The Kicker

One of the most fascinating sports business stories of the moment is the explosive growth of the WNBA. TV viewership is up dramatically, multiple teams sell out regularly, and stars like Caitlin Clark and A’ja Wilson have become household names. This year, the players’ union won a groundbreaking new contract, including their first-ever revenue share and a 4x jump in minimum salaries.The league’s recent surge in popularity has also brought new questions of access. The WNBA was the only major pro league that didn’t reopen its locker rooms to reporters after COVID closures, and many media outlets have clamored for a way to talk to players that doesn’t require going through team PR. The Indiana Fever stripped a press credential from a longtime beat writer after disagreeing with his framing of a Clark injury. For years, women’s basketball was enough of a backwater that journalists had more or less free rein; now everyone is trying to figure out what meaningful coverage looks like in a transformed world. Last week, as part of a special daylong event tied to the release of CJR’s new Access Issue, Sports Illustrated staff writer Emma Baccellieri—one of the best reporters out there focusing on women’s sports—stopped by to talk about how covering the league has changed. I interviewed her about how her job has evolved, why it’s more difficult than ever to ask questions of WNBA players, and what’s happening with college players getting paid through name, image, and likeness (NIL) deals. Listen below—or wherever you get your podcasts.Show notes:For Veterans Like Alysha Clark, This New WNBA Era Just Means More, Emma Baccellieri, Sports IllustratedShould We Be Worried About Caitlin Clark and the Fever? Clare Brennan, Dan Falkenheim, Blake Silverman, Emma Baccellieri, Sports IllustratedExpect Officiating to Be a Recurring Storyline During This WNBA Season, Emma Baccellieri, Sports IllustratedFever reporter claims credential revoked over Clark reporting, Michael Voepel, ESPNMegan Greenwell, hostAmanda Darrach, producerFernando Fermino, audio engineerAlex Hamm, video technician

Some of the most interesting journalism experiments aren’t taking place on the websites of publications. Instead, they’re happening on Facebook and WhatsApp and Reddit and WeChat and even Nextdoor, which I didn’t realize was anything other than a place for Karens to complain about loitering.Documented, an eight-year-old digital outlet that covers and serves immigrants in New York City and beyond, is behind many of these experiments—from producing a Chinese-language newsletter on WeChat to starting conversations on Nextdoor with Haitian Creole speakers in Flatbush, Brooklyn. In her first eighteen months at Documented, Ethar El-Katatney, the editor in chief, has elevated the publication’s investigative work and begun an expansion into video, but she refuses to lose sight of the mission: to give immigrants the information they need on the platforms they use.I interviewed El-Katatney about the common threads between Documented’s guides to city living and its long investigations, how differently her reporters work depending on what community they serve, and why Documented is expanding its ambitions to help other newsrooms. Show notes:Documented Gears Up for Trump, Lauren Watson, CJRThe Lost Prisoners of Chinatown’s Gang Era, April Xu, DocumentedFake Immigration Courts Take Advantage of Immigrants Desperate for Answers, Rommel H. Ojeda, Documented.Guide of Resources for Immigrants, Nicolás Ríos, DocumentedMegan Greenwell, hostAmanda Darrach, producer

When Ronald Reagan won the presidency, in 1980, it was a victory long in the making. For almost half a century, conservatives had plotted ways to cut taxes and undo workers’ rights. Their playbook for political influence went something like this: create a think tank, publish reputable reports, build relationships with journalists and politicians, and disseminate free-market ideas to the public, creating a new common sense. Today, the art of political influence is rather different. Think tanks no longer claim the power they once did and, since the rise of social media, newspapers and traditional journalists have lost their grip on public opinion. Perhaps this new state of affairs was best captured by Elon Musk when, shortly after taking over Twitter, in 2023, he declared that all press inquiries would receive an automated reply with the poop emoji. That is not the move of someone who believes the press is an essential tool in influencing public opinion.In this episode of the Journalism 2050 podcast, cohosts Emily Bell and Heather Chaplin are joined by two guests: Kim Phillips-Fein is a renowned historian of American conservatism and capitalism and the author of Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement from the New Deal to Reagan, among other books. Samuel Earle is the author of Tory Nation: The Dark Legacy of the World’s Most Successful Political Party and a PhD candidate at Columbia Journalism School. Together, they ask: How has the nature of political influence changed? What are the implications for journalism? And what, if anything, can the left learn from the right’s success?Producer: Amanda DarrachResearch: Samuel EarleProduction Assistant: Riddhi SettyArt Director: Katie KosmaIllustrator: Aaron FernandezMusic: Henry Crooks

“WHOA. Ohhhh. Freaking huge,” one of my favorite recent news videos opens. Emily Sweeney, a Boston Globe reporter, stands in the Museum of Fine Arts, gazing up at a thirteen-foot-tall, thirteen-thousand-pound Roman sculpture. Sweeney can’t hide her awe at seeing the statue the museum calls Juno, but that Sweeney knows from her teenage years as Gloria.Until a month ago, Sweeney was a rank-and-file breaking news reporter and the author of three books about Boston, her hometown. On March 31, though, her video about a dramatic home invasion at an estate north of the city made her a bona fide viral star. Dressed in a navy Adidas track jacket, with spiky platinum-blond hair and two silver hoops in each ear, she looks and sounds like the Platonic ideal of a native Bostonian, dropping R’s like they’re poisonous. Nearly three thousand people, including Ava DuVernay, the director, chimed in on Instagram, many of them saying they wanted more Sweeney videos. More than ninety-six thousand liked the video on TikTok. The Globe listened: Sweeney is now a regular on the paper’s social platforms—always in a different track jacket, always reading the news in that thick Boston accent. I talked to Sweeney about thinking she couldn’t be on camera because she doesn’t have the right look, her obsession with the weirdest parts of her hometown’s history, and what she’s learned about building relationships with readers. Listen below, or wherever you get your podcasts.Show notes:“What’s the story behind this statue at the MFA?” Emily Sweeney, Boston Globe, Instagram video “What we know about the mysterious Beverly mansion robbery.” Emily Sweeney, Boston Globe, Instagram videoDropkick Murphy: A Legendary Life. Emily Sweeney.Megan Greenwell, hostAmanda Darrach, producer

Before Elon Musk, there was Henry Ford: an attention-seeking car manufacturer, newspaper owner, and media celebrity who pushed reactionary views on the public and transformed society around his business interests. “Fordism” was more than a mode of production, it was a way of organizing society, involving large factories, nuclear families, stable employment, and affordable cars, refrigerators, and televisions.In a new book, Muskism, Ben Tarnoff, a technology writer, and Quinn Slobodian, a historian at Boston University, analyze Musk in similar terms, as a maverick businessman who stands for a new type of society and a new social contract. They find that “Muskism” provides a far more dystopian package than Fordism’s offering. It is a world of strict and unforgiving hierarchies where governments exist in symbiotic relationship with Silicon Valley, social welfare erodes, and Musk is a self-appointed “techno-king.” Want safety or stability? Buy a Cybertruck. In this episode of the Journalism 2050 podcast, Tarnoff and Slobodian join cohosts Emily Bell and Heather Chaplin to discuss Muskism’s vision of society, where it came from, and what the implications for journalism are. What does Muskism offer the public besides dystopia? How did Musk’s purchase of Twitter fit into his plans? What does journalism free from Muskism look like?Producer: Amanda DarrachProduction Coordinator: Hana JoyResearch: Samuel EarleArt Director: Katie KosmaIllustrator: Aaron FernandezMusic: Henry Crooks

I have a galaxy-brained theory that the most effective fundraisers in the country aren’t politicians or the heads of major foundations, but a pair of Atlanta-based college football bloggers.Two decades ago, Spencer Hall—best known as the creator of Every Day Should Be Saturday, a site covering college football with a mix of analytical skills and many inside jokes—decided to raise money for refugees in the Atlanta area. Hall had worked for a refugee services organization before pivoting to writing, so he put out the call to his readers and raised a few thousand dollars. After a couple of years of this, he and Holly Anderson, his fellow blogger, had an idea: Why not use college football rivalries to raise even more money? There’s nothing fans love more than destroying their most hated opponent, they figured, so they’d make the fundraiser a competition. Fans began donating in honor of their favorite team, often choosing the amount based on a significant number, like the score of a big game. The Charitbundi Bowl was born. The fundraiser continued after Vox Media bought Every Day Should Be Saturday, and after Hall and Anderson left the company, in 2020.To say their plan worked would be a comic understatement. Last year, Hall and Anderson—who now run a subscription-based college football site called Channel 6—raised more than 1.3 million dollars for New American Pathways, becoming its largest nongovernmental source of funds. The 2026 event, which runs through this weekend, crossed the million-dollar mark Wednesday evening. (You can donate to support your favorite team—real or fictional—here and see the leaderboard here.)I talked to Hall about his career from independent blogger to SB Nation editorial director and back again, being dismissed by Vox Media as “too niche,” and what it takes for a publication’s readership to become a real community. Listen below, or wherever you get your podcasts.Show notes:How we got here. Spencer Hall, Channel 6EDSBS Charity Bowl FAQNew American Pathways2026 EDSBS Charity Bowl Bluesky FeedMegan Greenwell, hostAmanda Darrach, producer

I’ve spent my entire professional career in journalism, but student publications are still my favorite news outlets. I broke the biggest story of my life for my high school newspaper, and I find something so infectious about the energy of students who aren’t yet jaded about the industry or the job market, who just want to write about topics that matter to their peers. Us pros can learn a lot from them.Eric Gustafson is one of the few people I’ve ever spoken to whose passion for student journalism rivals my own. A longtime journalist, he took over the journalism program at Lowell High, a prestigious San Francisco public school, in 2017. Last year, after a couple of controversial stories about student drug use, teacher sexual harassment, and AI grading—including one that the student paper, The Lowell, never even published—he was removed from the role. California, Gustafson knew, has one of the strongest laws in the country protecting the independence of student journalists and their advisers. He sued his employer, and he won: his reassignment was illegal, a state superior court found. In this episode, I talk to Gustafson about The Lowell’s steady stream of major stories, his decision to sue, the backlash from his colleagues, and why student journalism matters. Listen below—or wherever you get your podcasts.Show notes:Obtainable and addictive. Isadore Diamond and Clarabelle Fields, The LowellInvasive and inappropriate. Ramona Jacobson, Serena Miller, and Dakota Colussi, The LowellKnow your student press rights. The Student Press Law CenterFinal judgment, Eric Gustafson v. San Francisco Unified School District. Superior Court for California for the County of San FranciscoJudge rules that Lowell High School journalism teacher’s reassignment was illegal. Jill Tucker, San Francisco ChronicleLowell students open up about experiences with math teacher Tom Chan. Milena Garrone and Amálie Cimala, The LowellMegan Greenwell, hostAmanda Darrach, producer

I must confess that initially I was a bit skeptical of the concept. The New York Times was promoting a Q&A with two technology reporters, Mike Isaac and Sheera Frankel, and their editor, Pui-Wing Tam. The headline, in 2014 BuzzFeed style, was “Reporters Seek Comment. What Happens Next May Surprise You.” Over the course of several hundred words, Isaac, Frankel, and Tam explained how they ask sources for answers, especially those who might not be inclined to respond. Who is this for? I wondered. Who is this going to convince?So I called up Mike Abrams, the Times’ deputy trust editor, who conducted that Q&A, part of a series that runs under the “Times Insider” vertical. I wanted to know why he thinks trust in media is so low and why, after twenty-two years at the Times, this was the problem he wanted to work on. We talked about how all those front-facing videos that reporters are doing relate to trust, and how his role differs from that of the outlet’s PR staff biting back at criticism on X and Bluesky. And we got into the critiques of specific storylines: Trump, Gaza, trans medical care. Listen here—or wherever you get your podcasts.Show notes:Reporters seek comment. What happens next may surprise you. Mike Abrams, New York TimesTrust in Media at New Low of 28% in U.S. Megan Brenan, GallupSeen but not heard: The New York Times failed to quote trans people in two-thirds of stories on anti-trans legislation in a one-year period. Vesper Henry and Ari Drennan, Media Matters and GLAADMegan Greenwell, hostAmanda Darrach, producer

When I took over the Kicker host chair, one of the things I was most excited to do was to interview early-career journalists, who see the changes to our industry from an entirely different perspective from those of us who’ve been around since the days when Twitter was king, or before social media existed. I’ve always loved working with young people—among my many freelance gigs, I help run a program for high school journalists—because I feel like I get smarter (and hopefully even marginally more relevant?) every time I talk to them.For going on seven years now, Sofia Barnett has been one of my favorite young journalists to talk to. From the first time I met her, when she was a high school junior outside Dallas, she’s been uncommonly driven: toward a career in journalism, toward telling the stories of Indigenous Americans like herself, toward seeing the world and writing about all of it. Now, at twenty-three, she’s covered more big stories than many people do in a full career. She wound up at the Minnesota Star Tribune fresh out of college, moving to Minneapolis just in time for perhaps the newsiest year in the city’s history. As an intern, she was the first reporter on the scene of the Annunciation Catholic Church school shooting last August. Then, while formally assigned to cover the suburbs, she was named to the five-person team covering the Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids on the city.In this episode, Barnett and I talk about all of that, plus about how she thinks about a career in this tumultuous time for journalism. Listen below—or wherever you get your podcasts.Show notes:He couldn’t run. So they covered him instead. Sofia Barnett, Minnesota Star Tribune‘Just another Native’: Minneapolis Indigenous women demand emergency response to violence. Sofia Barnett, Minnesota Star TribuneTexas ranks almost dead last in the nation for women’s health care, research shows. Sofia Barnett, Dallas Morning NewsThe Princeton Summer Journalism ProgramMegan Greenwell, hostAmanda Darrach, producer

Since October 7, 2023, Miriam Berger has been on assignment in Jerusalem, covering Israel, Palestine, and war. A few weeks ago, she learned she and hundreds of colleagues were being laid off.One perk of hosting an interview podcast is having the opportunity to talk to journalists whose work I’ve admired for years but might never have met otherwise. Miriam Berger is one such journalist. She’s written some of the best articles I’ve read from Israel and Palestine: rich, textured narratives that tell stories of complicated human realities. A Philadelphia native, she’s spent a significant chunk of her career in the Middle East, working in both Arabic and Hebrew and becoming a go-to authority on the war.Though it was a thrill to get to speak with Berger, the peg for our conversation was a brutal one: She was one of three hundred–plus journalists who learned early this month that they would be laid off by the Washington Post, a dismantling that all but eliminated the publication’s international desk. Berger was on leave when the cuts were announced, working on a book about Israel’s starvation of Gaza. In this week’s episode of The Kicker, she and I talked about how media coverage of the region has evolved since October 7, 2023; how she reported stories from Gaza despite Israel banning reporters from entering; and the outdated distinctions Western media outlets draw between journalists sent from HQ and “local reporters” like the Palestinians she worked with. Listen below—or wherever you get your podcasts.Show notes: Palestinian paramedics said Israel gave them safe passage to save a 6-year-old girl in Gaza. They were all killed. Meg Kelly, Hajar Harb, Louisa Loveluck, Miriam Berger, and Cate Brown, Washington PostThousands of Gazans have gone missing. No one is accounting for them. Miriam Berger and Hajar Harb, Washington PostSupport for Washington Post international employees, GoFundMeMegan Greenwell, hostAmanda Darrach, producer

While the newspaper industry continues to contract, nonprofit news outlets have proliferated over the past decade. But dismissing profitable models for journalism is premature. How can journalism survive? Perhaps the question would once have sounded unduly panicked, but it has only grown more pressing over the past twenty years. Between 2004 and 2019, newspapers lost an astonishing 77 percent of their jobs—more than any other industry on record, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In early February, the industry suffered another historic blow, as the Washington Post announced it was laying off nearly half its staff. When even a legacy media outlet like the Post struggles—when even ownership by Jeff Bezos, who has a net worth of two hundred and fifty billion dollars, cannot guarantee stability—it is easy to wonder what hope there is. Is journalism slowly, or not so slowly, going kaput? Not so fast. In this episode of Journalism 2050, we’re joined by two guests who show—in different yet equally promising ways—what the future of journalism can look like. Vanan Murugesan is the executive director of Sahan Journal, a widely acclaimed local news organization in Minneapolis that was set up in 2019 to cover immigrants and people of color. Joshi Herrmann is the founder of Mill Media, which launched in Manchester in 2020 and now provides high-quality local journalism across six different cities in the UK. Sahan Journal is one of a growing number of nonprofit news organizations that rely on philanthropic grants. (The Institute for Nonprofit News now counts over four hundred members.) Mill Media’s success is based on subscriptions. Both are thriving, and both provide models that others can follow. What are the risks and rewards of each approach? Have we been too quick to accept that journalism cannot be profitable in the digital age? And what changes when, with rising authoritarianism, the pressures confronting a free press become political as well as economic? Suggested Reading:“Straight to your inbox: meet the journalists shaking up local UK news,” The Guardian, July 2024“Sahan Journal Is Built for When the National Media Leaves,” CJR, December 2025Hosts: Emily Bell and Heather ChaplinProducer: Amanda DarrachProduction Coordinator: Hana JoyResearch: Samuel EarleArt Director: Katie KosmaIllustrator: Aaron FernandezMusic: Henry Crooks

Experts discuss the risks posed to journalism as the courts test the limits of press freedom law.If I recall correctly, the original news peg for a live Kicker recording about threats to the free press was a raid on the home of Hannah Natanson, a Washington Post reporter. By the time Amanda Darrach, The Kicker’s producer, and I were finalizing logistics for the event, which took place in CJR’s office, two independent journalists—Don Lemon and Georgia Fort—had been arrested for covering a protest in Minneapolis. A few days before we recorded, the Post eliminated three hundred–plus jobs. Suffice it to say, I had plenty to talk about. I also had dream guests with whom to talk about it all. David Enrich, a deputy investigations editor at the New York Times, wrote the excellent 2025 book Murder the Truth about efforts to overturn the media law precedent set by New York Times v. Sullivan in 1964. Jameel Jaffer, the executive director of Columbia’s Knight First Amendment Institute, has been involved in litigating dozens of crucial cases on press freedom. In wrapping up the interview, I said I had about seven hundred more questions for them; in retrospect, that may have been an undercount.Recording live also meant the rare chance to take questions from other smart people, including Fabio Bertoni, the general counsel for The New Yorker, and Tsehai Alfred, the editor in chief of the Columbia Daily Spectator. SHOW NOTESQ&A: David Enrich on the Right-Wing Plot to ‘Murder’ Libel Protections, Jon Allsop, CJRBarnard suspends WKCR and Spectator reporters who covered Butler Library protest, Isha Banerjee, Columbia SpectatorCan the Media’s Right to Pursue the Powerful Survive Trump’s Second Term? David Enrich, the New York Times Magazine Megan Greenwell, hostAmanda Darrach, producerJim Bittel, assistant dean of broadcast and multimedia technology, adjunct professor, and multimedia facility consultant A.J. Mangone, assistant director, broadcast and multimedia technology Pedro Florentin, videographerJamal Jones, videographerKatie Kosma, art director

In 2016, Sarah Alvarez, a former civil-rights lawyer and reporter, reimagined what journalism could be. Rather than break news or publish stories on a website, her project, Outlier Media, promised to provide the people of Detroit with information on any property they wanted, via text message—all they had to do was ask. Alvarez hoped that with vetted information, locals could hold landlords to account and avoid property scams in an increasingly hostile housing market. It was to be the first of many such services that Outlier would provide, all centered around making important information more accessible, in line with people’s needs. “I was not satisfied with covering low-income communities for a higher-income audience,” she said in 2018. “I wanted to cover issues for and with low-income news consumers.”Outlier Media now stands as an example of an innovative local media landscape defying the darkest prophecies of journalism’s future. Outlier has pioneered a new journalistic approach—highly interactive, collaborative, responsive, practical, community-focused—to old goals: holding the powerful to account. Its text message system exists alongside original investigative reporting, which is targeted “on issues where better information alone can’t make a difference,” as its site explains. Outlier’s radical mission is journalism that serves not people’s curiosity but their material needs.In this episode of the Journalism 2050 Podcast, Alvarez and Candice Fortman join Emily Bell and Heather Chaplin to discuss community-focused news, how the media landscape has changed over the last decade, and what the future holds. Alvarez is the James B. Steele Chair in Journalism Innovation at Temple University’s Klein College of Media and Communication. Fortman is a media consultant who served as Outlier Media’s Executive Editor between 2019 and 2024. Suggested Reading/Listening:How Outlier is helping Detroiters get millions of dollars back from Wayne County, Nieman Lab, April 2025Candice Fortman, Commencement address for the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism Class of 2025, May 2025Civic Guides: How to solve everyday issues in Detroit, influence local decision-making and make the city work for you — written for Detroiters by Detroiters, Outlier Media (series)Producer: Amanda DarrachProduction Coordinator: Hana JoyResearch: Samuel EarleArt Director: Katie KosmaIllustrator: Aaron FernandezMusic: Henry Crooks

At first, January 7 felt to Bob Batz Jr. like a triumphant day. The U.S. Supreme Court had declined to consider an appeal from Batz’s longtime employer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the latest in a long string of legal victories for the paper’s union. After more than three years on strike, Batz and twenty-four colleagues returned to work in late November. Now, the P-G was legally obligated to reinstate the workers’ previous health plan, plus reimburse costs accrued when management failed to bargain in good faith.A few hours after rejoicing over the Supreme Court news, though, elation turned to mourning. Citing 350 million dollars in losses over twenty years, the P-G’s owner, Block Communications, announced it would shut down the paper — one of the oldest in the country — effective May 3. The company took no questions from its employees. The three weeks since have brought a flurry of activity designed to save some version of the Post-Gazette. Batz and his colleagues have been meeting multiple times a week — sometimes with potential funders, sometimes alone — to figure out the best path forward. This morning, a group of them announced the launch of the Pittsburgh Alliance for People-Empowered Reporting (PAPER), which is raising money to research “worker-owned and non-profit models as well as the potential for a truly independent Post-Gazette.” Forty-nine of their coworkers who didn’t strike, meanwhile, are working to overthrow union leadership in hopes of negotiating with Block Communications. Seemingly everyone in Pittsburgh’s large philanthropic world seems to be chattering about the potential for a nonprofit model.For this week’s episode of The Kicker, I talked to Batz about the highs and lows of his thirty-plus years at the P-G and his three years on strike, from his job editing the strikers’ award-winning newspaper, to the friendships that ended as a result of the battle, to the efforts to build something new.SHOW NOTESPittsburgh Alliance for People-Empowered Reporting (PAPER)Pittsburgh Union ProgressHost: Megan GreenwellProducer: Amanda Darrach

In 2007, Valleywag, Gawker’s gossip column devoted to Silicon Valley, published a short piece about a then-little-known venture capitalist and tech founder, under the headline “Peter Thiel is totally gay, people.” Thiel’s sexuality wasn’t a secret, nor was the piece mocking. “Peter Thiel, the smartest VC in the world, is gay,” it read. “More power to him.” But it was the first time this information was made public, and Thiel didn’t welcome the attention. He vowed privately to get revenge on Valleywag, which he described as “the Silicon Valley equivalent of al Qaeda,” a “Manhattan-based terrorist organization” that was apparently terrifying tech bros into conformity. It took him almost a decade for his quest to succeed. In March 2016, a lawsuit against Gawker brought by Hulk Hogan over the publication of a leaked sex tape resulted in its bankruptcy. Hogan, like everyone else, only discovered the identity of his mysterious and dedicated benefactor after the trial.The Gawker trial was a turning point, both for Thiel personally and for perceptions about the tech industry. His friends would say that, without the Gawker trial, Thiel’s early endorsement of Donald Trump that same year was unthinkable. To others, Thiel’s readiness to simply shut down an online publication that he did not like revealed, perhaps more than any other event up to that point, the authoritarian tendencies of the tech industry and how hollow its commitments to “free information” were. The outlook for digital journalism was ominous.What are the lessons from the Gawker trial, ten years later? What is its political legacy? And how can digital journalism build a safe future in the face of such severe threats? In this episode of Journalism 2050, Emily Bell is joined by three guests. Maria Bustillos is a journalist, editor, and self-described “information activist” who reported from the courtroom during the Gawker trial. Samuel Earle is the author of Tory Nation: The Dark Legacy of the World’s Most Successful Political Party and a PhD candidate at Columbia Journalism School. Marine Doux is the cofounder and editorial director of Médianes and a research fellow at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia Journalism School. SHOW NOTES:“Hulk Hogan is the Donald Trump of ‘sports entertainment,’” Maria Bustillos, PopulaConspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue, Ryan Holiday“Editorial Independence Means Technological Independence,” Owen Huchon, CJRMédianes Studio—A European Partner for Independent MediaProducer: Amanda DarrachProduction Coordinator: Hana JoyResearch: Samuel EarleArt Director: Katie KosmaIllustrator:

Annual reports are generally pretty boring documents, bogged down with numbers taken out of context and marketing-speak about “thriving in the face of unprecedented challenges.” Not Jasper Wang’s. At the end of 2025, the cofounder and vice president of revenue and operations at Defector—the pioneering worker-owned sports site that grew from the ashes of Deadspin—managed to reinvent the genre, writing a riveting six-thousand-something first-person words containing not only full transparency on the company’s revenue and costs, but also a meditation on the past, present, and future of worker-owned co-ops. “When Defector staffers speak to journalists interested in starting their own publications, with some frequency we sense that they are naively imagining worker ownership as a panacea to the ills of their previous workplaces, and treating meaningful subscription revenue as a foregone conclusion,” he wrote. “But the truth is that launching your own business is hard, and much harder today than it was five years ago.”As I started thinking about what The Kicker could sound like with me in the host chair, I knew immediately that I wanted to interview Jasper first. Narratives about exciting new business models like worker ownership often get flattened; rooting for them to thrive can sometimes mean talking less than honestly about the challenges as well as the triumphs. Despite Defector’s innumerable triumphs, Jasper never falls into that trap. Listen to his wisdom wherever you get your podcasts.SHOW NOTESDefector Annual Report, September 2024–August 2025Host: Megan GreenwellProducer: Amanda Darrach

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

When Natalia Antelava cofounded Coda Story, in early 2016, to cover democratic backsliding around the globe, she wasn’t expecting the tech industry to be such a big part of the story. It wasn’t only that autocratic regimes were benefiting from compliant Silicon Valley companies. By launching a new media organization, Antelava also discovered how entangled journalism itself had become with some of the same companies, which proclaimed their commitment to a free press while quietly cozying up to their enemies.In this episode of Journalism 2050, Antelava joins Emily Bell and Heather Chaplin to discuss the naïveté with which news organizations treated the likes of Google and Facebook in the early years of the internet, and some of the bizarre conferences, collaborations, and initiatives that resulted from it. To secure journalism’s future, Antelava warns, there must never be such innocence again. “We got into bed with the wrong guys, and we got ourselves in big trouble,” she says. How responsible are journalists for the perilous state of their industry? Who are their “natural allies”? And as the authoritarian tendencies of the internet’s gatekeepers become clearer and clearer, what compromises might journalists make, and what redlines must they draw?Further Reading:Coda Story: An interview with Richard GingrasThe Guardian: Apple and Google Accused of Political Censorship Over Alexei Navalny AppFreedom House: The Uncertain Future of the Global InternetHosts: Emily Bell and Heather ChaplinProducer: Amanda DarrachProduction Coordinator: Hana JoyResearch: Samuel EarleArt Director: Katie KosmaIllustrator: Aaron FernandezMusic: Henry Crooks

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

In 1992, a writer named Douglas Rushkoff signed a contract for Cyberia, his book about the internet subcultures of the West Coast. The next year, his publisher canceled it, according to Rushkoff’s recollection, on the grounds that “by the time the book came out the Internet was going to be over.” (He later found a different publisher, and the book came out in 1994.) Since then, Rushkoff has been one of the most entertaining and pointed futurists (though he prefers “presentist” these days) chronicling Silicon Valley’s effects on culture and communications. His books include Present Shock, Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus, and Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of Tech Billionaires. His Team Human podcast is required listening for skeptics of artificial intelligence.Emily Bell, the founding director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia Journalism School, and Heather Chaplin, the director of the New School’s Journalism + Design Lab, ask Rushkoff about what lessons we can draw from the anarchic free spirited origins of web publishing that can be applied to our present moment of techno authoritarianism and the dominance of Silicon Valley. As for what Rushkoff's outlook is for 2050, “the worst case is we will have ceased to be”—a bleak scenario. But the more optimistic case is that we will see a stratified media ecosystem emerge, with a number of large global players collaborating on complex stories, and a rich vibrant network of smaller local and niche players. Further Reading and Listening:“We Will Coup whoever We Want: the unbearable hubris of Musk and the billionaire tech bros”Team Human podcastJohn Perry Barlow : A Declaration of the Independence of CyberspaceProducer: Amanda DarrachProduction Coordinator: Hana JoyResearch: Samuel EarleArt Director: Katie KosmaIllustrator: Aaron FernandezMusic: Henry Crooks

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

Last week, as DC reporters were patting themselves on the back for not falling for internet falsehoods claiming that Donald Trump had secretly died, Garrett Graff wrote an essay on his blog, Doomsday Scenario, saying, “It’s time to have a serious conversation about Trump’s health.”Graff is an author and historian who’s spent more than two decades covering American politics—more recently he’s written a series of oral histories on major world events, and hosted a critically acclaimed podcast series about the early days of the internet and the culture of armed self-defense.But today, Graff is worried that political journalists are failing to recognize the history they are already living through. He joins The Kicker to share his thoughts on what he sees as the fragile state of American democracy—and the need for DC reporters to dig a lot deeper.Read More:*Graff’s blog post on the need for more reporting on Trump’s health*Graff on the increasingly blurry lines between democracy and authoritarianism*Breaking the Internet, season 4 of Graff’s acclaimed podcast series, The Long Shadow*Liam Scott in CJR on how the White House press handled the rumors of Trump’s death

Earlier this month, Hind Hassan, a decorated documentary news reporter who has covered everything from conflicts in Gaza, Lebanon, and Ukraine to the bizarre underworld of the global wellness industry, spoke at a graduation ceremony for students at Columbia Journalism School. In her address, Hassan pointedly apologized for not doing more to make the job safer for the next generation—a reference to, as she explains in this week’s episode of The Kicker, the brutality of the war in Gaza. “We're responsible for what our industry stands for,” she said. “I think it is the responsibility of the industry, of those who have the power, of heads of news organizations, to defend journalists when they come under attack, no matter where they are.”Watch More:*“Starving Gaza”—Hind’s 2024 documentary for Al Jazeera’s Fault Lines*“Inside the Wellness Industry’s Controversial Supply Chains”—Hind’s 2022 film for Vice News*“The Business of War”—Episode One of Hind’s new series for Al Jazeera

For the past few weeks, MAGA media and conservative podcasters have been torn apart over President Trump’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein saga.Anna Merlan, a senior reporter at Mother Jones, joins The Kicker to talk about right-wing media’s efforts to change the subject—and whether their audiences will go along with it. Read more:*Anna Merlan on what happened the last time Trump’s team tried to satisfy right-wing media’s hunger for Epstein news*Merlan on how Trump has constructed a new state media machine at the White House*Ben Mathis-Lilley in Slate on Steve Bannon’s not-so-hidden hand in the Epstein narrative*Charlie Warzel on the “upside down” world of right-wing media supporting Trump (2017)Hosted by Josh HershProduced by Amanda Darrach

Recent weeks have not been very comfortable for the BBC. A documentary about Gaza it refused to broadcast was aired instead by a competitor, to critical acclaim. A livestream of the Glastonbury Festival turned into a political nightmare, after a performer led the crowd in a chant of “Death to the IDF”—leading the network to ditch plans for future “high risk” live shows.But Alan Rusbridger, who spent twenty years as the editor of The Guardian and is now the editor of Prospect magazine, believes the BBC’s problems go much deeper—at a moment when it’s more needed than ever. “The BBC has never really recovered its nerve,” he says.Read More:*Listen to Media Confidential, Rusbridger’s podcast on the media, cohosted with Lionel Barber*Rusbridger: “The BBC Claims Impartiality over Gaza but There Is a Conflict of Interest at Its Heart” — July 2025*Rusbridger: “How the Government Captured the BBC” — January 2024*The Gaza documentary the BBC refused to broadcast*Controversy over an earlier Gaza documentary*The David Kelly sagaHosted by Josh HershProduced by Amanda Darrach

Last year, Branko Brkic, the founder of the Daily Maverick, a South African news outlet, left his day job to launch an advocacy campaign in defense of journalism. Called Project Kontinuum, the organization aims to sound the alarm about the global threats facing the institution of journalism—and to begin to mount a defense.In this conversation, Brkic speaks about the admittedly “bleak” picture that he paints, and why news outlets have to stop playing defense if they want to survive.This podcast was recorded live at ZegFest 2025, in Tbilisi, Georgia.Read more:*Brkic’s 2024 “Call to Arms” for journalism*Brkic’s farewell editorial to readers of Daily Maverick*Daily Maverick reflects on the revelations of its #GuptaLeaks projectAudio producer: Levan KurtskhaliaAudio recorder and editor: Zura PatsiaProduced by: Amanda DarrachHosted by: Josh Hersh

For nearly twenty years, Arwa Damon worked as a journalist covering conflict zones across the Middle East—much of it as a prominent correspondent for CNN. But in 2015, amid the unending horrors of the Syrian civil war, Damon had enough. She left the network and founded Inara, a charity that helps provide treatment to children facing some of the most difficult medical conditions. Her new role has allowed her access to people and places she wouldn’t have seen as a journalist, including four visits to Gaza since October 7, 2023.Damon joins The Kicker to talk about the transition from journalism to humanitarianism—why she reached her limit as a reporter, and how doing aid work draws on many of the same skills. This podcast was recorded live on the sidelines at ZegFest 2025, in Tbilisi, Georgia.Read more:*Learn about Inara, Damon’s charity*Seize the Summit: Damon’s recent documentary about four young survivors of war attempting to climb Mount KilimanjaroAudio recorder and editor: Zura PatsiaProduced by: Amanda DarrachHosted by: Josh Hersh

Ghaith Abdul-Ahad is an award-winning Iraqi journalist for The Guardian and the author of A Stranger in Your Own City (2023), a reported memoir of his life as an architect turned journalist during the American war in Iraq.In this wide-ranging conversation, Abdul-Ahad shares his journey to becoming a reporter, what he was surprised to learn about his own country, and how he approaches depicting the intimate lives of the people caught up in war—from innocent bystanders to murderous warlords.This podcast was recorded live at ZegFest 2025, in Tbilisi, Georgia.Read more:*Ghaith’s book: A Stranger in Your Own City *Mustafa’s story: “The Reluctant Collaborator: Surviving Syria’s Brutal Civil War and Its Aftermath”*Ghaith’s collected reporting for The GuardianAudio producer: Levan KurtskhaliaAudio recorder and editor: Zura PatsiaProduced by: Amanda DarrachHosted by: Josh Hersh

David Fahrenthold won the Pulitzer Prize for his 2016 reporting on how Donald Trump’s lifetime of charitable giving was largely a mirage.Nine years later, he’s still reporting on how Trumpworld’s claims about financial matters don’t always add up—this time, looking closely at the cost-cutting from DOGE for the New York Times. But does this kind of facts-first reporting still land? With Trump doing so much grifting and personal enrichment out in the open, Fahrenthold joins The Kicker to give his answer about why digging up presidential secrets is still worth the effort.Read more:*Fahrenthold’s Pulitzer-winning reporting on Trump’s charitable giving*Some closer looks at DOGE’s so-called “wall of receipts”*Who attended Trump’s crypto dinner at the White House?Hosted by Josh HershProduced by Amanda Darrach

For more than thirty years, Phil Williams has been the steadying voice of investigative reporting at NewsChannel 5, in Nashville. His deep dives into toxic wastewater and lobbyist access to state politicians have earned him a slew of major journalism awards, including five Peabodys and five duPont-Columbia Awards.But in recent years, his most viral moments have been his unflappable encounters with extremists and neo-Nazis, who have popped up brazenly in communities around Nashville—that is, until Williams shows up with receipts.Read and watch more of Williams’s reporting:*Confronting Hate – NewsChannel 5’s 2024 investigation into local extremist groups.*Hate Comes to Main Street – An investigation into a local politician’s association with hate groups.*Revealed – Williams’s deep dive into the special access lobbyists have to Tennessee politicians.

Last week, Donald Trump issued an executive order calling for the end of funding for NPR and PBS. It’s the latest attempt by conservatives to cut back on support for public media, and in particular target NPR, which they view as having a liberal bias.Katherine Maher, NPR’s CEO, says that perception is deeply unfair—and notes that the vast majority of the funding for public media goes to local stations, which are widely trusted across the political spectrum.But the battle to insulate NPR from political influence is not easy—and, as Maher explains, it’s facing its toughest challenge yet.Read More:*NPR’s coverage of Trump’s recent executive order*CJR on how local and tribal radio stations have the most to lose from a funding cut*Uri Berliner, a former NPR editor, launched a broadside against the network last year for having too much of a liberal biasHosted by Josh HershProduced by Amanda Darrach

A few years ago, El Salvador was one of the most violent nations in the world, with gang killings taking the lives of dozens of people every week. Nayib Bukele, elected president in 2019, changed all that—today, violence is way down. But his brute-force approach to the problem has involved mass arrests, secret deals, and forced disappearances into a harsh prison system—which is apparently the envy of many in the Trump administration.Filmmaker Neil Brandvold has covered much of El Salvador’s transition from dangerous gangland to authoritarian dreamworld, and he joins The Kicker to explain the methods Bukele used to construct his fragile peace.Read/Watch more:*Neil’s 2024 Fault Lines documentary on El Salvador’s gang crackdown.*Neil’s 2018 Economist video about a religious reform movement for gang members.*Neil’s 2019 New York Times video including interview with Nayib Bukele.*El Faro’s 2020 investigative reporting on Bukele’s early deals with the MS-13 gang. Hosted by Josh HershProduced by Amanda Darrach

Kai Ryssdal has been the host of Marketplace, a leading daily radio show and podcast about the economy, produced by American Public Media, since 2005. He delivers the news—from the bitter latest on our 401(k)s to unexpected interviews about the modern-day resurgence of train robberies—with an affable, direct tone.And when he has something he wants listeners to know—as he did all this week, while the policies of the Trump administration sent the stock market, and the global economy, into a tailspin—he’ll just come right out and say it.This week on The Kicker, Ryssdal explains what, exactly, just happened with the economy, and why he feels it’s so important for Marketplace to call it like they see it.Read and hear more:*Listen to Marketplace here, or wherever you get your podcasts.*“No, I do not.” A report on Ryssdal’s 2019 interview with Janet Yellen, on whether Donald Trump understands macroeconomics.*“The institutions of this economy work in no small part because the institutions of this democracy work.” Ryssdal’s final comments on February 13.Hosted by Josh HershProduced by Amanda Darrach

Prosecutors weren’t notified in advance, witnesses are in shock—and Watson’s family celebrates his freedom.On the day that Carlos Watson, the founder of the digital media company Ozy Media, was due to turn himself in to prison last week, to begin serving a nearly ten-year sentence for fraud and identity theft, he and his family received some unexpected good news: President Donald Trump was commuting his sentence.Susie Banikarim, who attended nearly every day of the trial last year, and cohosted the CJR special podcast series “The Unraveling of Ozy Media,” returns to The Kicker to explain how this wild turn of events came to pass, and what Watson’s family, former employees—and even the prosecutors—have had to say so far.Read more:*“The Unraveling of Ozy Media”—a three-part podcast series from CJR, including a special presentation of evidence from the original trial*“The Sentencing of Carlos Watson”—a report from Watson’s last day in courtHosted by Josh HershProduced by Amanda Darrach

If you thought “DOGE” only stood for the “Department of Government Efficiency”—well, you’re not alone. The world of crypto is full of double meanings and inside jokes, making the recent arrival of these alternative currency markets—and their attendant “crypto bros”—into the seat of power in Washington all the more mystifying.Enter Molly White, a longtime crypto researcher (and skeptic) whose work has appeared in the New York Times as well as in her self-published newsletter, Citation Needed. On this week’s episode, Molly explains what journalists, and everyone else, need to know about meme coins (dogecoin, $TRUMP), crypto’s grifty culture, and what recent policy changes mean for the average consumer.Read more:*Lauren Watson in CJR on the lessons of crypto media.*The Times on how Trump’s meme coin made a few people very rich—at the expense of most everyone else (with research by White).*White on the strategic bitcoin reserve, and how the crypto industry is trying to shed itself of government oversight.Hosted by Josh HershProduced by Amanda Darrach

Over the past several months, Donald Trump has mounted a series of legal attacks against the media, including a libel case against ABC, an FCC investigation into CBS, and a lawsuit accusing an Iowa pollster (and the newspaper that publishes her) of “election interference.”The sometimes far-fetched claims in these cases notwithstanding, the maneuvers are having an effect. The parent company of ABC settled the libel case, over the objections of many news staffers, and CBS has turned over internal documents to the FCC. And as Lynn Oberlander, this week’s guest and a longtime media lawyer, explains, the legal assault is already creating a chilling effect in many newsrooms. Read More:*The lawsuit against Iowa pollster Ann Selzer and the Des Moines Register. Selzer’s attorneys have fought back.  *ABC pays $15 million to settle a libel lawsuit, over the objections of news staffers.*CBS turns over raw transcripts in FCC probe.*FCC commissioner Brendan Carr described his aggressive strategy at a recent Semafor media conference.

In January, the Baltimore Banner released an investigation into the star kicker of the Baltimore Ravens, in which multiple women accused him of sexually inappropriate behavior during massages, dating back years. (The player denies the accusations.)It was an example of a rare kind of journalism these days: hard-hitting accountability reporting on sports. Over the past several years, numerous investigative sports outlets have folded, replaced largely by soft-focused content produced by players and teams themselves.Small, community-based publications like the Banner face the highest toll for doing this kind of work—boxed out of access from teams, they risk losing a pivotal connection they have with subscribers. But Chris Korman, the paper’s sports editor, says it’s worth it anyway.Read more:*The Banner’s investigation into Ravens kicker Justin Tucker*From the CJR archives: Can sports journalism survive in the era of the athlete? (2024)Hosted by Josh HershProduced by Amanda Darrach

András Pethő is a Hungarian journalist and a cofounder of Direkt36, an independent investigative news outlet.Over the past decade, he’s watched as the government of Viktor Orbán—the world leader whom Steve Bannon once praised as “Trump before Trump”—has systematically eroded the freedom of the press in his country, in ways that may feel familiar to Americans watching corporate news leaders succumb to pressure from the administration.Pethő joins The Kicker to explain why he believes journalists must accept the possibility that the worst is yet to come, while resisting the temptation to turn themselves into martyrs for democracy. “For a while, I thought, This would never happen here,” he said. “The biggest mistake that I made was the failure of imagination.”Read More:*András’s 2022 essay on the lessons he learned from experiencing Hungary’s crackdown on a free press*Direkt36’s latest investigation: a documentary about the secret wealth of Orbán and his allies (with English subtitles)*The New York Times on the fall of Origo, a once-audacious newsmagazine (2018)

Jon Allsop writes and edits The Media Today, CJR’s daily newsletter. There, he’s closely watched as the American press has struggled to respond to, and cover, the barrage of news that pours out of Donald Trump.As a frenetic new term begins, Jon joins The Kicker to share his thoughts on what the media gets wrong—and how the political press might begin to chart a new relationship with the presidency and the public.Read More:*Jon’s latest newsletter, on Trump’s first week back in office*Jon’s 2020 essay on how the media handled Trump’s first term*Chris Hayes on attention, on Ezra Klein’s podcast*Susan Glasser on Trump’s exhausting litany of outragesSign up for The Media Today, CJR’s daily newsletter.

Natalia Antelava spent many years as a correspondent for the BBC, before starting her own media company, Coda Story, in 2016. She’s covered wars in the Middle East and the rise of authoritarianism across Eastern Europe and the Caucasus. For the past year, she was a Knight Fellow at Stanford, where she examined how journalism might survive in an era of AI and tech supremacy.Antelava joins The Kicker to talk about Meta’s decision to do away with fact-checking, preparing for a second Trump administration, what mainstream reporters can learn from conservative podcasters—and why she’s still optimistic about what journalism can achieve in the year to come.Read more:“Noise Is the New Censorship” — Antelava on disinformation and authoritarianism“Grieving California” — Coda’s 2018 essay on the Tubbs FireHosted by Josh HershProduced by Amanda Darrach

In the finale, Carlos Watson takes the stand—and the jury reaches a verdict.“The Unraveling of Ozy Media” is a special three-part series of The Kicker, on the trial of Carlos Watson and the excesses of the digital media age, presented by the Columbia Journalism Review.Hosted and coproduced by Josh Hersh and Susie BanikarimProduced and edited by Amanda Darrach 

How inflating traffic data went mainstream in digital media—and a key witness takes the stand.“The Unraveling of Ozy Media” is a special three-part series of The Kicker, on the trial of Carlos Watson and the excesses of the digital media age, presented by the Columbia Journalism Review.Hosted and coproduced by Josh Hersh and Susie BanikarimProduced and edited by Amanda Darrach

Carlos Watson’s media startup arrives on the scene—and insiders reveal a dark reality under its glossy veneer.“The Unraveling of Ozy Media” is a special three-part series of The Kicker, on the trial of Carlos Watson and the excesses of the digital media age, presented by the Columbia Journalism Review.Hosted and coproduced by Josh Hersh and Susie BanikarimProduced and edited by Amanda Darrach 

Starting on December 9, the Columbia Journalism Review presents a special three-part series of The Kicker: “The Unraveling of Ozy Media,” on the dramatic rise and fall of Carlos Watson, the cofounder of the digital media company Ozy. In 2023, Watson was charged with fraud after it was revealed that one of his partners had masqueraded as a YouTube executive, during a call with potential investors. But Ozy’s failure is about more than one man. It’s a story about an era of profligate growth and overpromises in digital media that have left many wondering whether there’s any business model that will work for journalism today.Join hosts Josh Hersh and Susie Banikarim as they follow Watson’s trial and ask how much of digital media was built on a lie.

Nearly half of all Latino voters put their support behind former president Donald Trump this week, according to exit polls—a 14 percent increase from 2020.Those results surprised many, but not Jack Herrera, who has been reporting on the shifting voting habits of Latino communities across the country for years.Herrera joins The Kicker to talk about what he’s learned from his journalism in Pennsylvania, Iowa, and the border counties of Texas. Read More:Herrera’s article for CJR’s Election Issue on Lorena López, the editor of Iowa’s La PrensaHerrera’s 2024 reporting on Latino voting in Pennsylvania, Texas, and Iowa