What TPM’s Cooper Hire Means
By Daniel Strauss - Jan 21st, 2009 at 11:27 amWith the hiring of Matt Cooper it’s indisputable that Talking Points Memo is more than a publication of the far-left progressive media sphere. Cooper is a household name who worked at Portfolio, Time, and Newsweek covering the White House before he landed at TPM. Steve Benen considers Cooper’s new job a sign that progressive media is more serious than its conservative counterpart is–what with Joe the Plumber becoming a “correspondent” for Pajamas Media.
Besides that, though, I think Cooper joining TPM is a sign that investigative media doesn’t have to die with newspapers. TPM has never served as a propaganda engine for the left. It doesn’t profess itself to be without political sentiment, but none of its reporting is inherently swayed to the left, and as a reader I regard it as a source of news first and a liberal political website second. That’s no surprise if you look at who’s writing for the site: people like like Elana Schor, and now Cooper. These are serious journalists who focus on objective reporting–not opinion and punditry–and it shows at TPM.
The New York Times quotes Marshall on the divide between opinion and reporting at TPM,
Mr. Marshall said he tried to keep a partisan tone out of the reporting, though his personal blogging on the site reflected a liberal viewpoint. “As a company there are strong ideological viewpoints that inform what we do,” he said. “When we are reporting the news, we make every effort to report it in as factual way as possible.”
I bet we’re going to see more people like Cooper move to places like TPM and the The Huffington Post but continue their level of high-quality reporting. Hell, we might even see some conservatives at TPM in a few years–there are good right-leaning journalists out there, after all.
(Crossposted at Pensons)
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