Founded in 2005 as a simple multi-author blog (Wayback Machine copy), ThinkProgress has grown into one of the more popular progressive news sites, with an estimated reach of 1.8M monthly uniques per Quantcast. Behind it is a powerful NGO with strong ties to some prominent players in US politics.

Organizational Structure, Funding

You may have never heard of the Center for American Progress, but it’s one of the most well-funded political nonprofits in the US, with over $45M in revenue in 2014. It was founded by none other than John Podesta, chair of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and victim of a phishing attack of likely Russian origin on his email account.

CAP’s funding comes from foundations, corporations, individual major donors, and small donations. Its “Supporters” page provides a breakdown, and says that “corporate funding comprises less than 6 percent of the budget, and foreign government funding comprises only 2 percent.” Big foundation funders include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Sandler Foundation, and George Soros’ Open Society Foundations.

CAP has a sister organization, the Action Fund. Unlike CAP, it is organized under the 501c4 section of the US tax code which permits political lobbying, but means that donations are not tax-deductible. It is a smaller organization, with about $8.5M revenue in 2015, the single largest chunk of which comes from CAP itself. The organizations also share the same CEO, Neera Tanden.

The Action Fund is the organization behind ThinkProgress, which is said to be fully editorially independent. Founder and editor Judd Legum left ThinkProgress in 2007 to join Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid as research director and then returned to his role, which is an example of the revolving door from CAP to the US Democratic establishment.

In 2015, Legum received total compensation of $199K from the organization, which is comparable to other nonprofit publications like Mother Jones.

Transparency

The ThinkProgress website is one of the worst we have reviewed in terms of disclosing organizational internals. The About page mentions its parent organization without even linking to it. There, with some luck, you may find the list of supporters; beyond that, the only reporting I was able to find on the organization’s work was a 10th Anniversary Report (and only with Google).

Considering the combined revenue of the two organizations, this is a remarkably poor level of transparency; much smaller organizations like Truthout manage to report regularly about their own work (reports) and make these reports easy to find.

Positioning, Bias

ThinkProgress describes itself as dedicated to “providing our readers with rigorous reporting and analysis from a progressive perspective”. Beyond that positioning statement, does it have bias toward specific politicians or policies?

Using the 2016 election as a yardstick, political connections notwithstanding, I did not find evidence of bias in favor of one of the Democratic candidates (Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton) in the coverage itself. Privately, the Wikileaks disclosures show that ThinkProgress editor Judd Legum did sometimes casually forward items of interest that could be used against Sanders (emails that include Legum and Sanders).

One exchange in particular caught the attention of right-wing critics. It was a heads-up by Legum that Faiz Shakir, a former ThinkProgress staffer, had started doing some work for the Bernie campaign. CEO Neera Tanden (Legum’s boss) reacted in a manner that can only be described as vitriolic.

It would be unfair to infer too much about ThinkProgress itself from these leaked private exchanges. They only serve to underscore the strong personal connections of some of its key players to the Clinton campaign. Now that the campaign is lost, it remains to be seen how these same players act in the changed political environment.

I would describe ThinkProgress editorially as left-of-center, which in the age of Trumpism makes them a useful source of adversarial journalism. Its content selection reflects a progressive perspective that is relatively free of reflection and squarely directed at the political right. In pursuing this agenda, the site sometimes overstates/sensationalizes slightly, but not as much as clickbait sites like Occupy Democrats do; more on this below.

Stories do appear to go through internal fact-checking (though the editors fell for a fake news site in 2014).

The site also engages in independent fundraising from readers, e.g., for its recently launched Trump Investigative Fund.

Content Examples

Consistent with its origins as a blog, ThinkProgress does not distinguish between news, analysis, or commentary. Some of its reports are in-depth investigative journalism that would be right at home on sites like ProPublica (e.g., its report on the growth of the sanctuary city movement since Trump’s election).

An example article that shows reasonable depth, while also not presenting any perspective that disagrees with its analysis: “Trump poised to violate Constitution his first day in office, George W. Bush’s ethics lawyer says”. See this NYT piece for a somewhat more balanced assessment of the same situation. This is a case where citing only a single perspective serves to slightly sensationalize reporting.

Similarly, when 46 US Attorneys were fired by the Department of Justice, ThinkProgress focused on framing the action as part of a larger purge narrative, not spelling out that Bill Clinton fired all 93 attorneys in 1993 (see the Vox reporting). This is an example of using a fairly ordinary political event as a “hook” to support a larger narrative.

As an example for overstating, one article calls the war in Yemen a “climate-driven war”. While the article itself makes good arguments, that summary overstates the role of climate change (compare this analysis by International Policy Digest).

Sometimes the site does use clickbait tactics. The headline “SCOTUS nominee Neil Gorsuch faces extraordinary sexism allegation from former student” uses ambiguous language which could describe a wide range of behaviors in order to sensationalize Gorsuch’s alleged comments about maternity leave.

Worse, these comments are disputed by several other students (see NPR coverage, or National Review for the right-wing perspective). This isn’t mentioned in the article, and ThinkProgress kept tweeting the piece at least until March 24, when other media had already reported the dispute.

Design, Licensing

ThinkProgress design in 2005, 2011 and 2017 (old screenshots courtesy of archive.org).

The ThinkProgress website is a branded version of Medium, with all the associated advantages and disadvantages (e.g., it works poorly without JavaScript, but looks nice on mobile and has decent built-in social features such as commenting, notifications and following).

Content is under conventional copyright, with permission to re-use granted on a case-by-case basis.

The Verdict

While I would not put it in the same journalistic category as publications like Mother Jones or The Intercept, I do recommend following ThinkProgress on Twitter or by other means as a source of progressive advocacy journalism. At its best, ThinkProgress provides valuable in-depth investigative reporting.

The complex influence web behind CAP and the parent organization of ThinkProgress raises questions about how autonomously it can operate, but one shouldn’t overstate the case. The organization it is not dependent on a single funder and relies on public support, as well. Perhaps ThinkProgress would better served being a truly independent organizational entity, which would also enable tax-deductible donations.

The rating is 3.5 stars, rounded down. Points off for a slight tendency toward sensationalizing (primarily through framing and selective reporting) and a lack of transparency.

(Updated in March 2017 with new information and to be more consistent with our review methodology.)

I didn’t think Ridley Scott had another great movie in him, but he proved me wrong. The Martian turned out to be visually powerful, well-paced and well-acted, and will likely be remembered as one of the best sci-fi movies of this decade.

Matt Damon does a great job with a challenging lead role, conveying both the desperation and witty resourcefulness that define Mark Watney. Among the support cast, Kate Mara shines and lets us experience the emotional journey of one of Watney’s fellow crew members.

The movie lacked suspense in its last third, which in my view is because part of the story arc from the book has been omitted in favor of greater focus on the supporting characters. A bolder choice might have been to go the opposite route: to focus almost completely on Watney’s isolation.

We’re left with a movie that conveys optimism in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds, and enthusiasm for scientific exploration, while being highly entertaining. If you haven’t seen it yet, I recommend it.

Democracy Now! is one of the best-known progressive news sources in the United States. It has been around since 1996 and is distributed online as well as through broadcast television and radio. It is identified strongly with co-founder, principal host and executive producer Amy Goodman, an investigative journalist known for courageous confrontations with powerful economic and political forces. Most recently, Amy Goodman was in the news because an arrest warrant was issued against her in connection with her reporting on the Dakota Access Pipeline. The case was quickly dismissed but helped bring further attention to the protests.

The organization running the show is a non-profit, though it does not appear to publish an Annual Report (none is listed on the website, and an email request has so far not been answered). Its revenue for 2014 was $6,674,958, so the lack of transparency about impact, strategy and spending is a bit unusual for an organization of this size. Indeed, Charity Navigator rates it at two stars for accountability and transparency, due to the lack of audited financials or information about its board of directors.

The primary content the organization produces is a Monday-to-Friday one hour broadcast (in English, with some content translated to Spanish) that typically consists of news and interviews. With a progressive lens, the show gives more attention to issues that typically only get second-tier coverage in mainstream media, such as international efforts to combat climate change, or left-wing social movement activism. This is done in a dry and muted “just the facts” tone.

The show is always smart, sometimes tedious (interview guests are hit or miss; breaks with music or monotonic monologue are not for everyone), sometimes engaging (like when it tackles challenging conversations, such as discussions about third party candidates).

An example of clever journalism, even if one disagrees with it: during the 2016 election, Democracy Now! staged a reenactment of one of the US presidential television debates, giving third party candidate Jill Stein (who was not permitted to participate) the opportunity to answer the same questions the main candidates were asked. (The libertarian candidate was also invited, but could not make it.)

The overall curation of topics is quite remarkable, and the emphasis on stories not receiving attention by major media makes Democracy Now! a good addition to any news and information mix, if the video/audio format works for you. There is textual content on the site, but much of it is transcripts or very short blurbs.

Personally, I prefer to read the news, as do young people who have grown up with the web. But the Democracy Now! broadcast reaches audiences who may not be deft navigators of the web, and therefore is an important part of the US political media landscape.

The online version of the show does offer links to different segments and transcripts so you don’t have to watch to or listen to the whole show. But of course content that is native to the web offers many other possibilities that are underutilized in a TV/radio show transported to the web – conversation and participation, interactive data and charts, cross-referencing, embedded videos, tweets and other content, and so forth. This also gives Democracy Now! a disadvantage in social media that rely on content that’s optimized for being shared.

The Verdict

Democracy Now! is a fine example of viewer-supported journalism. It is constrained by its format and perhaps to an extent by its ambition. It is a brainy daily roundup that appeals to people who already self-identify as progressive, but is unlikely to convince people who are not. Many will background the broadcast to other activities rather than intently listening for an hour (a podcast version is available).

The lack of organizational transparency is disappointing for a non-profit, though not surprising for an organization that’s clearly monomaniacally focused on its mission. In spite of those reservations, Democracy Now! deserves four stars for its tireless dedication to quality journalism and to the pursuit of major stories and topics that are neglected elsewhere. Even if you don’t identify with the (by US standards) far left political lens of the broadcast, including frequent spotlighting of third party candidates, it enriches our perspective on the world in ways other sources rarely do.

David Mitchell loves to write books that challenge him as a writer, and writing historical fiction about a Dutch trading post in the bay of Nagasaki certainly qualifies – especially without writing in Dutch or Japanese, while still trying to maintain an air of authenticity in the language and dialect.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet succeeds, for the most part, in transporting the reader, and if you like where Mitchell is taking you, you’ll enjoy the ride. Occasionally, he overdoes it with prose that seems written mostly to amuse himself (“A smoke-dried Dane makes a Finn’s cock of a tangled vang”) or that is just a bit too experimental.

The central plot in Autumns borrows heavily from Mitchell’s own work – a group of women are drugged, enslaved, exploited, and lied to about their eventual fate. This also happened to the fabricants in Cloud Atlas, and Somni-451’s rescue included similar plot twists.

In Autumns, Orito uncovers part of the evil plot, but not the entirety of it (that is left to the male characters); like Somni-451 in Cloud Atlas, she seems to represent an ideal of both innocence and wisdom.

Towards the end of the novel, a whole new cast of characters, the crew of the HMS Phoebus, is introduced. We only get a brief glimpse into their motivations, and learning about the captain’s gout or the rivalry between the lieutenants seems like a distraction from the fate of the protagonists.

Mitchell couldn’t resist the temptation to weave a highly fictionalized version of this interesting historical incident into the novel - but I would much rather have spent more time with Orito, revealing perhaps more of her humanity rather than a less interesting and more stereotypical transition from victimhood to sainthood.

Incognito ties some interesting studies and anecdotes about human cognition together with opinions and hypotheses that are at times cringeworthy. The most problematic part of the book is Eagleman’s set of proposed reforms for the criminal justice system, which range from prefrontal cortex training for offenders to the suggestion that teenagers might be deserving of harsher physical punishment because their brains are still malleable. Here, Eagleman is guilty of the same simplistic, reductionist thinking that he later reminds us not to apply when dealing with high complexity systems.

Leaving aside all the other issues with his proposals, two points. First, any form of criminal justice impacts not only the population of offenders. Deterrent effects on would-be offenders, perception of fair treatment, and even impact on society as a whole need to be considered (as an extreme example of the latter, we can all imagine that a society that administers public crucifixions is shaped by that practice, irrespective of its impact as a deterrent).

Second, our sense of right and wrong is deeply informed by everything that happens around us: what our parents tell us, what our peers tell us, what the media tell us, and what’s actually going on. Would we recommend applying Eagleman’s “prefrontal cortex training” to a child soldier in an environment where violence is normalized? Of course not: we would argue that our priority should be to take the child out of a bad environment, and to address the root causes. Then we should also be careful to understand the micro-environments that exist within society, due to a history of racial and gender inequality, failed drug policies, and poverty.

Now, imagine an approach like the one Eagleman proposes being applied to, for example, the school-to-prison pipeline that exists in the United States and predominantly impacts children of African-American background. Will those teenagers be helped by harsher punishment because their brains still have the neuroplasticity to learn? Of course not – that will only further reinforce broken trust, and normalize “might makes right” as the standard of social behavior.

Where Eagleman writes about societal issues, he is out of his depth, and his suggestions come across as naive at best and dangerous at worst. That doesn’t render the whole book ineffective. He is a persuasive writer, the science is interesting, and some of his conceptual vocabulary (“team of rivals”, “alien/zombie systems”) is very well-chosen to bring his points across. Overall, the book is a light read, and those who have ventured into the depths of neuropsychology even a little bit will find much of it to be familiar.

Truthout is a progressive news site that’s been around since 2001 and is run by a non-profit organization. Their most recent tax return shows about $1.4M in revenue. Most of that goes to salaries and most of which comes from small donations. I was impressed with their annual report which highlights some of the stories they’re proudest of – it’s very professionally done, even though the organization is much lavishly funded than, say, ProPublica.

They highlight their climate disruption dispatches, their reports from Ferguson, and their investigation into the anti-trafficking movement (which they call the American Rescue Industry) as examples of their best reporting.

In practice, the Truthout front-page offers original content alongside syndicated pieces from sources like Democracy Now! and FAIR. A significant part of Truthout original content is news analysis and opinions. If that’s your cup of tea, you’ll find some good reads here; personally, I’d prefer a stronger focus on news and investigative pieces.

The perspective here is progressive-left, but it stays away from conspiracy-mongering and clickbait. At a time when sites like “Bipartisan Report” and “US Uncut” offer stories that are often half-true or sensationalized, Truthout offers a rational alternative. That said, the site is simply too small to serve as a primary news source; I do recommend following it as a secondary one.

The Verdict

Let’s compare it with Common Dreams, which is quite similar in its political bias and focus. Common Dreams has a more vibrant discussion community, and it licenses its content Wikipedia-style, free for anyone to build upon (Truthout uses conventional copyright terms). I find Truthout’s content to be higher quality and their organizational transparency to be up to the standards of a well-run non-profit. I gave Common Dreams three stars; I’ll give Truthout 3.5, rounded down for now since there’s still quite a gap to larger non-profit efforts.

When I read Ted Chiang’s Stories of Your Life and Others, I was deeply impressed by the imaginative and intelligent writing, and recommended the book, a collection of several stories, many times. I always regarded it as a bit of a cult hit, so I never expected to see one of the stories (“Story of your Life”, which gave the book its title) turned into a movie.

The adaptation by Denis Villeneuve (Sicario, Prisoners) adds many artistic layers to Chiang’s straightforward story. We share in the confusion of the protagonist Louise Banks (portrayed brilliantly by Amy Adams) who finds herself thrust into a military-led effort to understand the intentions of aliens whose giant pod-like ships have descended in multiple locations across the planet.

The aliens are large, looming octopus-like creatures who communicate in ways entirely unlike our own. The struggle to communicate turns into a race against time and against old prejudices.

Hollwood’s favorite sidekick, Jeremy Renner, plays scientist Ian Donnelly alongside Amy Adams, but he’s mostly there so she doesn’t have to talk to herself. There are similarities between Louise Banks and Ellie Arroway, Jodie Foster’s character in Contact, but unlike that movie, Arrival avoids any “religion vs. science” detours and stays focused on the larger story. Interestingly, we don’t see many political leaders – we experience events strictly from the point of view of the main character.

As with his previous films, Villeneuve paces things masterfully. There are scenes where we slowly move in real-time towards the alien ship, mirroring the anticipation and anxiety of the protagonist. Later, we skip through what could be weeks or months, until the film returns to real-time as it works up to a furiously paced conclusion.

This is not a cheerful movie, but it’s also not a dark one – like Contact, it is an intimate story full of empathy and love, and like the best of Star Trek, it has a strong moral center. If you enjoy intelligent sci-fi, you will not want to miss this one.

Once you’ve watched the film, you may want to read Stephen Wolfram’s post about the alien language, the spacecraft, and other details he and his son Christopher advised the filmmakers on. Note the attention to detail: source code shown in the movie does real stuff!

I’m a vegetarian, but I do like the taste of meat and the ease with which it delivers densely packed proteins. So I’m always on the lookout for meat alternatives: seitan, tofu, tempeh, and various proprietary products from companies like Quorn, Beyond Meat, Field Roast, Morning Star, and others.

One of the newest entrants to the meat substitute market is Impossible Foods. Founded by biochemist Patrick O. Brown (co-founder of PLOS, a project I have great respect and admiration for), it’s received nearly $200M in funding, and after tasting it, I can see why. I suspect that, unless someone beats them to the market, this company is going to get really big, really soon.

For now, you can’t buy their plant-based burger in any supermarket. The company has adopted the clever marketing strategy of piloting their patty in selected fine restaurants. We tried a three course menu at Jardinière, not ordinarily in my budget, but it was a special occasion with friends.

The menu consisted of

• broccoli salad with impossible “ground beef”
• impossible burger with lettuce, red onion, pickle, chips
• Baked Alaska
• selected wine pairings

And yeah, this meat substitute is the real deal. A little charred on the outside, red and “bloody” on the inside, near-perfect texture, and most importantly, very tasty (easily above average by hamburger standards, owing of course in part to the highly professional preparation). It felt like eating a science experiment that’s worked. One of our friends was an omnivore who acknowledged she’d happily eat this anytime instead of real meat. I don’t think she would have reacted the same way to any of the substitutes currently on the market.

Unless people break out in hives after eating these or there are other weird side effects (none for me so far!), I think they’ll sell a lot of these, easily, once they hit the market.

What determines the shape and fate of societies? It’s ideas and stories, and their ability to persuade us that in order to stay true to our beliefs, we must take action to upend or to preserve the social and political structures that surround us. That, at least, was the motivation of Cold War operatives on both sides who sought to win the war of ideas in the 20th century. In her book “Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War”, Frances Stonor Saunders documented the workings of the CIA-funded Congress for Cultural Freedom to support anti-communist intellectuals.

In Sweet Tooth, Ian McEwan takes this grand battle for hearts and minds to a human scale, by inventing the eponymous and decidedly less ambitious program by the United Kingdom’s internal counter-intelligence agency, MI5, to bankroll writers of both fiction and non-fiction. Amidst the domestic and international turmoil of Great Britain in the early 1970s, the protagonist and narrator, Serena Frume, finds herself entangled in more ways than one.

When Serena, a low-ranking desk worker at MI5, is asked to bring a young writer named T. H. Haley into the program, she relishes the opportunity to psychoanalyze Haley through his short stories. We get excerpts and summaries of those stories, enough to leave us hungry for more, but the story progresses quickly as Serena and her subject predictably fall in love. Just as we fear that this little world will unravel completely, McEwan sheds a whole new light on “Sweet Tooth”, and brings the story to fulminant closure.

This is not a conventional spy novel, and it lacks the scale and ambition of McEwan’s “The Innocent”, the sheer emotional force of “Atonement”, or the darkly cynical satire of “Solar”. But it tells a compelling story about freedom, integrity, trust and corruption, drawing inspiration from the sordid historical realities of the Cold War. It feels in some ways like a reflection on McEwan’s own life and times. The degree to which this becomes apparent gives the novel a light touch of narcissism, which is just sufficiently tempered by irony to not become a serious flaw. “Sweet Tooth” is perhaps not “utterly brilliant” (as Serena Frume characterizes Haley’s stories, perhaps to win him over), but it’s a challenging, enjoyable story worthy of McEwan’s caliber.

Mother Jones (MoJo) is a progressive magazine and website, and yet, when it came to the candidacy of Bernie Sanders in the 2016 US presidential election, they were one of the more consistently critical publications.

They kicked things off in 2015 by digging into Sanders’ 40-year-old writings (when he was in his 20s), highlighting anything that could be scandalized, and wrapped it up by calling him a con man. No, that was not enough, even after Sanders endorsed Hillary Clinton and began campaigning on her behalf, Mother Jones titled: “Don’t Hate Millennials. Save It For Bernie Sanders.”

In fairness, most of those stories were written by one of MoJo’s most prolific commentators, Kevin Drum, who on the other end filed stories like “Hillary Clinton Is Fundamentally Honest and Trustworthy”, “Hillary Clinton Is One of America’s Most Honest Politicians”, and “New Email Dump Reveals That Hillary Clinton Is Honest and Boring”.

I personally don’t see much value in a progressive news source engaging in trivial commentary to elevate an establishment candidate running, literally, a billion-dollar campaign, while belittling and dismissing her progressive opponent. It’s after half a dozen such stories that I stopped paying attention to MoJo for a while.

But one shouldn’t assess a news source based on the work of a single contributor. Other parts of MoJo did break more critical stories, such as “Hillary Clinton and Henry Kissinger: It’s Personal. Very Personal.” and “Hillary Clinton’s Goldman Sachs Problem”, both by David Corn. That’s the same man who broke the story “SECRET VIDEO: Romney Tells Millionaire Donors What He REALLY Thinks of Obama Voters” during the 2012 election, arguably the most influential single story in that campaign.

The currently featured investigations include a four-month undercover report about a private prison that MoJo rightly compares to Nellie Bly’s pioneering work in the 19th century to uncover abuses in New York’s Women’s Lunatic Asylum. This is the kind of journalism that’s incredibly hard to find and deserves kudos.

In other words, while I sometimes would wish for more depth and rigor, and less participation in rationalizing the status quo, it would be unfair to not acknowledge that MoJo is still a pretty remarkable publication that can pack a punch. I’m not a subscriber or donor, but I do read it from time to time.

The Foundation for National Progress is the nonprofit behind Mother Jones magazine, with a pretty diverse funding model that includes grants, subscriptions, donations and advertising. As of 2012, ads made up only 13% of the overall revenue.