LA Times: Blogs can top the presses (TPM and the USA story)

[ourbluenation]

Give it up for Josh and the Talking Points Memo staff.

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Blogs can top the presses
Talking Points Memo drove the U.S. attorneys story, proof that Web writers with input from devoted readers can reshape journalism.
By Terry McDermott, Times Staff Writer
8:51 PM PDT, March 16, 2007

New York

In a third-floor Flower District walkup with bare wooden floors, plain white walls and an excitable toy poodle named Simon, six guys dressed mainly in T-shirts and jeans sit all day in front of computer screens at desks arranged around the oblong room's perimeter, pecking away at their keyboards and, bit by bit, at the media establishment.

The world headquarters of TPM Media is pretty much like any small newsroom, anywhere, except for the shirts. And the dog. And the quiet. Most newsrooms are notably noisy places, full of shrill phones and quacking reporters. Here there is mainly quiet, except for the clacking keyboards.

It's 20 or so blocks up town to the heart of the media establishment, the midtown towers that house the big newspaper, magazine and book publishers. And yet it was here in a neighborhood of bodegas and floral wholesalers that, over the last two months, one of the biggest news stories in the country — the Bush administration's firing of a group of U.S. attorneys — was pieced together by the reporters of the blog Talking Points Memo.

more here...

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-blogs17mar17,0,2952916.story?coll=la-home-headlines

[ourbluenation]

1. here's another snippet...

In December of last year, Josh Marshall, who owns and runs TPM , posted a short item linking to a news report in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette about the firing of the U.S. attorney for that state. Marshall later followed up, adding that several U.S. attorneys were apparently being replaced and asked his 100,000 or so daily readers to write in if they knew anything about U.S. attorneys being fired in their areas.

For the two months that followed, Talking Points Memo and one of its sister sites, TPM Muckraker, accumulated evidence from around the country on who the axed prosecutors were, and why politics might be behind the firings. The cause was taken up among Democrats in Congress. One senior Justice Department official has resigned, and Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales is now in the media crosshairs.

This isn't the first time Marshall and Talking Points have led coverage on national issues. In 2002, the site was the first to devote more than just passing mention to then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott's claim that the country would have been better off had the segregationist 1948 presidential campaign of Sen. Strom Thurmond succeeded. The subsequent furor cost Lott his leadership position.

Similarly, the TPM sites were leaders in chronicling the various scandals associated with Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

[madrchsod]

5. this is what old school newspapers used to do

but now that costs to much money

[aquart]

7. Nobody poor ever owned a newspaper.

They were very little better in the past than they are now. They were, however, more competitive.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

2. "reshape" journalism?

wtf?

[ourbluenation]

3. msm out of shape, as it were...

[xxqqqzme]

4. that is a damn fine article.

[ourbluenation]

6. yep...about some damn fine work by Talking Points Memo

they really have done some great work on this story and during the abramoff scandal as well. just fantastic.

[ourbluenation]

8. morning kick - snaps for TPM