The Kicker

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.

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," available for preorder now.

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 of degrees at institutions like Columbia.

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 Magazine, and the London Review of Books, welcomes Kostyuchenko to the latest in his Delacorte Lecture series.

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.

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.