Talking Points Memo

Talking Points Memo (TPM) is a liberal political news and commentary website that started as a blog created and run by Josh Marshall. It debuted on November 12, 2000. The name is a tongue-in-cheek reference to a "talking points memo" that was often discussed during the Clinton-era Monica Lewinsky scandal. TPM became one of the first online-only political news websites to launch a membership program in 2012. In 2020, the site had 35,000 members.

TPM was founded as a political blog in 2000 by Marshall, who until 2004 was the site's sole employee. In 2005, he incorporated TPM Media LLC, and the company began to grow.

In the mid-2000s, the company launched a series of projects under the TPM umbrella. A spin-off blog, TPMCafe, debuted on May 31, 2005. This site featured a collection of blogs about a wide range of domestic and foreign policy issues written by academics, journalists, and former public officials, among others. Guest bloggers included politicians, such as then-senators Sherrod Brown, Bernie Sanders and John Kerry and at-the-time future senator Elizabeth Warren; journalists, including Ezra Klein, Dahlia Lithwick, Paul Krugman, George Packer, Ed Kilgore, Glenn Greenwald, Jonathan Chait, Peter Beinart, Emily Bazelon, Matthew Yglesias, and Michael Crowley; activist Aaron Swartz; policy experts, including Robert Reich and Dean Baker; and novelists Anne Lamott and Jonathan Franzen. TPMCafe has been described as a "social gathering place for readers to share news and opinion," and a precursor to social media.

TPMmuckracker expanded on Marshall’s work, with journalists working for the TPM collective, such as Paul Kiel and Justin Rood, investigating political corruption. TPMDC, founded in January 2007, was staffed by Washington-based journalists and covered politics from the capital. TPM Media also acquired from The American Prospect "The Horse's Mouth," a blog by Greg Sargent about how major news outlets covered Washington politics. Beginning in the summer of 2006, many weekend postings were provided by anonymous blogger DK. On November 11, 2006, DK was revealed to be attorney David Kurtz, who went on to serve as an editor for the site.

By 2007, TPM received an average of 400,000 page views every weekday.

During George W. Bush’s presidency, TPM closely covered the administration’s effort to privatize Social Security. The site also distinguished itself in 2006 for breaking a series of stories related to the U.S. Attorneys scandal. In 2007, TPM won a George Polk Award for legal reporting for its coverage, becoming the first online-only outlet to receive the award. In 2009, TPM opened a Washington, D.C. office and joined the White House press pool to cover the Obama administration, along with several other progressive news outlets.

In 2019, TPM was among the first outlets to uncover President Donald Trump’s pressure campaign on Ukrainian president Volodomyr Zelensky. In 2021, TPM was the first outlet to note that Trump had removed the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, BJay Pak, as part of his effort to substantiate false claims of voter fraud.

In 2023, TPM was the first outlet to report that Congressman George Santos had made charges on donors' credit cards without their permission. Santos later plead guilty to charges that he had done so.