On April 1, 1996, way before anyone heard of a blog, Beat the Press began as a weekly commentary called "Reading Between the Lines" on the Economic Policy Institute's website. I started writing it because I felt that major media outlets were often obscuring rather than explaining major economic issues. Since then BTP has gone through many format and name changes. When Mark Weisbrot and I founded the Center for Economic and Policy Research over 10 years ago, it moved with me and was renamed the "Economic Reporting Review," or ERR (the acronym was not an accident), and in its tenth year BTP got its current name, became a daily blog, and joined the Tapped lineup at The American Prospect. I want to express my gratitude to TAP for hosting Beat the Press and exposing it to its well-informed and thoughtful readership over the past four years. On April 1, 2010, its 14th anniversary, Beat the Press will be coming home to the Center for Economic and Policy Research's website. Again, I'd like to thank TAP for graciously offering to co-post Beat the Press for two more weeks and redirecting readers to BTP's new home page. I hope you will not only follow Beat the Press to its new home, but also continue to check in at Tapped for the important perspective that they provide to us all.
--Dean Baker