• Widely-read and quoted leftwing Internet blog
• A "project" of the tax-exempt The Nation Institute, where its namesake author and editor Tom Englehardt is a "fellow"

TomDispatch.com, a "project" of  The Nation Institute (affiliated with The Nation Magazine), is a blog published more-or-less daily. It is widely mirrored and quoted on other left-of-center websites and by leftist pundits and broadcasters.

TomDispatch.com gets its name and content from Tom Englehardt, a Nation Institute "fellow" and publishing industry veteran who "compiles and edits" this blog. Englehardt edited the book Marx for Beginners (1990), and he authored The End of Victory Culture: Cold War America and the Disillusionment of a Generation (1995), which argues that America's national identity has always been "the story of their slaughter and our triumph."

TomDispatch.com began, Englehardt explains, in the wake of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 as a mass email (to friends, initially) of worldwide Internet articles that he deemed significant. Topping each of these articles with a line or two of his own commentary, Englehardt described his efforts as "a clipping service."  Hamilton Fish (the head of The Nation Institute) suggested that this mass email be put online. Englehardt describes his technique: "I wander the web daily for hours, and I put together, in essence, another view of the world … how Iraq is dissolving, or the Bush assault on the environment, or whatever it might be, with a lot of places you can go to check it out. It's kind of like doing large op-eds with suggested links. It's an antidote to the mainstream media."

More than 8,000 people have signed up to receive TomDispatch.com. The blog provides links to numerous leftist websites, including The Nation Institute, AlterNet, Mother Jones, JuanCole.com, Progressive Trails, Common Dreams, The Nation Magazine, Antiwar.com, Znet, and Democrats.com.