Josh Marshall

Marshall was born in St. Louis, Missouri. Marshall's father was a professor of marine biology. His mother died when he was young.{{Cite news |last=Klam |first=Matthew |author-link=Matthew Klam |date=September 26, 2004 |title=Fear and Laptops on the Campaign Trail |publisher=The New York Times Magazine |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/26/magazine/26BLOGS.html |access-date=May 18, 2007}}

He is a graduate of the Webb Schools of California and Princeton University and earned a PhD in American history from Brown University. In the mid-1990s, Marshall designed websites for law firms and published an online news site about Internet law, which included interviews with prominent scholars such as Lawrence Lessig.

Marshall began writing freelance articles about Internet free speech for The American Prospect in 1997 and was soon hired as an associate editor. He worked for the Prospect for three years and in 1999 moved to D.C. to become their Washington editor.

He often clashed with the top editors at the Prospect, over both ideology and the direction of the website.

File:Josh Marshall (506434140).jpg

Inspired by political bloggers such as Mickey Kaus and Andrew Sullivan, Marshall started Talking Points Memo during the 2000 Florida election recount. "I really liked what seemed to me to be the freedom of expression of this genre of writing," Marshall told the Columbia Journalism Review. "And, obviously, given the issues that I had with the Prospect, that appealed to me a lot."

He left his job at the Prospect early in 2001 and continued to blog while writing for The Washington Monthly, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Salon.com, and the New York Post. In 2002, Marshall used Talking Points Memo to report on Trent Lott's controversial comments praising Strom Thurmond's 1948 presidential run as a segregationist. According to Harvard Kennedy School, Marshall was instrumental in fueling the ensuing scandal that eventually led to Trent Lott's resignation as Senate Minority Leader.

As a result of the Lott story, traffic to Talking Points Memo spiked from 8,000 to 20,000 page views a day. In the fall of 2003, as people focused on the failure to find WMD's in Iraq, there was a new surge of traffic to the site; "I remember there being peak days of 60,000-page views, which was really incredible." Marshall started selling ads on his site and by the end of 2004 was earning $10,000 a month, making him one of a handful of what The New York Times Magazine dubbed "elite bloggers" who earned enough money to make blogging a full-time occupation.

During the 2008 US election campaign, many independent news sites and political blogs saw a wave of "explosive growth".{{Cite news

|url = http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=2525

|publisher = comScore

|title = Huffington Post and Politico Lead Wave of Explosive Growth at Independent Political Blogs and News Sites this Election Season

|date = October 22, 2008

|access-date = October 26, 2008

|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20081218000149/http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=2525

|archive-date = December 18, 2008

|url-status = dead

|df = mdy-all

}} Talking Points Memo experienced the largest surge in traffic,{{Cite news

| url=https://blogs.wsj.com/biztech/2008/10/23/huffpo-beats-drudge/

| publisher=Wall Street Journal

| title=HuffPo Beats Drudge

| last=LaVallee

| first=Andrew

| date=October 23, 2008

| access-date=October 31, 2008}} growing from 32,000 unique visitors in September 2007 to 458,000 unique visitors in September 2008,{{Cite news

|url = http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticleHomePage&art_aid=93246

|publisher = MediaPost

|title = Huffington Post, Politico Top Political Sites

|last = Walsh

|first = Mark

|date = October 23, 2008

|access-date = October 26, 2008

|url-status = dead

|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20120603125014/http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticleHomePage&art_aid=93246

|archive-date = June 3, 2012

|df = mdy-all

}} a 1,321% year-to-year increase in the size of its audience.{{Cite news

| url=http://www.portfolio.com/views/blogs/mixed-media/2008/10/22/comscore-lefty-sites-making-huge-traffic-gains

| publisher=Condé Nast Portfolio

| title=ComScore: Lefty Sites Making Huge Traffic Gains

| last=Bercovici

| first=Jeff

| date=October 22, 2008

| access-date=October 26, 2008}}

In 2005, Marshall launched TPMCafe.{{Cite news| url=http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0505/10/ip.01.html | publisher=CNN: Judy Woodruff's Inside Politics | title=Political Fundraising Trial Gets Underway; Senate Problems with Judicial Nominees Continue | last=Tatton | first=Abbi | author-link=Abbi Tatton | date=May 10, 2005 | access-date=May 18, 2007}} This site features a collection of blogs about a wide range of domestic and foreign policy issues written by academics, journalists and former public officials among others.

Marshall expanded his operation again in 2006, launching TPMmuckraker. The site focuses on political corruption, and was originally staffed by Paul Kiel and Justin Rood. Rood has since moved on to ABC and its blog The Blotter. Kiel has recently been joined by two new staff reporter-bloggers, Laura McGann and Spencer Ackerman. TPMmuckraker has attempted to organize its readers to plow through and read document dumps by governmental entities engaging in cover-ups.{{Cite news| url=http://www.nysun.com/article/50895 | publisher=The New York Sun | title=New Technique Lets Bloggers Tackle Late-Night News Dumps | first=Josh | last=Gerstein | date=March 21, 2007 | access-date=June 15, 2007}}

TPM Media operates out of an office in Manhattan and currently employs seven reporters, including two in Washington.

{{2006 dismissal of U.S. attorneys controversy small}}

In 2007, Marshall was instrumental in exposing another national controversy — the politically motivated dismissal of U.S. attorneys by the Bush administration. Marshall won The Polk Award for Legal Reporting for his coverage of the story, which "led the news media" and "connected the dots and found a pattern of federal prosecutors being forced from office for failing to do the Bush Administration's bidding." Columbia Journalism Review also credited Marshall's news organization for being "almost single-handedly responsible for bringing the story of the fired U.S. Attorneys to a boil." The ensuing scandal resulted in the resignations of several high-level government officials; the Polk award in particular honored Marshall for his "tenacious investigative reporting" which "sparked interest by the traditional news media and led to the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales."

After a weekend writer noticed that the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas was being replaced with a former adviser to Karl Rove,{{Cite news| url=https://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/how_talkingpointsmemo_beat_the.php | publisher=Columbia Journalism Review | title=How TalkingPointsMemo Beat the Big Boys on the U.S. Attorney Story | last=McLeary | first=Paul | date=March 15, 2007 | access-date=September 9, 2007}} Marshall discovered that U.S. Attorney Carol Lam was also being asked to resign. Lam had successfully prosecuted Republican California Representative Duke Cunningham on bribery charges and was amid a criminal investigation into a congressional scandal of historic proportions. "I was stunned by it," Marshall told the Financial Times. "Normally, in a case like that, the prosecutor would be untouchable."

National newspapers were slow to pick up the story. Time magazine's Washington bureau chief Jay Carney accused Marshall of "seeing broad partisan conspiracies where none likely exist."{{Cite news| url=http://time-blog.com/swampland/2007/01/running_massacre.html | archive-url=https://archive.today/20070502211844/http://time-blog.com/swampland/2007/01/running_massacre.html | url-status=dead | archive-date=May 2, 2007 | publisher=Time magazine | title=Running Massacre? | last=Carney | first=Jay | date=January 17, 2007 | access-date=September 9, 2007}} By the time The New York Times first reported on Lam's firing (on page 17), Marshall and his news sites had already posted 15 articles on the story.

Two months after posting his accusatory article, Carney apologized to Marshall. "Josh Marshall at TalkingPointsMemo and everyone else out there whose instincts told them there was something deeply wrong and even sinister about the firings...deserve tremendous credit." Carney went on to write, "I was wrong. Very nice work, and thanks for holding my feet to the fire."{{Cite news| url=http://time-blog.com/swampland/2007/03/where_credit_is_due.html | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070315180450/http://time-blog.com/swampland/2007/03/where_credit_is_due.html | url-status=dead | archive-date=March 15, 2007 | publisher=Time magazine | title=Where Credit Is Due | last=Carney | first=Jay | author-link=Jay Carney | date=March 13, 2007 | access-date=September 9, 2007}}

For doggedly pursuing the story, Arianna Huffington nominated Joshua Marshall and the Talking Points Memo team to the Time 100.{{Cite news| url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1615198,00.html | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070430102201/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1615198,00.html | url-status=dead | archive-date=April 30, 2007 | publisher=Time magazine | title=The TIME 100 | author=Arianna Huffington | author-link=Arianna Huffington | date=April 26, 2007 | access-date=May 18, 2007}}

Marshall married Millet Israeli in March 2005,{{Cite news

|url=http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000387.php

|publisher=The Washington Note

|title=Saturday Morning Stuff and a Wedding Afternoon: Josh & Millet Get Married

|first=Steve

|last=Clemons

|author-link=Steve Clemons

|date=March 19, 2005 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060706075352/http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000387.php

|archive-date=July 6, 2006 |url-status=dead

}} and the couple live in New York City with their sons Sam and Daniel.{{Cite web | url=http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/bio.php | publisher=Talking Points Memo | title=Talking Points Memo by Joshua Micah Marshall | access-date=September 8, 2007 | url-status=dead | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070929083255/http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/bio.php | archive-date=September 29, 2007 | df=mdy-all }}

{{BLP unreferenced section|date=July 2021}}

• George Polk Award for Legal Reporting, 2007
• The Week Opinion Awards, Blogger of the Year, 2003 & 2007
• GQ Men of the Year, Muckraker, 2007

{{Reflist|2}}

{{Wikiquote}}

• [http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/ Talking Points Memo]
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20071011221209/http://talkingpointsmemo.com/joshmarshall.php Marshall's biography] at Talking Points Memo.
• [http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/57 Video discussion/debate with Marshall] and David Corn on Bloggingheads.tv
• [http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/94 Video discussion/debate with Marshall] and Mickey Kaus on Bloggingheads.tv
• {{C-SPAN|83341}}
• [http://www.c-span.org/video/?303536-1/qa-josh-marshall C-SPAN Q&A interview with Marshall, February 12, 2012]

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Category:1969 births

Category:American bloggers

Category:American political writers

Category:20th-century American Jews

Category:Brown University alumni

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Category:Princeton University alumni

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Category:American male bloggers

Category:21st-century American Jews