The (Josh) Marshall Plan

THE (JOSH) MARSHALL PLAN
[SOURCE: Columbia Journalism Review, AUTHOR: David Glenn]
A look at Talking Points Media started by Josh Marshall. He presides over a staff of four reporters -- one of whom also serves as deputy editor -- three associate editors, and a small army of unpaid interns. Their work is posted on a quartet of interconnected sites: Talking Points Memo, as Marshall’s original blog is known; TPM Café, a two-year-old site devoted to policy and culture debates; TPM Muckraker, a year-and-a-half-old project that trawls for political scandal; and TPM Election Central. In total, the sites draw roughly 400,000 page views on an average weekday. From the very early days of Talking Points Memo, he has (by accident or design) cultivated an intense relationship with a well-connected set of readers—lawyers, activists, policy wonks, and veterans of intelligence agencies. Those readers have offered an endless stream of tips, and they have occasionally been deployed en masse to plow through document dumps from the Department of Justice or to ask members of Congress to publicly clarify their positions on Social Security. Justin Rood, a former TPM Muckraker reporter who now works for ABC News, said, “In terms of its relationship with its audience, its ability to advance stories incrementally and to give credit to other news organizations, and its ability to get the story to readers -- it’s been able to foster a real spirit of collaboration.”
http://www.cjr.org/feature/the_josh_marshall_plan.php