One of the pleasures for me of this 20th anniversary package, as I’ve mentioned, is reading each installment fresh. I was interviewed for a few of these pieces and answered some questions. But I didn’t write them or have any role in the process other than that. It’s good to have a second set of eyes. And there are parts I’m learning about for the first time. The latest installment from Tierney Sneed looks at how our coverage of Obamacare helped shape the niche TPM’s DC office would carve out in the capital news ecosystem and within TPM. The legislative, implementation and political history of Obamacare is certainly one of the two or three stories we’ve invested most time and resources in going back 20 years. As Tierney explains, the long story of Obamacare played to two critical TPM strengths: a basic seriousness about and knowledge of the policy detail which is often just a background story in political journalism and an attention to the subterranean political world that often, cryptically, drives formal or official political narratives.
Both those strengths allowed our evolving team to see developments and land exclusives that others missed on this critical, consequential story.
