ThinkProgress

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ThinkProgress
URL https://ThinkProgress.org/
Status Online!
Archiving status Saved!
Archiving type Unknown
IRC channel #archiveteam-bs (on hackint)

ThinkProgress is a USA website, online magazine and think tank with left-wing leaning, run by the Center for American Progress (CAP).

The website has been preserved by Archivebot in July 2019, has published a few hundreds more articles in August 2019 and has been declared "shut down" on September 6, 2019.

September 2019 announcement

We are very sad to announce that after more than two months of searching, we have been unable to identify a new publisher for ThinkProgress, and we are left with no choice but to close ThinkProgress as an independent enterprise focused on original reporting.

Given the challenging trends in digital news media that have undermined so many iconic outlets, it has become unsustainable for CAP Action, as a non-profit, to continue supplementing the growing shortfall in ThinkProgress revenue. Despite conversations with more than 20 potential new publishers, including several extended dialogues, those broad trends proved insurmountable in finding ThinkProgress a new home.

We are pleased that other outlets have already recognized the exceptional talent of ThinkProgress journalists, and that a majority of ThinkProgress staff who were with us when we announced the sale have secured employment with other outlets and organizations, or within CAP itself. ClimateProgress, which started as an independent blog at CAP before merging with ThinkProgress nearly a decade ago, will be taken over by its founder, Joe Romm. We continue to do all we can to assist the remaining ThinkProgress staff during this tough time.

Given that we could find no new publisher, we have no other real option but to fold the ThinkProgress website back into CAP’s broader online presence with a focus on analysis of policy, politics, and news events through the lens of existing CAP and CAP Action staff experts. Conversations on how to do so are just beginning, but we will seek to reinvent it as a different platform for progressive change.

ThinkProgress and the hundreds of journalists who have worked there over the past decade, many having become leaders in their field, leave behind a deep and unique legacy of helping the country move toward truth, justice, and progress.

Status

ThinkProgress has been funded by a mix of donations and advertising. In 2016 it launched fundraising with Trump and NRA as a theme. Since 2017, the website got increasingly desperate in public about its declining advertisement revenues, claming that «Ad networks are targeting ThinkProgress simply because we cover white nationalism and other controversial topics» (ThinkProgress has a problem, and we need your help to solve it).

Most of the cost was staff, so the September 2019 layoffs may make the website self-sustaining at least in an archival fashion. From the announcement, it's not clear whether "fold [...] back into CAP's broader online presence" only refers to corporate structure (avoiding a separate entity) or also to software/hosting changes. Similarly, "reinvent it as a different platform" appears to be a wish about a future strategy rather than software, but might also be referring to a reingineering.

Software

ThinkProgress has run on Wordpress from 2005 to 2016, when it switched to Medium (as visible by the typical URL hashes). Around early August 2017 it abandoned Medium for various reasons[1] and switched to Wordpress.com, later branded as Wordpress.com VIP.

Old articles have been imported (2005 example by John Podesta) but the structured archives à la Wordpress (like /2005/) have not been restored.