One of the great mysteries of the world is how the news gets made. Theories abound. The reality is every newsroom is its own little ecosystem with its own way of doing things. I worked in several newsrooms before arriving at TPM, and TPM operates in a way that was vastly different from any other. I noticed the conspicuous lack of meetings and that nobody really had a “beat” — two things I had supposed were universal. But of course, TPM is not your average news gathering operation. So, in this episode of Inside TPM, I spoke to Managing Editor John Light to find out how the news gets made at TPM. We discussed how the team decides what is newsworthy, how the team tries to serve readers, and even how he thinks TPM would cover Tony Soprano if he were a real person. (The answer surprised me!)

All that and more in this month’s episode of Inside TPM.

Earlier today we hit the $350,000 milestone in the TPM Journalism Fund drive.

You may wonder how we think about this sort of thing internally. How do we talk about the fact that so many people are willing to contribute (generally speaking) over and above their membership fees to a small journalism outfit doing what it can to not just survive, but thrive in uncertain and unprecedented times?

Well it’s very simple: That’s 350,000 votes of confidence in our work. That’s 350,000 votes of confidence in our reporting, our analysis, and our commentary. That is 350,000 votes of confidence in our business model, which has kept us going even while countless other publications have, in recent years, failed or made significant cuts. It’s 350,000 votes of confidence in our belief that journalism can’t be hierarchical, so publications should offer free memberships to those who need them. In short, it’s 350,000 votes of confidence in us.

Look, let me be clear: We know not everyone can contribute over and above the membership fees. We’re thankful and appreciative of each and every member we have regardless of whether you ever contribute to the Journalism Fund. Memberships are the engine that sustains TPM. We thank you. Period.

One of the guiding principles at TPM is preparedness in the face of unexpected change. Change in the news environment or change in the business climate. We don’t always know what the changes will be or how they’ll affect us, but we know they are coming. They always do. That’s why the theme of this year’s Journalism Fund drive is “to help us prepare for what comes next.” 

If you have not yet contributed but are able to, please consider doing so. The revenue will help us grow and expand our journalism. It will help us distribute that journalism to more people. And, just as important, it’s a little confidence boost that all the work we put in day in and day out makes a difference in people’s lives. Because the difference between an organization like TPM and many other companies purporting to do journalism is that we care about more than our profit — we care about our impact on the world, and especially our impact on those who help us do what we love to do.

One last thing: Last year, more than 5,000 people contributed. I’m absolutely positive that if we hit that marker again, we’ll hit $500,000. Any amount you can contribute, no matter how small, makes a difference.

For the second installment of Inside TPM, I spoke with Kate Riga, who, like many at TPM, wears many hats. As podcaster/Capitol Hill reporter/Supreme Court reporter/(possible author???), she is a true multihypenate. Kate talked about how TPM chooses the Supreme Court cases it covers and how she prepares for the unique challenges involved in covering Supreme Court oral arguments and decision days. She also gives some book recommendations and her take on the state of the WNBA (at 6-19, her Washington Mystics are struggling just as much as everyone else in DC these days).

Two other things real quick. First, if you missed the last episode with Josh Kovensky, check it out here. Also, if you haven’t seen, we launched our TPM Journalism Fund drive. Our goal is to get to $150k today. If you can contribute, we’d greatly appreciate it!

If you are an Inside member, you’re familiar with the Inside Briefings we’ve done over the years. We’re launching a new kind of briefing: Inside TPM. This will be a series of monthly interviews with TPM staffers (and down the road, potentially alumni and friends-of-site) to help readers and viewers and listeners better understand TPM and the people who work here.

In the first episode, I spoke with Josh Kovensky about covering the Trump hush money trial, what he learned from his time in Ukraine, and much more. I hope you enjoy and we’ll be back next month with another video.

This weekend we’re going to be doing some very important site maintenance to upgrade our membership system. The site will remain online and our staff will continue to publish, so if there’s any breaking news, you can still count on TPM. However, while this work is going on, you will be unable to log into your account, comment, or access The Hive. Archived member-only content will also be inaccessible.

The work will begin early Saturday morning and may extend into Sunday. We’re sorry for the inconvenience, but this work is critical to the stability and security of the site. Suffice to say it’s extremely important and we thank you for your patience during this process.

Yesterday we kicked off TPM’s annual membership drive. Obviously, we hope you will become a member. We also assume you get lots of pitches from all sorts of companies that sell all sorts of products and services. Hell, they are even selling byzantine subscriptions for printers these days. Because every company under the sun is asking you to pay a recurring fee, it seems the sales pitches are becoming downright strange. Cringe, in the lingua franca of today’s youth.

So let’s get back to basics, shall we? (Unless you are ready to sign up now, in which case you can skip the post and click here.)

We recently asked if you’d help us out by answering some survey questions. First of all, thank you to everyone who did. These are massively helpful in terms of helping us decide how to improve TPM and better serve all of you.

There’s one particular piece of feedback I saw going through the thousands of results that I thought I’d address here. Several people asked if we’d bring back free or reduced-rate memberships for senior citizens and/or students. So here’s the good news: We still have free memberships for seniors and students. In fact, anyone who can’t afford a membership can apply for a community-sponsored membership here.

If you haven’t take on our reader survey yet, there’s still time! Feedback from readers helps us chart the future of TPM, and informs how we can best serve, you, the readers. We’d greatly appreciate it if you could spare five minutes to help us out. Thanks!

Do you have five minutes to answer a few questions? We aren’t offering any gift card drawings, but on your deathbed you will receive total consciousness – which is nice – and you will help us learn more about how we can improve and adapt TPM to this increasingly volatile news environment. All answers are confidential and used only for internal research. Thank you!