out if this is an open invitation, as it appears to be.  How will this premium membership work?

Well I don't know, this has been tried before. There's this site called, ah, lets see if I can remember, oh yeah, Talking Points Memo. It had an extremely active section with reader's blogs and lively discussion called the "cafe." The owner of that site made it very clear that his discussion section was losing money and was way to hard to moderate. If that dude, Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo, couldn't make money with his "cafe" and had to shut it down how is this guy at TPM going to make it work? Perhaps this guy at TPM has a different business model then the dude at Talking Points Memo. Or maybe this guy at TPM has a greater commitment to his readers than that other guy at Talking Points Memo.

One way he may limit the trolls is by creating a waiting period (such as 7 days) before comments are allowed.  This would limit someone who stumbles by the site to just log on and throw up a flame or spam. It would explain why they signing up on the 1st but won't be active until the 15th.

Interesting.  I am curious about who from the old Cafe will be approved for membership and who will be invited to post.  I miss the original Cafe's variety and depth.  I hope Josh brings that back.  It would be nice if he included reader blogs even if they are moderated.  Every news organization needs its Letters to the Editor.

If memory serves, last time we interacted with Josh, we got the other end of the Angus. 

...

TPM is on its way to becoming the CNN of the web.  When CNN started out, no one was really doing what they did.  Their coverage of the Gulf War still stands out.  However, over time CNN has been dying a slow death in the relentless pursuit of style over substance.  Ever more technological gimmicks, gimmicky bit pieces that don't really matter, etc.  It's been unwatchable for quite some time.

TPM started out organically on the web back at a time when you had to look at people like Drudge to find rivals.  Except TPM went beyond simply being a political web tabloid.  They actually did some original reporting.  And they were doing it precisely at a time when traditional outfits, like the NYT, were suffering a series of embarrassments (I'm lookin' at you, Judy Miller).  As Josh points out, TPM even won a prestigious award for that.  It helped bring Yglesias, Kurtz, Sargent and others to the fore.  Genghis cut his teeth so good there, he gnashed himself out a book deal.

Josh should have been proud of that.  Maybe he is, but he still shut it down.  Since then, TPM keeps going more and more into the realm of horse race gossip.  Obivously there's a big demand for that, but does that happen at the expense of real reporting with value beyond mere entertainment?  When was the last time they broke a story that really mattered?  I know that it isn't easy, but it's hard to see that there's even any focus on serious stories, of which there are plenty.  Yes, <insert name here>-(R) is an assclown.  We know this.  Where's the substance?

Maybe this new venture will prove worthwhile, but right now it looks like another four years of Obama and TPM will probably have completely devolved into a political gossip-based iPhone app.  A slightly left of center Politico with a touch screen interface.

the most interested, engaged and knowledgable audience anywhere

First off, he misspelled knowledgeable, so I don't what that says about his assessment about his audience.

And everytime I have gone to the site, and looked at the comments to an article, it has been just the same one liners of ideological reductionism (which has its place on any political blog).  I've never seen the nuanced arguments that one sees here on a regular basis. 

I'll take dagblog's audience over TPM's anyday.

Josh doesn't get around much does he ? He really needs to get out more, meat other people, go to a play or something.

Get enlightened.

Eliot said it this way:

"I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
 I do not think they will sing to me."

"TPM has the most interested, engaged and knowledgable audience anywhere on the web."

Well, if that's true, it's only because Josh couldn't frustrate some of the good ones until they went away, and because we ARE talking about the Internet here.... I know he had a lot going on, and it's hard to do the cat-herding involved in having a left-leaning web site, especially one that requires as much technology as that one did. He's done some amazing things, but I haven't been all that crazy about TPM for awhile. Curious about his real reasons for doing this.

A better model for a special-membership site would be to let people "earn" points for commenting, moderating, providing content, etc.....
 

BTW thanks for nuthin', you guys--now I am SO craving a great big T-Bone grilled up medium-rare and dripping juice. Seriously.

No jokes, please.

I think I found TPM Cafe in the spring of 2009, long after the elections, so I missed all the hoopla (but heard about it plenty).  I loved the Cafe patrons and was saddened to see the Cafe closed, but when we all got a second chance here at dag I found I liked it here even better.

I doubt I would pay to comment on TPM, and I'm still angry that he threw out all of our posts and comments without so much as a "Heave HO, there you go", but I'll ever be grateful for the chance to post there.  I was brand new to political blogging and it was the perfect place to learn how to write pieces honestly and accurately.  (Because. . .or else!) 

So I have mixed feelings about TPM, but will probably not get involved there.  I have to say, I'm not crazy about Josh Marshall and that sort of thing is important to me.

Gee, now I'm getting nostalgic thinkin' about the ol' times at the Cafe.

One way I think it was different is that all of us 'regulars' really valued and appreciated it. 

And of course, since it's election time again, I guess it's to be expected that we seem to be immersed in political blogs and discussions, but it did make me remember, as some  have pointed out, there was great diversity.  Some truly wonderful, interesting and even poignant posts. 

I remember too that there was 'talk' at one point about how it was in a sense like a real cafe where you could meet and greet, talk with your friends - interact with such a variety of people. Camaraderie, if you will.  There was even an after hours open thread sometimes for late night musings and tales.

There were real get togethers - one was in NY.  Virtual friends actually met, there was even an engagement. 

I'm not sure that, at least for me, dag has the same type of environment/feeling. much less personal and not much silly, fun banter back and forth. 

But, like Ramona, I will always be grateful for the opportunity - and sure will always remember it fondly.  It was an enriching experience.

I wrote this earlier today about some of my feelings about the TPM experience. I feel gratitude to Josh for the site that brought together an experience with exceptional thinkers but the destruction of the community there and its history was not appreciated. Today questions linger without answers.

Did Josh cleaned house because of the money or because he did not agree with what was being said. Our criticism, to the point of almost if not calling “The Americans Abroad” blogers delusional (Neocons are you know) may have been a thorn in his side.  I read an interview on the web with him long ago and far far away that indicated that people believed he agreed with the blogers on his site and he indicated he did not. It could have been the Americans Abroad crowd but I think it was us.

The unease with Josh is that he stopped giving his insights that attracted many to the site. Remember he said it was unfair to those he corresponded to with his emails to post on the site himself. Maybe someone can remember the exact way it was posted. Are the email contacts more valued than the traffic such insights could bring?  Am I off track here?

Some may remember the Whiskey Bar days with Billmon, and Kevin Drum's old site. The Whiskey Bar offered great commentary, and I forget when it closed down, but TPM definitely helped fill that space and expanded it.

Like others, I found my identity as a writer by blogging and commenting at TPM. And so, like others, I'm grateful to Josh for providing the site at a time when no one else was doing anything like it. 

We really needed a site like TPM: remember the time between Sept. 11 and the Iraq invasion in 2003, when a person couldn't provide a decent piece of political analysis without being practically called a traitor? The TPM community really helped me figure out what I believed and how to express myself to the few people who were willing to listen. By promoting those types of conversations at a high-profile level, Josh performed an amazing public service. And I think the site's work on the AG scandal was a major nail in the coffin for the Bush/Cheney administration. Huge.

At the same time, Josh had some blind spots. He would have done himself a favor by bringing his most prolific and insightful bloggers into the fold, instead of trying to ignore it when they ran rings around his guests. And it was frustrating when guest bloggers didn't check back in to interact with the community. Dag does a much better job on this. Josh was also pretty stuck on his center-left viewpoint. He had a hard time with perspectives that veered hard in one direction or the other. He sometimes seemed strangely threatened by alternative viewpoints, especially if they were well-presented.

More important, I think Josh was overwhelmed and frustrated by daily spam attacks and constant tech changes. He seemed vulnerable to technology vendors offering the next big thing, which was supposed to make sign-in easy and keep spam out. Of course, the next big thing never was quite as great as hoped. And, I remember a lot of pretty mean-spirited criticism from the bloggers in the vein of "it's so easy to run a web site," which it isn't. To be fair, he didn't deserve that.

Another big problem, especially as the site got larger, was anonymity. Many posters wanted it, and I don't think Josh ever fully understood why it was so darn important to them. (I always wondered if perhaps he was pressured by the authorities to be able to provide names and identifying information if necessary.)

Ultimately, Josh made the same mistake that parties often make--he failed to fully engage with his most passionate supporters, and it ended up affecting how his less passionate supporters experienced the site. (I still believe that this is the single reason the Democratic party did so poorly in the 2010 elections--dampening the enthusiasm of the people who would be willing to work hard and sing your praises to the masses is almost never a successful strategy.)  I think that once Josh closed down the Cafe, the site got a lot less personal and it lost some of its intellectual fire, which showed all over the site. I found it kind of dull, and the comments were short and predictable in a way that they weren't when the Cafe was in operation. Many of us tried to convince Josh that keeping the Cafe in some form was important to the well-being of the whole, but he just didn't seem that interested.

So it goes. I've started going back to TPM more often lately, for election information, but I probably won't join TPM Prime--not because I'm not interested, but because I'm doing other things. I really can't even afford the time to hang out at Dag these days. If TPM Prime turns out to be fantastic, I might reconsider but I'm not interested in paying to get in on the ground floor, as it were.

I think if Josh really wants TPM Prime to succeed, he needs to offer some scholarships, rather than make his best and brightest pay for the privilege of saying what they can say for free elsewhere. And he'd need to demand that his elite commenters really engage with the less well-known or anonymous commenters so that everybody feels like they're on equal footing. But I bet it won't work that way--my guess is that he'll end up with people paying for the privilege of saying dumb stuff in response to elite writers who will zoom in, drop a post, and not check back until it's time for their next word-dump....

Now that I think of it, his best shot would be to ask Dag to run the thing. 

Like many of you, I began my "blogging career" at TPM. I became absolutely obsessed with politics there, and thanks to most of you who were there at the time, I learned a LOT about constructing a rational argument, defending it, and learning from opposing points of view. It is a time I will never forget.

I also remember how helpful Josh was at shifting our blogs over here.

One thing I'm remembering (haven't seen it mentioned, so I apologize if I'm duplicating) is that the demise of the TPM reader blogs came at the time when Chris was accused of blowing up someone's office? I remember the FBI becoming involved, and although I don't remember Josh saying it, I always thought his attorneys must have come unglued and encouraged him strongly to not be hosting the reader blogs any more for liability reasons.

Steakhouse prices -- yikes!

The Cafe was great. A person could sit there all day and nurse a cup of coffee and not feel like they were taking up any important space. A $50 a year subscription for the Prime is sooo beyond my new and improved budget it is a foregone conclusion that I will not be signing up for the service. Especially since there is no evidence that reader blogs will be a feature. I mean, really....if I can't bless everyone with my awesome opinions of everything under the sun, what's the point?

So there's going to be in-depth articles at TPMPrime? Well, whoopie doo. There's in-depth articles all over the web for free. I can't see that it's offering anything special except for the promise of no spam. Maybe my view on it will change in time, but for now, I'm passing.

Remember when Josh decided to randomly put links to the day's most-read Cafe blogs on the front page? And on, like, the third day, which also happened to coincide with a rollout to eleventy-jillion new readers, the most-read Cafe post was an expletive-laden personal invective (which somehow I'm remembering was written by you, Quinn, but I could be wrong about that.)

End of links to Cafe from front page.

Poor Josh--in some ways it's a miracle he kept us around as long as he did!

DID Josh ask one or all of you guys to run it? Is that why you know about the structure??????

Inquiring minds, and all that.

If this is a repeat, sorry.  More from Josh on TPM Prime.

I wonder if I can get Iron Bolt Bruce to pay the $100 he so clearly owes me by telling him it's a subscription to DagPrime?

I think it is worthwhile to remember that the unfolding of TPM, TPMCafe and the reader blogs were part of the unfolding of the internet as a significant facet of social interaction for people.  New social norms and understandings had to be developed, including notions of etiquette, on which there are still debates today. 

How many words in the blogosphere were used in debate over what exactly constituted a troll, and when is it appropriate to call someone a troll?

TPMCafe and the reader blogs showed that when you toss a large number of people together under the general topic of politics, there is going to be a lot of diversity in regards to what everyone is seeking from the site. 

One of the key groups that kept clashing were those who sought just plain ole political analysis and opinion and those who saw the site as place to develop a social community.

It seems another clash is over what type of "cafe" is desired.  Josh appears to have desired the quiet salon (that name was already taken I guess) - where an "expert" pontificates and the others seated around the table would offer short responses such as "you make an interesting point about the dynamics of x" or "your conclusion reminds me of a similar one made by y last year."  The reader blogs turned out to be a bustling coffeehouse where people blustered and pontificated and joked and got very passionate about the issues, and the conversation could as easily end up becoming about Monty Python as it could on nuclear proliferation, all admist of the "hey there, how ya doing?" banter between people who knew each other only through the site.

TPMPrime, by using a paywall, seems to be a way for Josh (and others doing the same thing) to control the environment not available to someone who opens up a site to who ever wants to sign up and start commenting.  But this is true out there beyond the virtual world, too.  The crowd that shows up to a free concert in the park is going to be different than the crowd that hands over cash for the experience.  Just how many people want that quiet salon experience to the extent they are willing to pay for it is questionable.  But I I think there people who are attracted to being part of an exclusive club, which this will appeal to.  Josh seems to get that, hence:

During that period [before the launch], we’ll only be selling annual memberships. Those folks who sign up then will all become permanent ‘Launch Members’ of TPMPrime and you’ll be able say, in the words of Mitt Romney, ‘We Built That!’ No, there won’t be any special privileges associated with being a Launch Member. But we want to affix that title as a permanent thank you for being there at the beginning to get this new enterprise off the ground.

Which makes for an intriguing facet of the unfolding of the blogosphere's social landscape.

TPM Prime started signing up members today. I've been waiting for Josh to tell us what exactly it includes, but there's been nothing beyond his original cryptic post. He's pitching the whole thing more like a more like a fundraiser than a service. Odd.

Just ran across:

Funny to Think: Back in 2005, Warren was launch contributor for TPMCafe; ran her own group blog, Warren Reports, on debt/middle class issues

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) September 6, 2012

He is expanding his description as he gets feedback and questions--that's the way he's always done it in my experience--here's the newest version, with more details about sections, published @ 6:11 pm:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2012/10/will_you_join_us.php

Just ran across some real interesting market data for "stand alone political blogs" for Sept 2007- Sept 2008, if you place it in context of how Josh Marshall rolled out the software in Feb 2008 that got many of you blogging on the primaries and overtaking the old TPMCafe.

He ended up only middling on the size of audience, with 10 bigger than him (Huffington Post, Politico, Drudge Report, Real Clear Politics, Free Republic, Capitol Advantage, Daily Kos, Town Hall, Newsbusters, Worldnet,) but he absolutely won the "explosive growth" number contest @ 1,321% in one year.

Of course, you can't put that all on TPMCafe and Reader Blogs, as it's judging the whole site, and it's counting growth in unique visitors, not constant repeat visitors like Reader Blogs would be furnishing.  But something he did then worked magnificently. I might bet on polling info.

Donal Prime

Donal blog, September 30, 2012

After quite a few years of giving it away for free – it being content – internet sites are now demanding the financial security of marriage subscription fees. After years of watching you play the field, more and more sites want you to settle down and tie the knot with the mainstream media.

[....]

Last week Josh Marshall announced that Talking Points Memo was looking for eligible partners. Probably 80% of my online acquaintances derive from my years of posting and commenting at the TPM Cafe’.

[....]

So to defray costs I am announcing Donal Prime. Employees of the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Baltimore Sun and Talking Points Memo are encouraged to contribute to the running of this blog. The rest of you can keep reading for free.

I found that via DagBlog's contributor's masthead, BTW:

Donal has moved on from dagblog, and one day they'll take his name off the masthead. He is now posting on a wordpress blog called simply, Donal.

Since I can't manage to log in there except under my meatspace identity, which I refuse to do, I hope this isn't out of line, but I want to take the the opportunity to say that I really really miss Donal's occasional comments on other authors' posts here and wish that things would work out where he felt comfortable participating here like any other commenter. The IronboltBruce threads just aren't the same without him, for one example.

The more I think about it, the madder I am that he didn't call it TPMFlair.

Josh Marshall talking about TPM Prime in more detail, and giving some of his thoughts on the reason for its development, in an interview with Nieman Journalism Lab:

Talking Points Memo launches membership-only program, wades into longform

Josh Marshall: “What I noticed is that we didn’t have really strong internal financial incentives focused on our core readers.”

By Adrienne LaFrance, Nieman Journalism Lab, Oct. 2, 2012, 1:15 p.m.

This is what I have seen in the past, too--he is much better, more transparent, on meta issues, when he has an interlocutor on it that he considers a peer. I used to go search for interviews with him on Google News when there was an information drought about something going on at the site, and I would sometimes find an answer in an interview he was giving to trade media. Then I'd go back to the Cafe and post a link, and people would respond like "why isn't Josh telling us this?"