Joshua Marshall '91 never wrote for any campus publications. He paid his dues for Whig-Clio and laughs at how he never set foot in the building. And now, this history major is a successful political journalist on Capitol Hill — managing a website for his opinion column and regularly appearing on talk shows on the major networks.
Marshall's Internet column Talking Points Memo (www.talkingpointsmemo.com) strings together a week of daily commentary on hot topics for political discussion. He articulates liberal views towards current policy issues, such as the potential war with Iraq, and critiques policy decisions and speeches by major political figures.
"As a journalist, being provocative is part of what I do," said Marshall, who said he is fortunate to have freedom from editorial oversight. His website is independently run.
Marshall's column incorporates his reactions to political decisions with some reporting — including book reviews, interviews and his responses to other journalists and media sources.
"In journalism, you're locked into genres of writing which can be confining," said Marshall, who is also a contributing writer for the Washington Monthly magazine and a columnist for The Hill newspaper. "You're also confined by how you write. The website gives me a lot of freedom as a writer to write in different voices and to experiment as a writer."
Marshall's freedom is evident in his conversational writing style and candid remarks.
"I let myself come through," he said, adding that his personal style makes readers more inclined to respond and follow his column regularly.
And his audience — liberals and conservatives alike — keeps him busy, sending about 100 email responses daily that often influence his future commentary.
"When I write I'm aware that when I criticize, the people I criticize are more likely to hear what I say," Marshall said.
And because the site is not controlled by anyone but himself, Marshall added that he has benefited by "not having ideological oversight over what I was writing."
The TV pundit
The media also has responded to Marshall's column. He has appeared on CNN — for Crossfire and The Point — Fox, C-Span and talk radio shows around the country.
Marshall said his television appearances "were driven by the website" — TV shows would invite him to speak after he wrote a story that generated attention.
Marshall's coverage of the Gary Condit controversy more than a year ago led to a series of appearances on a dozen different shows, starting with 48 Hours on CBS. Once he was on television, Marshall said, various shows would invite him back to discuss other topics.
The Trent Lott story also generated a wave of media appearances for Marshall because his site helped drive the story before other news sources "jumped on the bandwagon," he said.
Marshall later discussed the media's initial disregard for the story on CNN's Reliable Sources — hosted by Howard Kurtz, whom Marshall knows personally.
Most recently, Marshall was invited to speak about North Korea on C-Span and CNN's Crossfire.
Marshall said he is comfortable speaking in front of the camera but admits he was afraid of public speaking when he was younger. He laughed when recalling how nervous he was to give his first lecture while in graduate school.
"Over time you just get used to it," said Marshall, who has appeared so frequently on talk shows that he now enjoys it as much as writing.
But, he said, there are limits to how he can express himself on television — unlike on his website.
"On chat shows you can't slowly unfold your ideas," he said. "You need to prepare rapid responses not just to sound intelligent but to spit out what you want to say before you get cut off."
Despite the constraints, Marshall said he appreciates the ability to reach a larger audience through television.
"If you're interested in influencing a vast number of people, TV is the way to reach the most people," he said.
Nevertheless, a wider audience by numbers does not mean more exposure, Marshall said. "The irony is that in some ways I've been better known from my website than my magazine writing."
Princeton's lessons
Marshall pointed to three University professors as having been important mentors — history professor Sean Wilentz, religion professor John Gager and history professor Daniel Rogers, whom he worked for as a research assistant for several years.
Marshall has kept in touch with Wilentz — one of his Junior Paper advisors whom he admired for his ability to combine a history profession with political writing.
"Sean Wilentz was always an inspiration to me. In a sense he was a history professor but also a political intellectual," he said.
Wilentz recalled how Marshall used to drop in during his office hours to hang out and talk about history.
"We were pals in addition to the student-teacher relationship," Wilentz said. He described Marshall as being curious and very skeptical as a student — qualities he sees carrying over into Marshall's current political work.
Marshall was "never content to take conventional wisdom at face value," Wilentz said.
"He was always exploring and poking at things," Wilentz said. Now, he added, Marshall is doing the same as one of the few effective liberal voices in the "pundit media."
Wilentz, who has read Marshall's Internet column, praised Marshall's ability to probe topics other journalists had overlooked or not sufficiently explored — such as the Trent Lott story.
Marshall is helping to invent a new form of journalism, Wilentz said, through his unique and informal approach to reporting online.
Wilentz also noted a strong sense for the past in Marshall's writing — the kind of historical perspective that is lacking in journalists who are caught up in the latest political topics.
History in politics
Marshall is currently finishing his doctorate at Brown University on mid-17th century colonial American history. His focus is on economic relations and violent conflict between English settlers and Native Americans in New England.
For five years, Marshall was a full-time graduate student before his career interrupted his studies.
For a year after completing his undergraduate degree, Marshall taught at the Hun School in Princeton, a private preparatory school.
Though he decided early on during his graduate work that he would not become a professor, Marshall said his academic studies benefit him as a political writer — when he tackles social and cultural issues.
"I see myself as fundamentally a writer, and there is a continuity between my interest in history and what I'm doing now," he said.
Though his academic studies are mostly separate from his work as a journalist, Marshall plans to incorporate history when he explores a new genre of writing in the near future.
A few weeks ago, Marshall was in New York talking with publishers about plans to write his first book — a contemporary history novel that would be nonacademic in style for popular appeal.
"When I first got into this business, I knew I'd have to develop some ability to write but my plan was to eventually write books about history and current events for a broad audience," Marshall said.
Just as writing for his website gives him greater freedom than writing for a publication, opinion writing had the same advantage over historical writing.
"As an historian, you're writing under certain constraints of subjectivity. For me, being an opinion journalist, there is a much freer range not just to describe what is happening but also what I think should happen."
But Marshall has not always enjoyed such freedom with his writing. He began his career working for a small political magazine in Boston — The American Prospect — while continuing his studies at Brown.
Marshall soon decided he did not belong in the small political magazine world.
"There are a lot of egos," he said. "I found it profoundly difficult to deal with."
Marshall then created Talking Points Memo in November 2000 to break away from the "ideological oversight" at the magazine. His technical skills from running a web design company in graduate school were useful.
Marshall has also been freelancing for the past two years — writing for the online publications Slate and Salon.
"He carved out a whole career for himself. That's great," said Wilentz.
From his home in Washington, Marshall continues to post articles at all hours of the day. Judging from the interest he receives, Marshall may indeed be promoting a new form of interactive journalism for the future.
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