The Kicker

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, a Delacorte fellow; Mathew Ingram, CJR’s chief digital writer; and Amanda Darrach, a contributing producer – discuss the media issues they’re watching in a round-robin discussion with Pope.Subscribe to The Media Today newsletter at cjr.org/email

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 Journalism Review, in this week’s episode of the Kicker. Together, Pope and Bell discuss how journalists should (or shouldn’t) cope with Musk’s Twitter, which Bell calls “an unstable substance,” and what might be lost if Twitter were to disintegrate completely.

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 movies, and, of course, cats. Lots of cats.

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 episode of the Kicker, Smith discusses how the media should continue covering the former president as he vies for another term. He suggests greater contextualization of Trump’s quotes, less coverage of his tweets, and more.

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, The Nation and more talks with CJR’s editor and publisher Kyle Pope about why the media’s penchant for speculation in divisive elections.Also in the discussion: how the media grapples with writing about a democracy in peril. “Is this the election that will determine the future of democracy?” Barkan questions.  “Maybe, maybe not. But I have my own reservations about that kind of grandiose rhetoric.”

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 talks about his recent book, "What’s Prison For? "Keller shares lessons from reporting inside prisons in the U.S. and abroad, and contemplates the through line of his journalism career spanning criminal justice to the Cold War. In the end, Keller says, prisons and Russia belong to the same beat: freedom.

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 Channel showcasing the winners of the 2022 Covering Climate Now Journalism Awards.Haque talks with Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR, on covering climate emergencies in West Africa, and how climate change has touched his life, personally and professionally.

In 1975, at the age of twenty-nine, John Bennet got a job at The New Yorker, under the editorship of William Shawn. He was first placed on the copy desk. Eventually, he edited Pauline Kael, Seymour Hersh, John McPhee, Alma Guillermoprieto, Oliver Sacks, Robert Caro, Elizabeth Kolbert, Bill Finnegan, and many others. In 2001, he started teaching courses in magazine writing at Columbia Journalism School. He became, over decades, a mentor to generations of authors, editors, and students—recipients of his unimpeachable proofs and compassionate, bullshit-free counsel. Shortly before he died—of cancer, in the summer of 2022—he spoke about how life took him from a dirt farm in Athens, Texas, to literary heights, shaping some of the greatest nonfiction stories of his time.By Betsy MoraisEdited by Amanda Darrach and Mark Van Hare.

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.

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 Uproot Project, his initiative to support environmental journalists of color.