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To celebrate our 25th anniversary, we asked 25 writers we admire—from @jeetheer.bsky.social to @anamariecox.bsky.social—to reflect on a moment from the past 25 years of digital media. Read @joshtpm.bsky.social's intro to the project: Pivots, Trolls + Blog Rolls talkingpointsmemo.com/tpm-25/the-o...

For our first essay, @espiers.bsky.social writes about starting Gawker, the heyday of blogging, and how blogs changed her worldview: “There were people I started out reading whose views I began to reject, and some of which I eventually found abhorrent.” talkingpointsmemo.com/tpm-25/what-...

@ddayen.bsky.social on how paywalls and the privatization of information corrupted politics journalism: "Obviously the tenor of coverage changes when the core audience is investors, lobbyists, and political professionals." talkingpointsmemo.com/tpm-25/dcs-a...

@maxrn.bsky.social thinks the most "bone-headed" of all the rules for online journalism was that it should be free. When he & his co-founders started @hellgatenyc.com, a local NYC news site, they decided to do so as a reader-funded, worker-owned publication. talkingpointsmemo.com/tpm-25/the-f...

In 2015, at the peak of the digital media boom, law student Nathan Robinson founded the print magazine @currentaffairs.bsky.social. He makes the case for why democracy needs small print magazines for TPM’s 25th anniversary series on 25 years of digital media: talkingpointsmemo.com/tpm-25/why-i...

@sunraysunray.bsky.social wrote about Crooked Timber, starting @jacobinmagazin.bsky.social in his dorm room and "the secret sauce of the political blogosphere at its peak: it felt simultaneously democratic and curated." talkingpointsmemo.com/tpm-25/can-s...

@hamiltonnolan.bsky.social shares his favorite political blog post of all time, and gets into how blogging made writers get to the damn point. talkingpointsmemo.com/tpm-25/this-...

@anamariecox.bsky.social writes about the failure of patron-supported journalism. "If everyone has to cobble together their own constellation of individual creators, $5 at a time? That’s not a media ecosystem. That’s a privatized patchwork of tip jars." talkingpointsmemo.com/tpm-25/patro...

@marisakabas.bsky.social appreciates being able to write critically about Trump II's abuses: "The beauty + joy of being independent is that I’m working counter to, rather than in concert with, institutional power...I never have to apologize when I come for it." talkingpointsmemo.com/tpm-25/journ...

@kellyweill.bsky.social takes us inside a 2018 Flat Earth conference. While flat earthers were then a curiosity at the time, "They were early adopters of a delusional digital mode that, a couple years later, would come to dominate political speech," she says talkingpointsmemo.com/tpm-25/what-...

@emptywheel.bsky.social takes us back to the somehow-less-bad old days of 2015 to explore one particular partnership between Donald Trump and a network of right-wing online trolls who helped him hijack American politics. talkingpointsmemo.com/tpm-25/witho...

@ericmgarcia.bsky.social tells the story of how autism disinformation spread from obscure Facebook groups to the top of the U.S. government’s public health apparatus talkingpointsmemo.com/tpm-25/anti-...

@andrewjparsons.bsky.social was a NYC kindergarten teacher when he started his first podcast. He went on to become a co-creator of Slow Burn, and soon found himself inside a podcast industry bubble—one "that many of us correctly suspected would eventually pop" talkingpointsmemo.com/tpm-25/watch...