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When Byron Tau came up through Politico, I was part of his mentorship program. I want to say, for the record, that I’m fairly certain he needed it a lot less than the program assumed he did.Byron was one of the most confident young reporters I have ever been around. He just seemed to know how to get whatever he needed. And if he couldn’t get it directly, he’d talk his way around it until he did. Young, brash, funny — and with Jennifer Epstein beside him on the White House team, the two of them bickered like siblings and produced like veterans. Being part of that newsroom dynamic was genuinely one of the pleasures of my life on that beat.I’ve always felt a sense of pride watching him go from that Politico desk to the Wall Street Journal, to NOTUS, and now published author and investigative reporter for the Associated Press. This spring, Byron was part of an AP team that collected the Pulitzer Prize for a global investigation into surveillance tools built in Silicon Valley, refined in China, and quietly brought back home for secret use by the U.S. Border Patrol. The citation called it astonishing. It was.Before all of that, Byron waited tables at the Cheesecake Factory on Wisconsin Avenue for nearly two years — getting his master’s degree, collecting internships at Roll Call, the New Republic, the National Journal’s Hotline — working his way toward a job that didn’t exist yet in a city that wasn’t ready to hire him. That’s the origin story. He got to Politico, got under Ben Smith’s wing, learned to be fast, learned to monitor everything, learned how a well-regarded reporter manages sources without getting spun. And then he was off.In this episode, we talk about what it was like to cover Barack Obama as a 26-year-old with a White House credential and the nerve to use it. We talk about the surveillance reporting — how it started with a tip about the border region, how it built through litigation records and a motorist from Houston who’d filed a lawsuit, how the Border Patrol all but confirmed the story before it ran. We talk about mentorship, and Byron is honest about it: the stubborn streak, the self-made impulse, the things he might have taken more of if he hadn’t been so determined to figure it out alone. “You were always there as a resource,” he told me. “I probably could have just used you a little bit more.”I’ll take it.And then I asked him what a Pulitzer actually changes.“The work is still the work,” he said. “Prizes are nice, but it’s not the reason we do this. The reason we do this is to tell stories that are important to the public and to hold powerful institutions accountable when they let down the people they’re supposed to serve.”I didn’t teach him that. But I’m glad he knows it.We close with Current Events — the segment where guests quiz me on the week’s news, knowing full well I’ve gone from consuming everything to reading the print Washington Post and whatever I overhear during the day. Seth Kaplan got me. Neetzan got me. Byron had the decency to go local.Guests lead, three to nothing.Press play.love, journalism is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lovejournalism.com/subscribe

I’m Darren Samuelsohn, and this is love, journalism.First time visiting? Please sign up for my love letter from the beat. Listen to recordings of ‘The love, journalism Show’ here.’The last time Neetzan Zimmerman was on The love, journalism Show, The Messenger was collapsing around us in real time. That was February 2024. He was one of the last guests I had before the show went quiet for two years.A lot has happened since then.Neetzan was once known as the Editor of the Internet — literally, that was his title at Gawker. He had a gift for understanding what people would click on before they knew it themselves. In November 2013, his posts alone drove 17.3 million unique visitors to Gawker. More than every other writer on staff combined.Today he and his wife Yulia Shamis run The Newsagent’s — a bookshop, coffee bar, and event space at 228 Fayetteville Street in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina. Used paperbacks. Vinyl. VHS tapes. Vintage magazines. No Wi-Fi. No Google. No notifications. Just artifacts and the people who love them.He put it this way: “The internet is everything now. The goal is to log off. Where is the exit?”The Newsagent’s is his answer.We talked about The Messenger’s collapse, the move to Raleigh, his store’s quirks, what he misses about journalism, and whether he’d ever come back. We also played a game — I’ll let you find that part yourself.This is exactly the kind of love, journalism story this show was built for.love, journalism is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lovejournalism.com/subscribe

The love, journalism Show is back after a two-year hiatus — and for the return, I’ve got someone who was there at the very beginning.Seth Kaplan and I go back to 1988. Same middle school journalism class in Coral Springs, Florida. Same student newspaper — the Jolly Roger. Thirty-seven years later, we’re both still in the business, still asking questions, still trying to figure out what this industry we love means in 2026We talk about the origin story, the long road through local TV news markets, what it means to leave journalism and come back around, and what the craft looks like from where we’re both standing now.Also: bar mitzvah pictures.Welcome back to the love, journalism Show.love, journalism is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lovejournalism.com/subscribe

I’m Darren Samuelsohn, and thanks for listening to The love, journalism Show. First time joining us? Please sign up to read love, journalism, my free newsletter full of insights, interviews, ideas and inspiration — and for podcasts like this one.Mitch McConnell’s decision earlier this week to step down from Senate GOP leadership in November sets the stage for a potential generational change in one important seat of American power.But the possible replacements for the 82-year old Kentucky Republican aren’t exactly Gen X or Millennial. The youngest of the recent names bandied about — Sen. Steve Daines, a Donald Trump favorite from Montana — was born in 1962.By all accounts, America remains a gerontocracy, a phenomenon that my former team of journalists at Insider gave the deep-dive treatment a few years ago in a 30-plus part project we titled ‘Red, White and Gray.’Our series started publishing in the late summer of 2022 and continued into the early fall. I’m proud of our epic effort, led by then-deputy editor Dave Levinthal, which involved the work of 40 different people.If you never read our articles and explored all the stunning visuals, please do. You’ll find investigations, explanatory reporting, historic interviews, polling, data, science and for the nerds amongst us there’s even a Dungeons & Dragons-style game that demonstrates how the American system favors seniority, incumbency, age, and on occasion, a bit of wisdom.The work is just as relevant now as it was when we reported and then released it, maybe even more so given the 2024 election looks like it’ll be a rematch between America’s two oldest presidents at the time of their inaugurations.Joining the latest episode of The love, journalism Show to talk about the project is an all-star cast of my former colleagues. Levinthal, now the editor-in-chief of Raw Story, discussed how our work was a bit “before its time.” When we published, not long before the 2022 midterms, he noted Biden and Trump were not quite going at it the way they do now in criticizing and ridiculing the other for being something less than a spring chicken. Nancy Pelosi, now 83, had not yet stepped aside as House Democratic leader and been replaced by Hakeem Jeffries, who is now 53. “And then finally it was Mitch McConnell,” Levinthal said, “who took until today to say that he was stepping down from leadership. So in a way, this is a moment to…we can pat ourselves on the back at least a little bit to say that many of them were prescient and ended up predicting kind of the state of play in politics that we're seeing.” Also on the show: Walt Hickey, a Pulitzer Prize winner and now executive editor of the media startup Sherwood. He helped pull and then analyze the data that showed both Congress and the federal judiciary have been getting older and at a much faster rate than at any time since our country’s founding in the late 18th century. Hickey - who is also behind the D&D game — talked on the podcast about how his efforts ultimately helped convince Dave and me to pull the trigger on going big with the entire Insider project. A show about America’s gerontocracy wouldn’t be complete without discussing the incumbent, 81-year old president of the United States. Nicole Gaudiano, most recently my colleague at The Messenger and a veteran of the Biden beat going back to his Senate days, unpacked her in-depth look into why “Scranton Joe” thinks he’s never too old to be president.Kimberly Leonard, now a Politico politics reporter, shared more about her examination into how the mind of an aging president is so much different than a younger president. Now the author of Florida Playbook, Kimberly also made the point that Sunshine State Gov. Ron DeSantis, at 45, could run for president for the next 30 years and still be younger than Trump or Biden is now.C. Ryan Barber, now a Wall Street Journal reporter covering the Justice Department and courts, talked about his story written with Camila DeChalus (now at CNN) that delved into how lifetime appointments have made the federal judiciary older than ever.And Warren Rojas , most recently a Capitol Hill reporter for The Messenger, makes his second appearance on The love, journalism Show, this time to talk about his story that put the spotlight on Congress and what it's like working for lawmakers “whose golden years are clouded by power struggles, rumors of senility, and constant second-guessing.”“It was a good time,” Rojas said, “and a lot of people got mad at us for writing about it.”Perhaps what I loved most about the series from a journalism standpoint is how everyone on the politics team got a swing at contributing. I admit this podcast would have lasted two hours if we brought everyone in all at once, so please let me give all a shout out here for all of their efforts.Here we go: C. Ryan Barber, Camila DeChalus, John L. Dorman, Kayla Gallagher, Nicole Gaudiano, Brent D. Griffiths, Madison Hall, Hanna King, Jake Lahut, Kimberly Leonard, Bryan Metzger, Grace Panetta, Eliza Relman, Warren Rojas, Oma Seddiq, Dave Levinthal, Walt Hickey, Rhea Mahbubani, Elvina Nawaguna, Taylor Berman, Rebecca Harrington, Sam Fellman, Skye Gould, Jenny Chang-Rodriguez, Taylor Tyson, Annie Fu, Kazi Awal, Shayanne Gal, Tien Le, Vicky Leta, Rebecca Zisser, Rachel Mendelson, Marianne Ayala, Tyle Le, Anna Kim, Havovi Cooper, Simi Sadykhov, Tanita Gaither, Amanda Howard, Victoria Gracie, Tyler Murphy, Rachel Lupton, Jensen Rubinstein, Grace Lett, Hannah Williams, Kevin Kaplan, Nick Siwek, Emma LeGault and Jonann Brady.Thanks for reading love, journalism! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lovejournalism.com/subscribe

I’m Darren Samuelsohn, and thanks for listening to The love, journalism Show. This is the sixth installment of my podcast mini-series featuring conversations with my former colleagues at The Messenger. (Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV and Part V are here).First time joining us? Please sign up to read love, journalism, my free newsletter full of insights, interviews, ideas and inspiration.My former Messenger colleagues have banded together since we all lost our jobs.On any given day we’re sharing lengthy and encouraging text chains about someone finding work or a job interview. A Slack channel shares tips on mental health and getting a good night’s sleep.We’ve created a new sense of community that didn’t exist when we were all busy writing and editing an endless stream of stories. It’s been a big help after the sudden end to our digital media company that had been the focus of so much intense media scrutiny. Here on this sixth installment on The Messenger’s end, I gathered together former politics breaking news editor Geoff Rowland and three of our top reporters: Lindsey McPherson covered Congress; James LaPorta wrote about national security and defense; and Ben White, the chief Wall Street correspondent.It’s a pretty fascinating conversation about our failed digital startup where we discuss our roles at the company, its startup culture, management issues, plus the media coverage and criticism that swirled during our company's collapse. One more thing: Please consider donating to this GoFundMe page organized for and by ex-employees of The Messenger to help my fellow former colleagues during this uncertain period.Our company’s nearly 300-person staff was let go on Jan. 31 without severance or healthcare of any kind.All the funds collected from this campaign will go to help former employees cover bills, living expenses, medicine, groceries, childcare, and health insurance costs, among others.#30# This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lovejournalism.com/subscribe

I’m Darren Samuelsohn, and thanks for listening to The love, journalism Show. This is the next installment of my podcast mini-series featuring former employees of The Messenger, the $50 million media startup that scorched across the internet from May 2023 until the end of January. (Part I, Part II, Part III and Part IV are here).First time joining us? Please sign up to read love, journalism, my free newsletter full of insights, interviews, ideas and inspiration.Rebecca Morin covered President Joe Biden’s White House for The Messenger. Lauren Morgan oversaw the photographs and other visuals that illustrated our work.Both veteran journalists played key roles in helping build the digital news publication from scratch but after 10 months of work are now back on the job market after the company shuttered.We talked in this episode about the many challenges in getting a media outlet started, from obtaining White House press passes to putting together an image library on everything from war to Congress and Taylor Swift/Travis Kelce.Our journalism conversation got personal too. Rebecca offered insights on what it meant to her to cover the politics and policy of immigration as a native of a Texas border town. Lauren shared tough-love wisdom about what it takes to make it in the business, as handed down from her mother, a barrier-breaking ex-copy editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer.We met to talk about our experiences with The Messenger and the future of our industry on Feb. 8, less than a week after losing our jobs. It’s a bittersweet, raw chat among recently laid-off journalists looking for their next opportunities to keep covering the news.One more thing: Please consider donating to this GoFundMe page organized for and by ex-employees of The Messenger to help my fellow former colleagues during this uncertain period.Our company’s nearly 300-person staff was let go on Jan. 31 without severance or healthcare of any kind.All the funds collected from this campaign will go to help former employees cover bills, living expenses, medicine, groceries, childcare, and health insurance costs, among others. #30#Thanks for reading love, journalism! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lovejournalism.com/subscribe

I’m Darren Samuelsohn, and thanks for listening to The love, journalism Show. This is the next installment of my podcast mini-series featuring former employees of The Messenger, the media startup where I worked until it imploded Jan. 31 after a nine-month run. (Part I, Part II, and Part III).First time here? Please sign up to read love, journalism, my free newsletter full of insights, interviews, ideas and inspiration.Editor Mary Papenfuss and reporter Warren Rojas had long journalism careers before The Messenger.That’s one of the many reasons why I so enjoyed my recent conversation with them about the news outlet where we all just worked until the publication died in a very public way to begin 2024. Leaning into their past experiences everywhere from the AP to HuffPost, Bloomberg and Insider, Mary and Warren were full of perspective on this raw moment where so many are still asking WTF just happened at our previous place of employment that had once promised to “break the news.”We talked about the allure of joining a startup, the challenges faced in cranking out so much copy and the empty feeling that has followed knowing our publication is no longer available on the World Wide Web.“I mean, to spend nine months creating that and getting it off the ground and where it was actually starting to coalesce into something I think pretty powerful, and then just to shut it down, to lose all of that work and money and such a shame,” Mary said.I promise this isn’t a total downer of a show too. Both journalist veterans shared their thoughts on the future of the media industry and dished advice to future editors and reporters who may be wondering if they’re better off getting a law degree. #30#Thanks for reading love, journalism! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lovejournalism.com/subscribe

I’m Darren Samuelsohn, and thanks for listening to The love, journalism Show. This is the third installment of my series of podcasts (Part I and Part II) featuring former employees of The Messenger, the media startup where I worked until it imploded last week after a nine-month run. First time here? Please sign up to read love, journalism, my free newsletter full of insights, interviews, ideas and inspiration.We are back for another dip into what happened at The Messenger with two journalists who know what it takes to get you to click on a story.Until last week, Neetzan Zimmerman was the company’s chief growth officer and the behind-the-scenes guru doing his thing trying to pull the strings on the internet.Ben Smith is editor-in-chief and founder of Semafor, as well as a former New York Times media columnist and author of the book ‘Traffic: Genius, Rivalry and Delusion in the Billion-Dollar Race to Go Viral.’On today’s episode of The love, journalism Show, these two former colleagues of mine (Ben and I crossed paths back at Politico) got into a lively exchange on The Messenger’s ambitious rollout, plus its wins and its losses. Tune in as Neetzan pulls back the curtain on some of the reader metrics that the news site was generating even as the business model ultimately sank the ship. And both journalists talk at length about their views on the future of journalism and what needs to happen for the news industry to survive into the 21st century.Enjoy.#30#Thanks for reading love, journalism! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lovejournalism.com/subscribe

I’m Darren Samuelsohn, and thanks for listening to The love, journalism Show. This is the second installment of my series of podcasts featuring former employees of The Messenger, the media startup where I worked until it imploded last week after a nine-month run. First time here? Please sign up to read love, journalism, my free newsletter full of insights, interviews, ideas and inspiration.I spent the last nine-plus months at The Messenger leading a small crew of beat reporters chronicling the first time in American history a former president of the United States has faced criminal prosecution. That’s a difficult story to cover, especially for a brand new publication facing all manner of internal and external challenges. But we did it — and I’m thankful that some of our peers in the journalism business have recognized our body of work for its speed, scoops and storytelling. “There’s been plenty of snark about clickbait heds and upcycled local news, but the work done by The Messenger’s legal team was second to none,” Liz Dye wrote last week in Above the Law’s obituary about our publication. Singling out several members of my team, she added: “Everyone in this business relied on articles from amazing journalists like Adam Klasfeld, Steve Reilly, and Maggie Severns. And if it happened on the ground in Fulton County, Alessandro Marazzi Sassoon let us know about it.”There have been other kudos too, including from MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell, who trumpeted live on air back in October during the early goings of the former president’s civil fraud proceedings in New York: “If you’re not following Adam Klasfeld’s live tweeting of the trial or reading his reports of the trial in The Messenger, then you are missing the best writing from inside the courtroom about that trial.”For today’s episode of The love, journalism Show, I caught up with Klasfeld, NOTUS reporter Severns and Ben Feuerherd to reflect on the whirlwind journey we all have been on. Enjoy.#30# This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lovejournalism.com/subscribe

I’m still going through the emotions that come when something big and important in your life reaches a definitive end. I’m talking about The Messenger, my place of employment for these last nine months — until Wednesday.We all saw it coming. There’d been a steady stream of articles over the last few weeks in other publications narrating our impending demise. The stories highlighted our business model built for yesterday’s internet, bad budgeting and a foundational belief that we could find ginormous numbers of readers who wanted stories right down the middle of the plate during a political era when so many get their information from partisan bubbles.Despite those headwinds, we were really just starting to hit our stride. The teams were gelling. Our journalists were getting prime time TV props. We were scoring big scoops. Readers were clicking. The news we covered was only getting more intense.Now, our website is gone. So are our paychecks, health care, benefits and the sense of security that comes with full-time work. My colleagues and I now join loads of other excellent journalists looking for our next opportunities in an industry that’s imploding and in desperate need of fresh ideas.Which brings me back to love, journalism. I stated this Substack nearly a year ago on Valentine’s Day 2023 with a mission to humanize journalists like yours truly who keep getting entangled in their own complicated love/hate relationships with this thing called journalism.I’ve kept the site dormant for these last many months to put my all into nurturing a new relationship with The Messenger. Then came yesterday’s break up.Today, I bring you a new episode of The Love, Journalism Show, featuring my now-former colleagues Marty Kady, Mary Ann Akers, Marc Caputo and Kayla Gallagher. We talk about our fun, crazy, sad and emotional journey together, driven by a love for journalism. #30#Thanks for reading love, journalism! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lovejournalism.com/subscribe

I am lucky to have called Josh Gerstein a colleague for nearly a decade. His reporting chops are unparalleled. His expertise on the legal beat unrivaled.He’s also one half of the reporting duo with Alex Ward that broke one of the biggest stories of 2022 when they obtained a leaked copy of the draft Supreme Court opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade. You probably heard about it at the time.Josh shared a good bit with me about that journalism experience of a lifetime in this episode of The love, journalism Show. He talked about what it’s been like to have everyone trying to figure out where their scoop came from, including the Supreme Court itself. He explained how there’s more suspicion among justices and their staffs since Politico published its story. And he walked me through the feelings that came with his team being named a Pulitzer Prize finalist.We covered plenty more ground too, including what Josh is prepping for around the potential for more criminal charges against former President Donald Trump and his advice for journalists just getting started in the business.“I'm a big fan of doing — more than studying,” he said before noting he may sound like a lawyer but he’s managed just fine with only a bachelor’s degree.Josh and I were in the trenches together at Politico. We were fact checking presidents together before fact checking was really a media thing. He showed me the ropes at the Supreme Court for a couple of other momentous decisions. We also were partners on the Mueller investigation beat, a period when everything was moving all at once, and then some.I hope you enjoy our conversation. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lovejournalism.com/subscribe

One of the many cool things about putting in a decade of work at Politico is getting to know many talented colleagues who have since gone on to do great things at other news outlets.Eliana Johnson is one of those people.We were reporters together on the Trump White House beat and on a couple of occasions even co-bylined articles capturing a few moments from that crazy period of recent US history.She left Politico in the fall of 2019 for a job with all kinds of new responsibilities as the editor-in-chief of the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative and still relatively new for its time digital news outlet. Eliana’s still leading her team, which is now keeping tabs on the White House and closely tracking things like the House Select Committee on China. It’s even up to volume 39 of its presidential “Senior Moment of the Week” for Biden, age 80.She’s also now a fellow podcaster who on a weekly basis co-hosts Ink Stained Wretches with Chris Stirewalt. This may sound familiar for the love, journalism audience: They explore their mutual love-hate relationships with the news business.In my recent conversation with Eliana, she shared her takeaways on jumping from reporting into being a first-time manager at the Free Beacon and what it’s been like leading a team of right-leaning journalists trying to skill up in the tools of traditional journalism.She also talked about the upsides of working at a news outlet that doesn’t get anywhere near the level of access and cooperation from sources on the political left compared with her mainstream media competitors.“I like to be the underdog and punch above my weight,” she said.Eliana tried to land a job with her Yale degree writing speeches for the US government before catching the journalism bug. Then came stops at the New York Sun, the Council on Foreign Relations, Sean Hannity and Fox News Channel, National Review, CNN and as my fellow crew mate on the Politico pirate ship.Now captain of the Free Beacon, she espouses to her charges how a good journalist doesn’t need a fancy college degree but really just an insatiable curiosity and writing chops: “This is not rocket science.” This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lovejournalism.com/subscribe

There was a bunch more from my interview with author David Allen that didn’t make it into last week’s episode of The love, journalism Show.So here it is.The author of Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity shared more about the techniques that journalists (or anyone for that matter) can use to help get into their zone for creative projects and then what to do to stay there.Allen also unpacked the benefits of rest and relaxation and shared his rationale for reaching Inbox Zero for email.“How important to you is emptying your garbage?” he said. “That’s how important it is to me.”Also in our conversation, I stumped him on a question about the most unusual place where he’s ever stopped to jot down a note. But the conversation did take an interesting turn when he shared a suggestion for what he does to capture good ideas when he doesn’t have a pen and paper nearby.Calling it “California whoo-whoo stuff,” Allen’s approach is designed for the moments that inspiration strikes and you’re, say, going au naturel in a sauna. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lovejournalism.com/subscribe

I first learned about the author and executive life coach David Allen in the early aughts while visiting the campus bookstore at my alma mater, the University of Missouri.I’m a nerd and like to see what the kids are learning about. That’s when I came across Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity on the shelf for a journalism undergraduate class that I’d taken just a few years earlier.On a whim, I bought a paperback copy. I was struggling at the time to stay afloat with constant deadlines while covering energy and environmental policy in the early George W. Bush eraAllen’s book taught me tons, including the importance of getting all of the ideas floating around in my head into my notebooks and journals. I learned how to prioritize and what it takes to get moving one step at a time to accomplish the things I wanted to accomplish.As a journalist, Allen’s book delivered some much needed manna in the form of how much easier it got to juggle reporting and writing assignments of the short, medium and long-term variety.I started building spreadsheets. I even got a little bit better on getting where I needed to be on time.Allen has been one of my go-to guides ever since.He was also immediately atop my list of potential guests for The love, journalism Show when we launched a few months ago.Introducing David Allen. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lovejournalism.com/subscribe

The love, journalism Show hit the road to Cincinnati for this week’s interview, where we caught up with MLB.com’s Jordan Bastian to talk about his sportswriting career and plenty more.Bastian is in his 18th season on the professional baseball beat and to be quite honest he has one of the many journalism jobs I wanted when I was a kid, covering the Chicago Cubs. It’s his “dream job” too. We recorded at a downtown bar in early April during opening week of the brand new 2023 regular season and just a few hours following the postponement of a Cubs-Reds game due to rain. Bastian shared the story of his own path from playing youth baseball to becoming a baseball writer who chronicles one of the sport’s most popular franchises.In our conversation, Bastian talked about what it’s like to spend an entire year reporting and writing on a single team, from spring training through 162 regular season games and a potentially tense series of post-season playoffs. That’s followed by the winter offseason when players and coaches frequently change cities. Then the whole cycle repeats itself.Sportswriting has changed a bunch in the digital media age compared to when I was just breaking into the business in the late 90s, at the very end of the print era. Bastian explained how writing about a specific game’s outcome is no longer a top priority for the job. Instead, he often focuses on putting a game, a player, a coach or a moment into context via features and a newsletter. Bastian described how he balances family life and stays healthy while spending so much time on the road with the Cubs. And he shared some of the advice he gives journalists getting started in their careers: seek criticism, read everything, say yes to assignments others turn down, show initiative and don’t be shy reaching out to people you want to meet.The Michigan State University graduate watches lots of baseball and revealed a bit about what a beat writer sees on the field as a play develops that the casual fan may miss. Bastian also gave his early take on this season’s new rules, including the pitch clock and runner-on-base to start extra innings. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lovejournalism.com/subscribe

We’re taking on a serious topic in the latest edition of The love, journalism Show: The threats journalists face in the US and around the world when trying to do their jobs.My guest is Frank Smyth, an investigative journalist, author and global authority on press freedom who runs a US-based training firm that assists media members going into hostile environments.We taped our conversation in early March and begin with a look into why there are more journalists currently in jail than ever before. It’s a jarring fact driven home again this past week when Russian authorities detained an American reporter for the Wall Street Journal on charges of espionage. In the interview, Smyth highlights what he says has been a slight improvement in the impunity rate for murdering journalists worldwide and he unpacks some of the heightened risks faced by correspondents covering wars in Syria and the Ukraine.We go through the reasons it is so dangerous to be a reporter in China, Turkey, Belarus and throughout Latin America. And in the US, we discussed the challenges and risks journalists face doing their jobs. Smyth offers advice for journalists working in the field to travel in pairs if possible and maintain situational awareness. A diverse range of opinions and perspectives can also be a healthy way to foster dialogue and maybe improve the safety of all journalists.“Criticize me, sure,” Smyth says, “but don't throw rocks or fire guns.” This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lovejournalism.com/subscribe

In the early morning hours after Game 7 of the 2016 World Series ended, White House speechwriter Cody Keenan pecked away at a first draft of remarks for President Barack Obama to deliver for a potential celebration heralding the Chicago Cubs as champions.The idea this was even happening wasn’t lost on Keenan, a die-hard Cubs fan still basking in the fact his baseball team had just been crowned world champs for the first time since 1908. He also didn’t know if his boss would even get the chance to give the speech.World Series winners typically don’t make their visit to the White House during the off-season when the players are all scattered around the world. They come the next summer, which in the Cubs case meant it should have been midway into 2017 when either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump would be the president.“We said, 'F-that,'” Keenan recalled in an interview with The love, journalism Show. “Either way, we weren’t going to give them the Cubs. We needed the Cubs.”There were other obstacles too.White House party planners had to navigate around the Cubs’ ownership, a largely conservative Republican family with members actively working to get Trump elected president. Obama’s aides instead arranged the visit through Theo Epstein, then the team president of baseball operations.As Obama’s second term approached its final days, Keenan delivered to the president a 25-minute speech drenched in baseball nostalgia. For sports fans, the remarks had the added fun twist that Obama wasn’t a Cubs supporter but instead rooted for their crosstown rivals, the Chicago White Sox.“‘This is really long, man,’” Keenan recalled Obama telling him.“'Just read it. What else do you have to do?,’” the speechwriter replied to the lame duck president of the United States.The Cubs’ visit in January 2017 marked Obama’s final public event at the White House, though some members of the team would accept a second invitation for a more private ceremony with Trump during the summer. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lovejournalism.com/subscribe

Ever wonder what it’s like to work for the White House? I hope you’ll come away with a better sense of exactly that by listening to the latest edition of The love, journalism Show.Pulling back the curtain is Cody Keenan, a former chief speechwriter and the author of Grace: President Obama and Ten Days in the Battle for America.Keenan’s recollections from two terms at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue may bring back memories of an episode or three of the West Wing TV show. But the real life drama he shares is way more real, including the challenge of writing words for a president with seemingly all the power in the world but where on many occasions they all feel powerless.“What's interesting is one of the actual things you have to do in the White House is fight against cynicism,” Keenan told me. “You have to fight against that impulse that you can't do anything. Because you can, even if it's not satisfying, even if it's not 100 percent of what you want.”Over eight years, Keenan played an important role in some of Obama’s biggest speeches, from key moments in the Affordable Care Act, eulogizing victims and addressing the nation after a series of deadly mass shootings, and annual State of the Union addresses.Considering Obama’s use of oratory to win the White House in 2008, expectations were often pretty high that the president would connect each time he spoke. That pressure found its way to speechwriters like Keenan, who recounts the challenge Obama faced speaking from the Lincoln Memorial in 2013 on the half-century anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech.“Talk about being set up to fail,” Keenan recalled. “It's like, ‘Can you go stand where Dr. King stood and pay tribute to that speech 50 years later?’ Sure, cool.”***Aspiring writers might want to listen closely to a part of our interview where Keenan unpacks the advice Obama shared to help break free from writer’s block, and also how to capture the muse when it does strike.“Read James Baldwin when you’re stuck. Listen to John Coltrane when you're not,” the president told his speechwriter as guidance before those aforementioned Lincoln Memorial remarks got drafted.Did it work? “Sort of,” Keenan answered, explaining that Baldwin inspired him to think beyond what “the inertia of politics” might otherwise have convinced him to keep out of a speech.“You read something like James Baldwin, and you're like, ‘Oh no, there is such a thing as right and wrong.’ And so I can say whatever I want,” he added.As for Coltrane? “That was the harder piece to absorb,” Keenan said. “Because it's just kind of free-form jazz and it would work if I already knew what to write. …You would feel like your fingers are moving a little bit faster. But it's not like I sat down and listened to Coltrane every time I wrote a speech.”***White House speechwriters are surrounded by lots of powerful people — think ex-governors, ex-senators, military brass, lawyers, rich supporters, close friends — who have their own ideas about the words a president should say. It helped that Obama gave his top speechwriters open-door privileges to him in the Oval Office, plus veto power to reject inappropriate suggestions.“So if anybody would try to sneak something into a speech through us, we had his proxy to say, ‘No.’ He doesn't want to talk about that. That's for something else,” Keegan said. Obama wasn’t an easy boss, either. He had his own writing chops, and staffers like Keenan entered into conversations with the president bracing for the kind of feedback that meant there’d be more work to do. “He'd always begin by saying, ‘Look, this is well written,’” Keenan recalled. “But you know as soon as he told us it was well written, we were like, ‘Oh, no, something’s wrong with it.’” This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lovejournalism.com/subscribe

President Barack Obama’s March 2015 speech commemorating Bloody Sunday’s 50th anniversary and the civil rights marches from Selma to Montgomery would have sounded a bit different had it not been for a pretty short article I’d written a few weeks beforehand for Politico.That’s according to Obama’s chief White House speechwriter, Cody Keenan, who I interviewed this morning eight years to the day of that historic presidential address for a special edition of The love, journalism Show. In our interview, Keenan described the heightened tension he faced spending six weeks working on drafts of the speech Obama was scheduled to deliver on March 7, 2015. While he felt “an amazing luxury” to have so much time to write, expectations were high given the symbolism of the nation’s first Black president speaking in front of the Edmund Pettus Bridge and paying tribute to a seminal moment in history.Early versions Keenan wrote weren’t ready for primetime, he recalled, and Obama even told him at one point he only “took a half swing.” Then, two days before Obama flew on Air Force One to Alabama, a late winter snow storm brought Washington, D.C., to a standstill, and Keenan got nearly unfettered access to the president for them to work together on the final draft.That’s when Keenan leaned on a technique that had worked before to help inspire Obama into some new freeform verbiage they could capture on the page.“I always found that a good way to kind of shake loose some emotion from him is to get him all hopped up on, you know, whatever the political idiocy of the day was,” Keenan recalled. “Enter Darren.” Time to back up and put into context why I suddenly and without knowing it would become part of this story through a completely unrelated series of events. For love, journalism readers, this next part will sound familiar because I wrote about it here just a few weeks ago.About six weeks earlier, on Ash Wednesday in 2015, I’d been on a Politico Magazine assignment for a long-form profile story about Stephen Moore, a economist and Republican policy wonk who was trying to find his way into a job working for one of the fledgling 2016 presidential campaigns.Traveling with Moore to New York, I scored an invite to an exclusive dinner he was co-hosting with about 60 right-leaning business executives, conservative media types and then-Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, an early leader in the GOP nomination battle to succeed Obama, as the featured speaker.Without any advance warning, the night took a dramatic turn when Rudy Giuliani showed up without unannounced and took the microphone to make some extemporaneous remarks questioning Obama’s patriotism.“I do not believe, and I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe that the president loves America,” Giuliani said. “He doesn’t love you. And he doesn’t love me. He wasn’t brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up through love of this country.”Giuliani had much more to say too, but the gist of all this is that my 593-word article breaking the news of those specific comments traveled around the world, prompted plenty of controversy and served as launching pad for a Saturday Night Live cold opening skit.Giuliani became the subject of an Oval Office conversation when Keenan brought up “America’s Mayor” and the love America comments in order to goose the president into the right state of mind for late-stage speechwriting. “Who gives a f**k what Rudy Giuliani has to say?” the president replied, according to a quote in Keenan’s book, “Grace: President Obama and Ten Days in the Battle for America.”Then Obama took the bait. “But it does offer an idea worth taking on.”The president and his speechwriter started riffing on the notion that they could “tell the fuller, truer story of America, this is a big, messy country that's full of contradictions and we've made mistakes, but we also, what really actually makes us exceptional is that we have the ability to change and that it's often spurred on by nameless, faceless voiceless Americans, who love their country and believe they can change it.”Both former Chicago residents who looked askance at how DC couldn’t handle any amount of snow, Obama and Keenan that day would go on to share five drafts between themselves. “Which had never happened before and would never happen again,” Keenan recalled. “Each one better than the last. And we just knew that it was a good speech, which was also rare that we would know that. I remembered he emailed the night before the speech. He was like, ‘This is great. I’m really proud of it.’ And that’s just something that never happened.”You can listen to Obama’s long riff on what it means to him to love America about two-thirds of the way through the full 32-minute speech. It starts when he references the American citizens throughout history who have helped change the trajectory of the country. John Lewis, the late Georgia congressman who 50 years earlier had been severely beaten while leading the Selma marchers, is seated just to the president’s right, looking on.Reflecting on the whole thing eight years later, Keenan explained that Giuliani had pretty much walked right into Obama’s Selma remarks by opening up a conversation that allowed the Democratic president to make history relevant to the current battles in Washington and around the country over policies restricting voter access to polling places.“We were looking for a little grit. You know what the speech kinda needed was a foil beyond, you know, the Bull Conners of the world, and Republicans who would come to pay tribute and then block the Voting Rights Act anyway,” he said.I’ll admit that at the time of Obama’s Selma remarks I missed the link back to my Giuliani story. The president didn’t give me or Politico any kind of specific shoutout. I was head down anyway writing the Moore profile, and my beat had me bouncing all over the place across a wide range of policy topics. I didn’t make the connection until recently when I revisited the fallout from Giuliani’s comments for my new Substack and a good source suggested I chat with Keenan.When we did finally connect today, Keenan added a couple of additional points of context.First: “As always, Obama would have lifted it somewhere it needed to be. But your story made it a lot easier by just giving us that. So, thank you. But yeah, without it we would have had to find some other, I don't know if he would have come up with the whole, you know, what it means to be an American argument. Maybe? But it might have been a little less pointed.” Second: There really aren’t many presidential speeches that are remembered beyond the delivery date. “Your piece,” he added, “just happened to inspire one of them.”#30#Tune in Saturday for more from my Cody Keenan interview on the next edition of The love, journalism Show. He talks about what goes into being Obama’s wordsmith and shares memories from the Chicago Cubs visit to the White House to celebrate their 2016 World Series championship just days before the president’s second term ended. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lovejournalism.com/subscribe

Here are some additional love, journalism Show bonus tracks from my recent interview with former US attorney and the author of Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance.We talk about her Substack’s aim to engage regular Americans who want help understanding the justice and legal system.“The silver lining of the Trump era is this increased interest in how stuff works,” she told me on Friday. “I promise you that in 25 years as a prosecutor, no one ever stopped me on the street and said, ‘Tell me how the grand jury works.’ And you know, that actually happens these days.”She loves the notion I used to blast out emails to former federal prosecutors seeking comment and insights and help understanding the legal system.“We all thought it was an honor to get to do that,” she said, referring to stories like these.On Substack, Vance enjoys a wide variety of styles. Pressed to name some, she says she loves the “rollicking good read” of Ask E. Jean, anything Letters from an American and specifically a recent column about Reconstruction and Ron DeSantis that she printed out to share with her husband and also Today’s Edition Newsletter by Robert B. Hubbell.Vance and I capped off our conversation by sharing the heartwarming backstory of how her kids inspired the chicken coop on her property where she frequently goes for mental health breaks. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lovejournalism.com/subscribe

Former US attorney Joyce Vance’s guilty pleasure is sitting in her backyard with her chickens.She’s been doing it since her family built a coop during the pandemic, and it’s a quiet place to go for morning coffee to catch up on Substacks and whatever else is on her reading agenda.As for how the chicken coop got there, I’ll let her share that story on this free clip from The love, journalism Show. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lovejournalism.com/subscribe

Today I'm sharing a secret about all the hard work that went into covering the Robert Mueller beat at Politico. To help decipher every twist in the legal drama I would frequently blast out a single email to a bunch of former federal prosecutors and other legal experts seeking instant commentary and analysis.My editors and I called it The Bat Signal.Enter Joyce Vance, a former Obama-era US attorney who frequently responded with simple on-the-record layman explanations that unpacked the confusing legal briefs and other investigative or court-themed drama that might otherwise look or read like a foreign language.Maybe you’ve seen her on TV? She answers the NBC and MSNBC equivalent of a Bat Signal as one of the network’s legal analysts. She also does a version of this on her own via Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance, a Substack I turn to frequently for updates on all-things-legal-involving-Donald-Trump.Joyce joined me on Friday morning from her home in Alabama to give The love, journalism Show’s listeners a rundown on where things stand on the many Trump-related cases that can be a bit dizzying to track. We discussed the latest on the Fulton County investigation in Georgia surrounding Trump’s phone call to state officials surrounding the 2020 presidential election and the “mysterious” interplay that is happening between the state probe and the separate federal investigations surrounding Trump now under the command of Special Counsel Jack Smith.I hope our conversation helps anyone interested in learning about the US legal system and provides some perspective on what may seem like the never-ending Trump show.There’s more from our chat still to come too. I’ll soon share her heart-warming backstory behind her chicken coop, and subscribers should watch out for bonus tracks.  This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lovejournalism.com/subscribe

Cue up the Miami Vice theme song for this one.I’m a South Florida native and sports nut, so I couldn’t resist quizzing local TV journalist Khambrel Marshall about his time in the mid-1980s working as my hometown’s sportscaster for the local ABC station during his recent visit to The love, journalism Show studio. Marshall delivered with stories about covering the University of Miami football team amid its decade of dominance and the Dan Marino-led Dolphins in the seasons following their loss in Super Bowl XIX.love, journalism is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.In this bonus podcast edition of The love, journalism Show, listen as Marshall, now a meteorologist for Houston’s NBC station, explains why he wears a bow tie and recounts dropping a pass from Marino that landed right in his hands plus hanging out at the home of Don Shula with his entire family.“Remember The Godfather when he's out there chasing around his kid in the garden and whatnot? That's what it was like,” Marshall said of Shula. “But nobody ever saw that.”Marshall dished up several other stellar sports stories too, including how tennis great Arthur Ashe helped land him a job doing pay-per-view boxing for HBO, when Chicago Cubs legend Ernie Banks asked for advice about where to send his kids to school and posing for a photo with Muhammad Ali. “Who does that?” Marshall said. “I'm just so blessed to have done this. That's why I love this business like I do. Whether it be sports or journalism, it just fits in exactly with what you're doing, talking about love, journalism.” This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lovejournalism.com/subscribe

I sent an email on Super Bowl Sunday 35 years in the making.The recipient: Khambrel Marshall, a meteorologist and the host of a public affairs show on Houston’s NBC station known for his warm on-air presence, volunteerism and trademark bow tie. I wanted to be him when I grew up.“Dear Khambrel,” I wrote. “I am sending this email to you in 2023 for something you did perhaps without even remembering it now but which had a profound effect on my life and the trajectory I've been on ever since.”I shared in my note how we’d last seen each other in the late 1980s when he worked in South Florida as a local TV sportscaster and the host of The Jimmy Johnson Show starring the University of Miami head football coach. My brand new step-father worked in advertising specialities selling logo-branded tchotchkes like t-shirts, coasters and keychains. His clients included the ABC affiliate where Marshall worked. Eager to impress me and well aware of my budding love for journalism, Rick brought me along on a business call and finagled a tour of the TV studio where Marshall answered all my questions about what it was like to work in broadcast news. In my email, I updated Marshall on my professional journalism career and told him he’s on my mind whenever someone getting their start asks questions about my career. “Wow!” he replied during the SuperBowl. “Great to hear from you and to know you are thriving in a career that you love. I've loved most of my 47 years in the business as well but it has certainly been challenging along the way!”A few days later, once ‘love, journalism’ had launched, I invited him to join me as my first guest on my brand new podcast, “The love, journalism Show.”It was so cool to reconnect. Marshall opened by sharing his journalism origin story of how he got into broadcasting because he liked the notion of shining a light on society’s problems.“My mother was a sociologist and I'm a mama's boy,” he said. We discussed how he came to learn when he got the sportscasting job in 1985 that the Miami Herald had just published a story with the headline below when his race hadn’t even been discussed once during his interviews with Channel 10. “I was like, ‘Wow, so this is where we are,” he recalled. “It's 1985 and I thought my goodness, this is not something I expected in 1985.”He talked about being raised by a family of educators who worked at a segregated school in Arkansas City, Arkansas, that was named for his grandfather, a principal and teacher for 9th through 12th graders. He shared how he had overcome the trauma of a cross being burned on his front yard when he was eight years old, and why he spoke up during the George Floyd protests in 2020 about a case of racial injustice that happened after the Civil War in his community of Sugar Land, Texas. There’s lots more in our conversation, including Marshall’s story of how Hurricane Andrew in 1992 propelled him from sports into news and why later after moving to Houston he moved into management and then meteorology. He shared his own adversity stories about how he handled not getting different contracts renewed, his reasons for why objective journalism is so important for journalists just getting started in the business and why his own pursuit of perfection makes it so challenging to watch his own newscasts. Marshall recounted a number of stellar sports stories too, including his favorite exchanges with Arthur Ashe, Ernie Banks and Muhammad Ali. I geeked out when Marshall described hanging out with Don Shula in the role of “Godfather” and dropping a Dan Marino pass during a charity outing. Those are available in a separate bonus edition podcast of “The love, journalism Show” you can find right here. love, journalism is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lovejournalism.com/subscribe