Paul Farhi was a media reporter for the Washington Post until the end of last year. But instead of retiring, he’s been busier than ever, chronicling the seemingly endless stream of bad news stories about the media business, for outlets like The Atlantic and here at CJR. He joins The Kicker to talk about traditional journalism’s struggles to stay relevant amid the boundless other means companies and high-profile individuals have to communicate with the public—and the growing number of people who ...
Jun 23, 2024•35 min•Season 9Ep. 6
Steve Herman was the White House correspondent for Voice of America during the Trump administration. He joins The Kicker to talk about his new book on what it was like to cover a deeply unpredictable president—and why he believes it’s essential, even under extreme circumstances, for reporters to stay out of the political fray. This podcast is part of “Covering the Election,” CJR’s spring special issue on news and politics in 2024. Read the whole issue here . You can find Herman’s Behind the Whit...
Jun 12, 2024•37 min•Season 9Ep. 5
Haaretz is one of Israel’s most respected newspapers. It’s also one of the few willing to openly criticize the government for its treatment of Palestinians. The Kicker speaks with Hagar Shezaf and Omer Benjakob, two journalists with the paper, about what it’s like to do accountability journalism in Israel these days—especially in the aftermath of the devastating Hamas attacks of October 7th. Read more: Hagar Shezaf on violence against Palestinians in the West Bank since October 7 And on the pris...
May 17, 2024•42 min•Season 9Ep. 4
Jelani Cobb is the Dean of the Columbia Journalism School. He is also a staff writer at the New Yorker magazine. For much of the past few weeks, he has been enmeshed in Columbia University’s efforts to grapple with a protest movement on campus over the war in Gaza – one that culminated in the takeover of a building, and finally, on Tuesday, April 30th, a police raid.The Kicker talks to Cobb about the role the Journalism School played throughout the crisis, including facilitating press access to ...
May 04, 2024•26 min•Season 9Ep. 3
This week, host Josh Hersh dives into the world of documentary news. Amel Guettatfi and Julia Steers just won the Polk Award for Inside Wagner, their hourlong Vice News documentary on the Wagner Group—Vladimir Putin’s private army of militiamen. They discuss their unprecedented access to a military training operation in the Central African Republic, the unique challenges of doing this kind of reporting on film, and why, sometimes, video is the only way to tell the story. Show NotesInside Wagner:...
Apr 25, 2024•41 min•Season 9Ep. 2
In recent years, numerous beloved sports news institutions have been shut down, or dramatically reduced their operations, while digital shows hosted by professional sportspeople, current and retired, have become ubiquitous, Meanwhile, traditional sports journalism—particularly of the type that asks uncomfortable questions of what is, ultimately, a huge and powerful business—has been in decline. Last year, Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel, an HBO show that mixed softer features with hard-nosed inve...
Apr 03, 2024•39 min•Season 9Ep. 1
News of stubborn inflation, increasing unemployment, and the housing crisis dominate headlines of late. Alissa Quart is trying to improve that reportage, in content and form. Quart is the executive director of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, which challenges traditional narratives of economic class and issues through funding original reporting, done by independent journalists from diverse economic backgrounds. Quart explains to Kyle Pope, Columbia Journalism Review’s editor and publishe...
May 12, 2023•25 min
Before Russia invaded her home country, Ukrainian journalist Svitlana Oslavska was reviewing books for Krytyka, a Ukrainian magazine, and writing nonfiction books. Now, she’s documenting war crimes committed by the Russians against Ukrainians for the Reckoning Project. Since joining the Project, Oslavska’s reporting serves two purposes — to provide detailed witness testimonies for court cases against the Russians and to publish accounts of the war in the international media. In this episode of t...
May 10, 2023•25 min
The Columbia Journalism Review recently invited journalists, academics, and experts to convene at a conference called "FaultLines: Democracy." In this episode, taped at the FaultLines conference, Masha Gessen, of The New Yorker; Jodie Ginseberg, president of the Committee to Protect Journalists; and Sheila Coronel, an expert in global investigative journalism, discuss how authoritarian regimes are erasing traces of the past and recasting history in dangerous ways.
May 09, 2023•37 min
For decades, Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty have broadcast into countries all over, in dozens of languages. Yet in some places where the United States has invested the most soft power, authoritarianism has only gotten stronger—and journalists remain at risk. That may be especially true in Afghanistan since the Taliban’s takeover. For CJR's latest digital issue, Emily Russell reports on hearts and minds media in Afghanistan and beyond.Visit cjr.org to read the Authoritariani...
Apr 19, 2023•34 min
In 1982, about twenty Black journalists quit their jobs at American networks, banded together under the name Jacaranda Nigeria Limited, and flew to Nigeria, where they would work under the country’s newly elected president to revamp a state-funded journalism network. On today’s episode of the Kicker, Feven Merid, a Columbia Journalism Review staff writer, tells their story.She explains the many unforeseen challenges Jacaranda’s journalists faced — the Nigerian government’s interference in their ...
Mar 13, 2023•20 min
Last week, the Columbia Journalism Review published a four-part investigation into the media’s fraught relationship with Donald Trump. In this episode of the Kicker, Jeff Gerth, who authored the report, talks to Kyle Pope, CJR’s editor and publisher, about the origin of the investigation and the intense responses to it, with which Gerth admits he is still “grappling.”On the podcast, Gerth says he considers his 24,000-word story an “anatomy,” reconstructing how the media covered Trump and Russia....
Feb 07, 2023•19 min
After two decades of attending the World Economic Forum's annual gathering of business elites in Davos, Rana Foroohar, associate editor of the Financial Times, stayed back this year. In this week’s episode of The Kicker, Foroohar tells Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of the Columbia Journalism Review, why the annual meet-up of global technocrats imparts “icky” feelings, and why the Davos crowd, including the journalists reporting from the conference, might have a skewed outlook on the economy. A...
Jan 31, 2023•26 min
At the start of January, Jon Allsop, chief writer of Columbia Journalism Review’s newsletter, The Media Today, tuned back into the news after a two-month hiatus. On this week’s Kicker, Allsop discusses what he found upon his return: a “ghostland” of a Twitter feed and a keen awareness of the “trivial” nature of the news cycle. In conversation with Kyle Pope, CJR’s editor and publisher, Allsop also talks about what media trends he’ll be monitoring in the new year. Other CJR staffers – Pesha Magid...
Jan 16, 2023•32 min
Elon Musk’s ownership of Twitter has inspired news headlines once unimaginable (see New York Magazine's "Elon Musk is Selling Off Twitter’s Cafeteria and Furniture"). It has also created serious problems for journalists who rely on the platform for developing sources, finding stories, and driving readership. It’s not safe to do journalistic business on the platform anymore, Emily Bell, founding director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism told Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of the Columbia...
Dec 14, 2022•23 min
Welcome to the weird, wild, scintillatingly stylish, and syntactically sound world of RED PEN—the grammar podcast that won't put you to sleep. Brought to you by the Columbia Journalism Review and hosted by old buds Ryan Davis and Mike Laws, RED PEN plucks examples from the news (as well as from novels, music, movies—wherever!) to answer all those questions you were too afraid to ask in English class. Digressions may include: Green Day's early work, the oppressive atmosphere of latter-day Batman ...
Dec 08, 2022•4 min
Writing for The Guardian last week, Washington bureau chief David Smith recalled that Donald Trump, announcing his run for presidency at Mar-a-Lago, appeared an “ousted dictator, drained of power and surrounded by a dwindling band of loyalists in his last redoubt.” Many in the media similarly reported a lackluster atmosphere and an uninspired Trump, whose splintered Republican base, deepened by mid–term losses and legal controversies, might be intensifying the nation’s “Trump fatigue.” On this e...
Nov 22, 2022•27 min
On today’s Kicker, what the media got right and wrong in the 2022 midterm election. Ross Barkan, a politics reporter for New York magazine, The Nation and more talks with CJR’s editor and publisher Kyle Pope about the media’s penchant for speculation in divisive elections.Also in the discussion: how the media grapples with writing about a democracy in peril. On today’s Kicker, what the media got right and wrong in the 2022 midterm election. Ross Barkan, a politics reporter for New York magazine,...
Nov 11, 2022•29 min
Reporting from Moscow in the final years of the Cold War, Bill Keller witnessed the Soviet Union “fall apart like Humpty Dumpty.” On this week’s Kicker, Keller says Vladimir Putin is trying to put Humpty Dumpty back together again – evoking international anxieties from the past. Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of the Columbia Journalism Review, asks Keller about these anxieties, and, alongside CJR staff, discusses how the media should approach nuclear speculation.Also in this episode, Keller tal...
Oct 28, 2022•22 min
Just as Europeans prepare for winter amid rising gas prices – calling upon their old ties to gas-rich African countries – a colonial-era island off the coast of Senegal erodes into the rising sea. Both these stories, discussed on this week’s Kicker with Nic Haque, a reporter for Al Jazeera, underscore the urgency of the climate crises that journalists cover across the globe. Some of that work, including Haque’s, will be celebrated October 25 in “Burning Questions,” a broadcast on PBS’s World Cha...
Oct 21, 2022•20 min
On this week’s Kicker, Rebecca Traister, a writer-at-large for New York Magazine and the Cut, and the author of “Good and Mad,” a book about the history and political power of women’s anger, sits down with Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR. They discuss why the press seemed only willing to cover “medically chilling” abortion stories, and how to protect sources as abortion’s legal loopholes disappear.
Jul 15, 2022•27 min
Should climate crisis coverage focus on the danger at hand, or on optimism and solutions at work? On what individuals can do, or industrial changes? As newsrooms struggle to reach a consensus, the Covering Climate Now Journalism Awards provide a model for impactful work.Justin Worland, senior correspondent at TIME, was just named CCN’s 2022 Journalist of the Year. On this week’s Kicker, Worland sits down with Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR, to discuss his climate crisis coverage and The ...
Jun 27, 2022•21 min
Nina Totenberg has covered the Supreme Court for five decades. On this week’s Kicker, the NPR reporter sits down with Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR, to discuss a court she says is more conservative than it has been since the late 1920s and early 1930s, and what happens next in light of the leak of the Roe v Wade decision.Nina Totenberg is NPR's legal affairs correspondent. She has a book coming out in September called "Dinners with Ruth: A memoir about The power of friendships," availab...
May 31, 2022•24 min
The Columbia Graduate School of Journalism announced today that Jelani Cobb will be its new dean. Cobb is a professor at the school, a staff writer at The New Yorker, an author, a documentary producer, and the director of the Ira A. Lipman Center For Journalism and Civil and Human Rights. On this week’s Kicker, Cobb speaks with Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR, about the role of journalism at a politically fraught time, diversity efforts at the J-school and in journalism, and the high cost...
May 13, 2022•22 min
Elena Kostyuchenko reported atrocities as they unfolded inside Ukraine until Russian censors forced Novaya Gazeta—her employer and Russia’s oldest independent newspaper—to halt publication. How did Kostyuchenko gain access to the country her homeland was invading? What did she see there? And how does she view Russia’s future?On this week’s Kicker, guest host Keith Gessen, who is a professor at the J-School and a founding editor of n+1 and contributor to The New Yorker, the New York Times Magazin...
May 06, 2022•45 min
Last week, after years of public speculation on the matter, the New York Times named Joe Kahn as Dean Baquet’s successor to the position of executive editor. How did that process play out behind closed doors? And, as the midterms draw near, how does Kahn plan to cover the threat to American democracy?Baquet and Kahn sat down with Kyle Pope to discuss objectivity, the evolution of the paper from a news outlet to something we’ve never seen before, and—inevitably—Wordle.
Apr 26, 2022•46 min
Al Roker, weathercaster for the Today Show, is one of the best-known and trusted names in media. He has also led efforts to educate the American public on the ties between weather and the climate crisis. On this week’s Kicker, Roker and Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR, discuss the evolution of weather coverage, from lighthearted entertainment to reporting on the frontlines of the biggest story of our time.
Apr 20, 2022•23 min
Over the past week, Ukrainians have used social media to document Russia’s attacks on civilians. Those efforts have been more effective at blunting the Russian propaganda machine than anything that has come out of the technology companies themselves.On this week’s Kicker, Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR, speaks with Jane Lytvynenko, a senior research fellow in the Technology and Social Change Project at the Harvard Kennedy School's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy. ...
Mar 03, 2022•24 min
In the five days since Russia declared war on Ukraine, invading troops have drawn ever closer and their attacks have grown more deadly. Domestic and foreign reporters on the ground are struggling to determine how much danger is too much, and where they can most effectively cover the conflict.On this week’s Kicker, NPR’s Eleanor Beardsley and Igor Kossov, a journalist at The Kiev Independent, speak with Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR. The two journalists, both attempting to leave the coun...
Feb 28, 2022•26 min
While Sarah Palin may have lost her defamation lawsuit against The New York Times, the legal climate for journalists nevertheless seems to be getting worse.Stuart Karle is a media lawyer who has served as chief operating officer of Reuters News and as general counsel of The Wall Street Journal. On this week’s Kicker, he and Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR, discuss the Palin case and why privacy law may prove to be the next frontier in the war against the press.
Feb 18, 2022•24 min
