FAQ
As a member-funded publication, building and maintaining a community is critical to us. We think it’s important communication goes both ways. We are constantly engaging with readers and incorporating their feedback not just into our reporting but also the way in which we build our site and present our work. This reader-centric approach to journalism is in TPM’s DNA and continues to this day.
We strive to be as transparent about our business model as we are with our journalism.
TPM is funded overwhelmingly by readers’ membership fees. More than 70% of our income is derived from memberships. The rest comes from advertising. As a fully independent organization, TPM has no corporate overlords. TPM is not beholden to or controlled by any outside interests. TPM was founded by a journalist and to this day its “business” side is staffed with former journalists whose primary mission is to create a sustainable environment for our reporters and editors to do great work.
We currently have three different membership options. Our flagship membership tier is called TPM Prime. In the fall of 2018 we also launched TPM Inside for readers looking to support TPM at a higher price point, and finally in the beginning of 2019 we introduced the long awaited Prime Ad Free! You can check out the perks of each tier and how much each costs here.
A membership to Prime, Prime Ad Free, or Inside will give you unlimited articles and access to special features each day, including: exclusive posts from Josh Marshall and other editors, articles detailing how our reporters got stories, and explanations of why we chose to focus on covering the stories we did. The different membership plans vary in the perks they offer, but all members gain access to additional insight — what we think of as a “guidance layer” of the site — helping our readers to understand how TPM is approaching the massive amount of news that surfaces each day. We think this is all good stuff.
- Prime is a membership program designed to give readers more. It is a deep layer of TPM providing additional content, access to our members only forums, a premium layout with fewer ads and a better TPM experience overall.
- Prime Ad Free -- Prime AF as we affectionately call it -- gives readers all the benefits of a standard Prime Membership while also providing a completely ad free experience accompanied by dramatically faster page loading. It is also a way for readers to support TPM at a higher price point than our standard Prime membership.
- Inside is TPM’s inner circle membership. It’s for TPM Readers who want a closer, deeper look at the most important news stories and policy questions. It also brings you inside operations at TPM and gives you a voice in guiding our future. Inside is also for TPM Readers who want to and are able to support TPM at a higher level than a base Prime membership or Prime AF.
- Seniors and those experiencing financial hardship can apply for a Community-Supported membership and receive a free year’s worth of Prime with all the benefits of a regular membership.
- In addition, if you are a currently enrolled student and would also like to enroll in Prime, you can apply for a FIN membership.
- FIN (The Future is Now) is our free student membership which is available to qualified applicants. Recipients receive a free year’s worth of Prime with all the benefits of a regular membership.
Yes! Currently enrolled students are free to apply for a FIN membership.
- Qualified applicants can apply for a FIN membership and receive a free year’s worth of Prime with all the benefits of a regular membership.
If you'd like to support TPM beyond the cost of a membership, you can do so by contributing to the TPM Journalism Fund. Contributions allow us to hire more journalists, to provide free memberships to those who cannot afford them and above all else contributions support independent, non-corporate journalism.
You can access your account information by signing in and clicking your username in the upper right hand corner of TPM and selecting 'Account' in the drop down menu.
TPM members can reset their passwords by following this link. Members are also given the ability to log in with the email address associated with their account in case they cannot remember their username. If you need further assistance you can reach out to [email protected].
Unfortunately, at this time we do not allow TPM members to change their username after their initial sign up. This is meant to prevent inappropriate behavior on our site and in our community. If you need further assistance on this matter you can reach out to [email protected].
You can update your billing preferences, including your credit card information by clicking you username in upper right-hand corner of the site. Billing preferences are found by selecting ‘Account’ in the dropdown. Once your information is up to date and your membership is set to automatically renew, your account will be charged based on the updated information.
You can find out this information by selecting your username. To find out how much your are being charged, select ‘Account’ from the dropdown.
To renew your membership you’ll need to ensure that auto-renew is turned on. You can check this by signing into your account and selecting your username in the top right of the site — click the person icon on mobile and tablet. Select the ‘Account’ option from the dropdown and you’ll be taken to an account page with an option to turn auto-renew off or on. So long as the setting is turned on, your membership will renew at the end of the current cycle.
You can upgrade or downgrade your membership at any time by signing into your account and selecting your username in the top right corner of the site. Select the ‘Account’ option from the dropdown and you’ll be taken to an account page, with an option to 'Change Membership' in the Membership and Billing section. Selecting 'Change Membership' will take you to a page with all of our current membership options to pick from. Upgrading your membership will happen immediately and the price will be prorated based on the remaining amount of time in your current membership. Downgrades will take place at the end of your current billing cycle and will not be prorated.
If you are looking to rejoin after letting your previous membership lapse, you can do so by logging into your previous TPM account (if you have forgotten your username and or password you can reach out to [email protected]) and visiting the Memberships page to select a new membership and begin accessing Prime again.
Each of these memberships lasts a year from the date the account is activated and it can be renewed either by reapplying — if you still remain qualified — or assuming control over payment for the account which can be done via your account settings. You can enter billing information by selecting ‘Account’ from the ‘Member’ dropdown menu.
Yes, we manage all membership transactions through Stripe. You can read their security policy here.
TPM does not store credit card information. All payment information is managed through Stripe. You can read their privacy policy here.
Yes, you will receive an automated email confirming your payment upon its completion.
If you have any questions about your billing information or notice an error please reach out to us at [email protected].
We're sorry to see you go! Members can cancel their accounts at any time by disabling the auto-renew feature located in their account settings. You can find this feature by signing into your account and selecting your username in the top right of the site. Select the ‘Account’ option from the dropdown and you’ll be taken to an account page.
Please reach out to us at [email protected] if you'd like to disable or delete your account.
Any TPM reader who does not already have, or have previously had, a membership and has not already claimed a pass is eligible to redeem a Free 7-Day Trial.
On top of being entirely free, signing up for a Free 7-Day Trial gives you access to all of the benefits of a TPM Prime membership. That means:
- Access to Member-Only Articles
- Fewer Ads
- The Hive Member Forum
- The Weekender and Franchise Newsletter
- RSS Feeds
- Commenting
When your 7-day pass expires you will be reverted back to a basic account without membership benefits and you will only have 9 articles available to you per month. At the end of your 7-day pass you will also recieve special offers to upgrade your account to a membership account.
Readers with a free TPM account are entitled to redeem one Free 7-Day Trial. Free account holders may also receive special promotions and benefits after claiming their pass. Those who cannot afford a membership are always encouraged to apply for a free membership – either through our Community Supported Membership program or our Student Membership (FIN) program.
As memberships have become the primary source of revenue for TPM, we’ve decided that implementing a metered paywall is in the best interest of the organization to ensure long-term sustainability. However, this is not a decision we made lightly. We want our journalism to reach as many people as possible and remain accessible to everyone. For this reason, our paywall is deeper than most publications: 9 articles per month. The frontpage and live blogs will remain free. Additionally, we offer free memberships to students and our community-supported membership program provides free memberships to anyone who cannot afford one. We’ve given out over 1,000 free memberships in this manner.
You can read a total of 9 per month before hitting the paywall.
All pages with the exception of the frontpage, index pages, and live blogs are paywalled.
TPM is a member-funded journalism organization. Advertising revenue now accounts for less than 20 percent of revenue as opposed to just a few years ago when it used to be close to 100%. This is a good thing, but it means we need and rely on funding from our members and our readers.
We recognize the need for more journalism now. The public has an urgent need for accurate reporting and intelligent analysis of current events. We need to increase our resources to be part of the solution. We of course want to continue growing our membership base, but we believe we need to act quickly now to ensure we have the resources to produce high quality, independent, non-corporate journalism.
If you are already a member, please do not feel as though you need to make a contribution on top of that. While a membership is definitely the best way to support TPM, we know that some members wish they could contribute more. This is an avenue to do so. We also know that some readers can’t afford a membership, but would still like to contribute. This is a way for them to do so as well.
You can make a contribution by clicking the 'Contribute' button in the upper right hand corner of the TPM front-page.
Contributions are not recurring.
Contributions are not tax-deductible as a charitable contribution.
At the bottom of each article (excluding the Editors' Blog) there is a comment box with a button to "Continue Discussion". Clicking this button well bring you to the commeting forum where members can post comments.
The Hive is a members-only forum available to all TPM members.
To access The Hive, you can do so via the portal located on all story pages (along the right-hand side) or via the account dropdown menu located at the top of each page when you select your username.
TPM is member funded and member focused. Our time and energy across the entire organization from editorial to tech is focused on serving members. In that spirit, it seemed an important step to make commenting a member-only privilege. However, it's also a priority to ensure that we don't become a walled garden only accessible to those who can afford our journalism and to be a part of our community, which is why we offer free memberships for anyone who cannot afford a membership or is a student. By providing these avenues, we think we can best ensure the sustainability of the organization and retain the openness we think critical.
Yes, your comments will still be there if/when your membership lapses. In addition, you can download your comment history at any point through your Hive profile page.
You can find our terms and services here.
First off, please make sure you are signed into an active membership account. You can do so by checking your account settings page, or by seeing if a corresponding membership logo is displayed next to your username in the upper right hand corner of the page. If you are signed into an active membership account, we recommend signing out of your account and back in to see if that does not resolve the issue please reach out to us.
First off, please make sure you are signed into an active membership account. You can do so by checking your account settings page, or by seeing if a corresponding membership logo is displayed next to your username in the upper right hand corner of the page. If you are signed into an active membership account, we recommend signing out of your account and back in to see if that removes the excess number of ads. If it does not please email us. Inside and Prime AdFree members should see no ads while signed in. Prime members should see:
- Two banner ads per page on desktop and tablet devices
- No banner, video or pop up ads on mobile devices
Once you sign in on a device, you should remain signed in for one year, unless you manually sign out or clear your cookies. If you notice that you are being required to sign in multiple times per day, please make sure you are not using a private or incognito browser window through your preferred web browser. If you are still noticing this issue please reach out to us at [email protected] and we'll see what we can do to resolve this issue for you.
First, please make sure that the email wasn't filtered into your spam folder by mistake. Reset emails are sent to you by way of Discourse, the program we use to run our sign in forms and comment section so make sure you're looking at the subject lines of any new emails for any mentions of Discourse. It's possible the email was not delivered for several reasons including: you've unsubscribed from TPM emails, your inbox or email server marked the email as spam, or previous emails sent from us to you have bounced. Please reach out to us at [email protected] and we'll see what we can do to resolve this issue for you.
We maintain a Site Status blog that you can find here, if you're noticing something that is not reflected in the blog feel free to email us at [email protected]
We don't have a direct relationship with these organizations. The ads come through third-party networks. TPM has always had an agnostic stance toward advertising that comes through third-parties with regard to candidates or politically minded organizations because once you start allowing some and not others, those become endorsements.
You can report offensive ads by emailing us at [email protected] Please include a screenshot of the ad in question and we will review it, and if needed see what we can do about removing it.