TomPaine.com was a

website A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google Search, Google, Facebook, Amaz ...

with news and opinion on

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

politics from a

progressive Progressive may refer to: Politics * Progressivism, a political philosophy in support of social reform ** Progressivism in the United States, the political philosophy in the American context * Progressive realism, an American foreign policy par ...

perspective, named after the political writer

Thomas Paine Thomas Paine (born Thomas Pain; – In the contemporary record as noted by Conway, Paine's birth date is given as January 29, 1736–37. Common practice was to use a dash or a slash to separate the old-style year from the new-style year. In th ...

. It featured a mixture of original articles and links to articles on other websites. TomPaine.com was founded in 1999 by John Moyers as an independent, non-profit journal of opinion. The project became best known for its opinion advertisements — or "op ads," a term coined by Moyers — which ran almost weekly on the op-ed page of the

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

, and also in the

Weekly Standard ''The Weekly Standard'' was an American neoconservative political magazine of news, analysis and commentary, published 48 times per year. Originally edited by founders Bill Kristol and Fred Barnes, the ''Standard'' had been described as a "red ...

Roll Call ''Roll Call'' is a newspaper and website published in Washington, D.C., United States, when the United States Congress is in session, reporting news of legislative and political maneuverings on Capitol Hill, as well as political coverage of c ...

, and other publications. Between 1999 and 2003, Moyers conceived and wrote some 120 op ads. Some of those launched national controversies and were noted, quoted, cited and/or copycatted in The New York Times, Newsweek, Time, Reuters, the Associated Press, The International Herald Tribune, Der Spiegel and dozens of other publications and Web sites; on the CBS, NBC, and ABC evening newscasts; and on numerous cable news outlets. An op ad was reprinted in a college-level textbook as an example of effective mission-driven communications. Rolling Stone dubbed TomPaine.com a "cool irritant," calling its op ads "perhaps the media's most visible outlet for apple-cart-upsetting truths about glossed-over issues." In April 2001, Alternet.org named Mr. Moyers one of six "New Media Heroes.". PC Magazine called the website "a great example of what an online journal can be.". The Communication Workers of American and the Newspaper Guild awarded the 2003 Herbert Block Freedom Award to John Moyers and the staff of TomPaine.com for being "a consistent voice of reason and democratic discourse at a time of increased political attacks on civil liberties and a flattening of discourse in the mainstream media." Moyers left TomPaine.com at the end of 2003 and TomPaine.com is now a project of the Institute for America's Future, a progressive

thinktank A think tank, or policy institute, is a research institute that performs research and advocacy concerning topics such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, technology, and culture. Most think tanks are non-governmental o ...

References

External links

TomPaine.com
American political websites Cultural depictions of Thomas Paine Internet properties established in 1999 1999 establishments in the United States {{US-politics-stub