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In March, the digital literary magazine Guernica published a personal essay by a British Israeli writer and translator, about her experiences in the aftermath of the October 7 Hamas terror attacks.
It was raw and honest and painful to read. The writer, Joanna Chen, had spent years before the attacks and subsequent war on Gaza volunteering for an organization that transported Palestinian children into Israeli territory for medical care; after October 7, she found it hard to connect with the work.
After the piece was initially published, in March, a number of Guernica staffersâall of them volunteersâexpressed outrage that the magazine had published an essay centered on the internal moral agonies of an Israeli, at a time when Palestinians were being brutally killed.
The publisher of Guernica pulled the essay; within a month, Jina Moore Ngarambe, the editor in chief, resigned.
Today on The Kicker: a conversation with Jina about what she learned from the experience, and why she believes so strongly in journalismâs responsibility to present uncomfortable perspectives.
Read more:
Joanna Chenâs essay, âFrom the edges of a broken worldâ (as republished by Washington Monthly)
Guernica founder Michael Archerâs explanation for why the essay was taken down
Jinaâs interview with Semafor
Hosted by Josh Hersh
Produced by Amanda Darrach
Audio Mix by William Flynn
Episode website -
In late May, Kyle Clark went viral after he moderated a debate featuring six Republican candidates for Coloradoâs Fourth Congressional District, including Rep. Lauren Boebert.
He refused to allow the candidates to evade his direct questions with waffling, rambly answers, instead repeatedly cutting them off: âYou didnât make any attempt to answer the actual question,â he said at one point.
Over the next few weeks, his management of the debate was hailed by everyone from the Poynter Institute to Jimmy Kimmel, who told his national audience, âThatâs how you run a debate, right there, like a drill sergeant!â
A few months on, Clark has mixed feelings about all the social media fanfareâbut heâs happy that his no-nonsense approach to interviewing politicians has caught on.
He joins The Kicker ahead of the upcoming presidential debate, between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, to talk about the importance of the media calling out falsehoods, and why local news is central to restoring public trust in the media.
Watch the full 9News debate, from May, here.
Hosted by Josh Hersh
Produced by Amanda Darrach
Research by Kevin Lind
Episode Website -
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In early 2023, Patrick Lohmann, a reporter for the nonprofit Source NM, moved to the small town of Las Vegas, New Mexico, to learn how residents were coping with the aftermath of the largest wildfire in state history.
What he learned there was that the destruction brought on by wildfires doesnât end when the fire itself goes out. It can take years for people to extract benefits from the federal bureaucracy, and for communities to fully recoverâif they ever do. Wildfires leave behind debris that can be swept up in devastating flash floods, and in many parts of the country, the âfire seasonâ encompasses most of the year.
Pat spoke to The Kicker about the new reality of wildfires, and why all reporters living in fire-prone areas may eventually find themselves covering wildfires.
Read more of Patrick Lohmannâs reporting at Source NM
Patrick moved to Las Vegas, New Mexico to cover the aftermath of the Hermit's Peak/Calf Canyon Fire
How wildfires led to flash flooding in Ruidoso (NYT)
Hosted by Josh Hersh
Produced by Amanda Darrach
Research by Kevin Lind
Episode Website -
The Democrats are gathering in Chicago next week, and the sitting president has dropped out of the race. But as the guests on todayâs podcast remind us, that doesnât mean history is repeating itself.
In 1968, Ted Koppel was just back from a tour covering the war in Vietnam, and assigned to the comparatively tameâif, as he reminds us, not without its momentsâpresidential campaign of Republican Richard Nixon.
Over on the Democratic side, as historian Heather Hendershot writes in her recent book, When the News Broke: 1968 and the Polarizing of America, the media were about to get a rough introduction to how much audience appetites for news were shifting.
For more reminiscences on the politics of â68âand its present-day lessons for the news mediaâin CJRâs special report, reported by Kevin Lind.
Hosted by Josh Hersh
Produced by Amanda Darrach
Research by Kevin Lind
Episode Website -
Eugene Daniels is a White House reporter for Politico, with a special focus on Kamala Harris. Thatâs put him front and center for a month of news that few people in politics saw coming.
On this episode of The Kicker, Daniels shares what heâs learned from nearly four years of covering the vice president, how her relationship with the press will differ from the presidentâs, and why you canât blame the media for Bidenâs decision to drop out of the race.
Produced by Emily Russell
Hosted by Josh Hersh
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Lorena Lopez came to the United States from her home country of Nicaragua, where she was an investigative reporter, in 1992. But it wasnât until 2016 that she managed to return to her passion, as the founding editor of La Prensa, a Spanish-language newspaper serving Western Iowa.
On this weekâs Kicker, Lopez talks about her long journey back to journalism, why reliable, trusted information available for Spanish-speaking Americans is so hard to come byâand why so many of her readers are leaning towards voting for Donald Trump.
You can read more about Lopezâs work in Jack Herreraâs profile, which was part of CJRâs Election Issue. (A Spanish-language version of the article is available here.)
Hosted by Josh Hersh
Produced by Amanda Darrach
Research by Kevin Lind
Episode Website -
Alex Thompson, a national political correspondent for Axios, first reported that President Biden had started wearing special sneakers, in part to reduce the risk of tripping, last fall.
But until the debate last week, he was still one of a small handful of reporters who was aggressively pursuing direct evidence that Bidenâs age â regular fodder for political talk shows â was actually having an impact.
He joins the Kicker to talk about what itâs like to do that kind of journalism, how the White House pushed back, and why so many people had a hard time accepting what was happening in front of their eyes.
Read Alexâs report from last fall about concerns inside the White House about Biden losing his footing.
And his coverage after the debate, when he revealed why the White House limited Bidenâs public engagements before 10am and after 4pm.
The Wall Street Journalâs months-long investigation into signs of Bidenâs mental decline, from early June, is here.
Hosted by Josh Hersh
Produced by Amanda Darrach
Research by Kevin Lind
Episode Website -
Paul Farhi was a media reporter for the Washington Post until the end of last year. But instead of retiring, heâs 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 journalismâs struggles to stay relevant amid the boundless other means companies and high-profile individuals have to communicate with the publicâand the growing number of people who say they avoid the news entirely.
You can read more about journalismâs apathy problem in CJRâs Election Issue here.
And read Farhiâs reporting on how some companies no longer feel the need to give any comment to a reporter, even when they think the story is wrong.
Hosted by Josh Hersh
Produced by Amanda Darrach
Research by Kevin Lind
Episode Website -
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 presidentâand why he believes itâs essential, even under extreme circumstances, for reporters to stay out of the political fray.
This podcast is part of âCovering the Election,â CJRâs spring special issue on news and politics in 2024. Read the whole issue here.
You can find Hermanâs Behind the White House Curtain here.
Project 2025, the Heritage Foundationâs blueprint for a second Trump term, includes a chapter on remaking VOA.
Hosted by Josh HershProduced by Amanda Darrach
Research by Kevin Lind
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Haaretz is one of Israelâs most respected newspapers. Itâs 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 itâs like to do accountability journalism in Israel these daysâespecially 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 prison camp at Sde Teiman
Omer Benjakob on Israeli influence operations against Hamas and UNRWA
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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 Universityâs efforts to grapple with a protest movement on campus over the war in Gaza â 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 campus after a lockdown was imposed, and supporting the work of student journalists, who were the only ones left on campus to document the police raid as it unfolded.Read CJR on the work of the Columbia Spectator, the undergrad student newspaper: https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/interview_editors_columbia_spectator_campus_protest.php
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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 GroupâVladimir Putinâs 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: The Rise of Russia's Notorious Mercenaries, Amel Guettatfi and Julia Steers, Vice Newsbit.ly/3UtURmh
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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 journalismâparticularly of the type that asks uncomfortable questions of what is, ultimately, a huge and powerful businessâhas been in decline. Last year, Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel, an HBO show that mixed softer features with hard-nosed investigative journalism, wrapped its final season after twenty-nine years on air. Josh Fine was an investigative producer at Real Sports for seventeen years. He has some ideas on how sports journalism can revive itself.
Host: Josh Hersh
Producer: Amanda Darrach
Show Notes:
Can sports journalism survive in the era of the athlete? by Josh Hersh for CJR -
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 publisher, how this helps dismantle the “American myth” of self-reliance — the subject of her latest book, Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream. In the interview, Quart and Pope discuss how the media’s reliance on this myth impacts electoral politics and what solutions exist. Quart suggests changing language standards, expanding recruiting criteria for newsrooms, and even reimagining news sections.
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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 the Kicker, Oslavska recounts the war crimes she documented for the Project and later published as a story in TIME.
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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.
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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 strongerâand journalists remain at risk. That may be especially true in Afghanistan since the Talibanâs 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 Authoritarianism Issue.
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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 countryâs newly elected president to revamp a state-funded journalism network. On todayâs episode of the Kicker, Feven Merid, a Columbia Journalism Review staff writer, tells their story.She explains the many unforeseen challenges Jacarandaâs journalists faced â the Nigerian governmentâs interference in their reporting, the lack of proper training and resources, the confusion over their racial identity â and, ultimately, how the problems they went to Nigeria to escape never really disappeared.Read Feven's article at https://www.cjr.org/the_feature/black-american-journalists-nigeria.php.
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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. In reporting the piece, Gerth interviewed Trump at – predictably – a golf course, and reached out to dozens of journalists who covered Trump-Russia, albeit with limited success. “Many of them are loath to want to discuss or/and engage with what they do,” Gerth says in the episode. “I find it perplexing.” For additional news on this story and on the media, subscribe to CJR’s daily newsletter at cjr.org/email
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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 weekâs 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 âickyâ feelings, and why the Davos crowd, including the journalists reporting from the conference, might have a skewed outlook on the economy. Also joining Pope in conversation is Mercy Orengo, a CJR fellow. Orengo shares insights from her recent conversations with business reporters tasked with covering an uncertain economy.
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