This is Super Important
Today, the day we launch our big request for the year, the TPM journalism fund annual Drive. I just called him our “big demand”. But I want to be clear that if you are a member, you should not feel any obligation. You have done your part to support our work. More than 35,000 of you make TPM possible. But TPM Journalism Fund plays an essential role in maintaining Vital TPM, prepared for the unexpected and able to expand our ability to respect the public crisis of the moment. We really need your support. What we do today at TPM, responding as we are in the public crisis of the second Trump presidency would not be possible without it. If you’ve heard enough and can contribute to any amount, please click here.
Again, this year, we have a very, very ambitious goal: the collection of $ 500,000 for the TPM Journalism Fund. (We are already going this morning, but the first hours and the days are the simplest part, so you must really constitute a steam head.) What does that do? This is what allows us as a very small organization – only seven journalists and three publishers, without incorporating me – to rely on investigative reports, which never really pays. This is what allowed us to add two new positions this spring: a new publisher position (Allegra Kirkland) and a new journalist position (Layla A. Jones).
There are other things that are more complicated to quantify. I have mentioned several times at the complicated, sometimes frightening transition of TPM, but ultimately successful of a business model mainly based on advertisements with a subscription. To do this work, Joe Ragazzo (currently on parental leave) and I have implemented all kinds of what I assume that you would call the funding of the crisis to make things work. Nothing too crazy and certainly not legally uncertain, be careful. But things you do because you absolutely have to do it. Due to the journalism fund, we have been able to spend most of these small plans in recent years.
TPM has always been managed as a very, very small conservative operation. We do not like to take risks, certainly not with our colleagues. We do a lot of planning. It is not an accident that we have never dismissed anyone in 25 years. However, when you manage something as big as changing the basic business model of an organization on the fly, you bind a lot with band and rope and simply push things and determine the new plans as you go. So, when I say to relax which mainly means things like the construction of cash reserves, paying things in advance so that the organization as a whole strengthens resilience rather than simply surviving. Simply survival in this time of journalism is a big problem. But the strengthening of capacity and resilience is more than simply Joe and I to sleep more easily. It is enough for the life of the whole organization.
It is therefore all the things that the TPM journalism fund makes possible: investigation reporting, expansion, stability. If you play, we would be so grateful. You can click here, and any amount goes very far.
Thank you for all of us.
