The Kicker

The Kicker returns with our former host, Josh Hersh, and our new one, Megan Greenwell, in conversation.Between President Trump’s legal battles against news outlets, the defunding of public media, the rise of creator journalism, wave after wave of layoffs, and at least twelve hundred more things I’ve forgotten, Josh Hersh hosted this podcast during an eventful time for the journalism industry. Then he left! Now you have me. I’m an author and magazine features writer, and a longtime writer and editor at publications including ESPN the Magazine (RIP), Deadspin (RIP), GOOD magazine (RIP), and even some that still exist (the Washington Post, Wired, etc.). I’m very excited to be taking over from Josh, who—as you will learn in this episode—was one of the first journalists I really admired. Going through the archive of Kicker episodes from Josh’s run, one thing that sticks out is how many of the stories he covered are still relevant now. And a thousand new ones seem to pop up every day, so I don’t think my run is likely to be any less exciting than his. I wanted to have Josh on as my very first guest to talk about what he learned from hosting this show and what advice he has for me. We talked about journalists’ ongoing battle for relevance in the age of streamers and why journalists should never marry journalists. He even persuaded me to pay more attention to TV news. I hope to make The Kicker feel approachable and warm, like listening in on conversations at the dive bar around the corner from the newsroom. Mostly, I’m excited to talk to a whole bunch of smart people in the only industry I’ve ever worked in and call it a (part time) job. I’d love to hear from you about what you think I should cover on The Kicker and who you think I should have on. Let’s get going.Show NotesEx-Reporter Relies on the Book, Not the Pen, Joshua Hersh, Columbia SpectatorAlex Jones Says Trump Is Just The Start, Michael Moynihan, VICE News‘I Try to Find the Question That People Cannot Squirm Out Of’: Nashville’s Phil Williams on local investigative reporting, Josh Hersh, The KickerHost: Megan GreenwellProducer: Amanda Darrach

In 2006, Jay Rosen, the media scholar, published his influential article “The People Formerly Known as the Audience.” His medium was as important as his message. Although the essay would later appear in media-studies textbooks, it was first published on his blog, a form invented in the late 1990s that seemed, in Rosen’s words, to give everyone their own printing press. Armed with such technologies, he said, the public would no longer simply consume journalism as passive spectators. They now owned the means of media production. A beautiful democracy and a newly accountable press were sure to flourish. As Rosen knows as well as anyone, the world did not quite pan out that way. What was initially understood to be a technology of liberation became, increasingly, a mechanism of control: a means of surveilling the public, selling ads, and generating enormous profits for a small number of companies. Journalism and democracy both entered periods of sustained crisis from which they have yet to recover. The internet has even begun to abandon participation as part of its core ethos. As a recent analysis by the Financial Times shows, “social media has become less social”: partly because of these platforms’ algorithms, people are interacting with one another less and returning to the passive media consumption that the internet was supposed to disrupt. In this context, it seems that the people formerly known as the audience are… once again the audience.In this episode of Journalism 2050, Rosen joins Emily Bell and Heather Chaplin to discuss where it all went wrong and what journalists can do to fight back. Were the assumptions that the internet would help democracy and journalism simply naive? What did commentators fail to see at the time? What should we make of the return to blogging culture via platforms like Substack and Medium? Further Reading:“The People Formerly Known as the Audience,” Jay Rosen, Press Think, June 2006“Have we passed peak social media?” John Burn-Murdoch, Financial Times, October 2025“Winter is coming: prospects for the American press under Trump,” Jay Rosen, Press Think, December 2016Hosts: Emily Bell and Heather ChaplinProducer: Amanda DarrachEditor: Emily RussellProduction Coordinator: Hana JoyResearch: Samuel EarleArt Director: Katie KosmaIllustrator: Aaron FernandezMusic: Henry Crooks

It has been called “the last good day on the internet”: on February 26, 2015, Americans flocked online to watch fugitive llamas in Arizona evade their captors on a live broadcast, shortly before an ambiguously colored dress—blue and black to some, white and gold to others—was uploaded online. At BuzzFeed, which sent the dress to unprecedented levels of global virality, Ben Smith watched it all unfold. He realized in that moment just how popular divisive content could be. In hindsight, it was a grim foreshadowing: social media created the perfect conditions for an exceedingly polarizing presidential candidate to thrive.In this episode of Journalism 2050, Smith, the cofounder and editor in chief of Semafor, joins Emily Bell and Heather Chaplin to reflect on the thrill of being a journalist in the early years of social media, the internet’s evolution since then, and how AI has become the latest vehicle for techno-evangelism. Even as politics and the tech industry tack right, he insists upon his “core conviction” that good journalism will always find a way to survive.Should we mourn journalism’s past? How worrying is the future of the news? If Ben Smith was starting out now, would he even be a journalist? Over twenty-five years, as a blogger, editor, and founder—from Politico and BuzzFeed News to the New York Times and, now, Semafor—Smith’s career has always been a revealing indicator of the state of the journalism industry, and where it’s going next.Further Reading:“What Colors Are This Dress?” BuzzFeed, February 26, 2015“The Internet of the 2010s Ended Today,” by Charlie Warzel, April 2023, on how BuzzFeed News “defined an era.”“The New York Times’ success lays bare the media's disastrous state,” Emily Bell, The Guardian, February 2020“Why the Success of the New York Times May Be Bad News for Journalism,” Ben Smith, New York Times, March 2020Hosts: Emily Bell and Heather ChaplinProducer: Amanda DarrachProduction Coordinator: Hana JoyResearch: Samuel EarleArt Director: Katie KosmaIllustrator: Aaron FernandezMusic: Henry Crooks

Natalia Antelava, co-founder of Coda Story and former BBC foreign correspondent, delves into the troubling intersection of journalism and technology. She unveils how news organizations naively trusted tech giants like Google and Facebook, leading to compromised reporting. Natalia discusses the dangers of a 24/7 news cycle that prioritizes noise over substance, and highlights the growing power of oligarchs in shaping democracy. She urges journalism to seek alliances that uphold democratic values, moving away from complacency with tech giants.

Examining an ongoing crisis for press freedom—and how to manage security risks going forward.For Journalism 2050’s inaugural live event, Emily Bell and Heather Chaplin are joined by Azmat Khan, the director of Columbia’s Simon and June Li Center for Global Journalism, and Anya Schiffrin, a professor at the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs, to discuss the consequences of the war on Gaza on journalism and what history can teach us about the role of the press in times of crisis.According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, it took only ten weeks at the end of 2022 for Israel to kill more journalists in Gaza than had previously been killed in any one country over an entire year. The attacks have not relented in the three years since: while barring international journalists from entry, the Israeli military has treated journalists inside Gaza as acceptable collateral damage and even, at times, explicit targets. In September, Irene Khan, the UN special rapporteur, described it as “the deadliest conflict ever for journalists.” These attacks on journalism, and the limp response from the US and other powerful countries, set a dangerous precedent for the future. How might journalists and media organizations take the defense of their principles and values into their own hands? What lessons can we learn from the past? What tools do journalists need to navigate this new world? Further reading: Urgent Ideas for Defending Press Freedom in Gaza, Columbia Journalism Review, by Azmat Khan, Meghnad Bose, and Lauren WatsonGlobal Muckraking: 100 Years of Investigative Journalism from Around the World, edited by Anya SchiffrinProducer: Amanda DarrachProduction Coordinator: Hana JoyResearch: Samuel EarleArt Director: Katie KosmaIllustrator: Aaron FernandezMusic: Henry Crooks

Douglas Rushkoff, a media theorist known for his insights on technology’s cultural impact, chats with Emily Bell and Heather Chaplin about navigating the present amidst digital chaos. They discuss the origins of internet subcultures and critique the dominance of Silicon Valley. Rushkoff shares his views on AI's potential to reshape employment and the fragility of billionaire escape fantasies. He highlights the importance of local journalism and community ties as resistance against authoritarianism, envisioning a future that balances global and local media narratives.

Emily Bell and Heather Chaplin speak with the smartest minds in media to discuss the roots of today's crisis in journalism, from democracy's decline to the rise of AI, and to explore the uncertain future of journalism in the digital age. This series is brought to you by the Tow Center for Digital Journalism and Columbia Journalism Review, with help from the New School's Journalism + Design Lab. Journalism 2050 is supported by the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation and available wherever you get your podcasts

This summer, Margaret Sullivan, the executive director of the Craig Newmark Center for Journalism Ethics and Security at Columbia Journalism School, and her colleague Julie Gerstein published a series of essays in CJR exploring what a new generation of journalism ethics might look like, as the media industry evolves. “It is conventional wisdom among journalists that while the world around us changes, our ethics do not,” Sullivan wrote, in her introduction to the project. “Yet a fresh look at our standards and practices seems a worthwhile pursuit at this moment.”Sullivan joins The Kicker to talk about what it means for journalism ethics to evolve with the times—and how she views critical questions around transparency, media bias, and whether the public editor role might make its return.Read More:*“A New Look at Journalism Ethics”—A special project from CJR *“Is Objectivity Still Worth Pursuing?”*“What Do Journalists Owe Their Sources—and Their Audiences?”*“Can AI Tools Meet Journalistic Standards?”

On Thursday, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order barring federal agents from using riot control measures like tear gas to disperse journalists seeking to cover protests outside the Broadview ICE processing center, near Chicago. The order was the result of a lawsuit filed earlier in the week by several Chicago news  organizations and reporters who had been injured or detained while trying to cover ICE activity in the city. Stephanie Lulay is the co–executive editor and cofounder of one of them, Block Club, a seven-year-old digital nonprofit that seems almost perfectly built for this moment. She and reporter Francia García Hernández join The Kicker to talk about what they’ve seen around Chicago recently, and about what it’s like reporting on a city under siege.Read more:*The lawsuit filed by Block Club and other Chicago-area news outlets.*Some of Francia’s coverage for Block Club. *A September incident during which a Block Club freelancer was shot by pepper balls while covering protests at Broadview.*Dave Levinthal for CJR on how ICE has been routinely ignoring FOIA requests from reporters—including one from Block Club.

In 2017, Elle Reeve, then a correspondent for Vice News, became a household name when she reported from the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia—as neo-Nazis marched with burning torches and a white supremacist drove his car into a crowd of counterprotesters. Reeve has developed an expertise on what you might call the fringe beat, covering shadowy internet groups and right-wing political movements for CNN.Those worlds collided when a very online man assassinated the right-wing political star Charlie Kirk in a meme-drenched attack that left much of the media world mystified. Reeve joins The Kicker to help make sense of it all.Read More:*Elle recently spoke about interviewing extreme figures with CNN’s Donie O'Sullivan *Black Pill, Elle’s 2024 book on her journeys into the “darkest corners of the internet”*“Charlottesville: Race and Terror,” the 2017 Vice News documentary