Not even a ‘no comment’: Paul Farhi on the media’s historic struggles with relevance

In early 2023, Patrick Lohmann, a reporter for the nonprofit Source NM, moved to the small town of Las Vegas, New Mexico, to learn how residents were coping with the aftermath of the largest wildfire in state history. What he learned there was that the destruction brought on by wildfires doesn’t end when the fire itself goes out. It can take years for people to extract benefits from the federal bureaucracy, and for communities to fully recover—if they ever do. Wildfires leave behind debris th...

26 Elo 202422min

The Democrats are gathering in Chicago next week, and the sitting president has dropped out of the race. But as the guests on today’s podcast remind us, that doesn’t mean history is repeating itself. In 1968, Ted Koppel was just back from a tour covering the war in Vietnam, and assigned to the comparatively tame—if, as he reminds us, not without its moments—presidential campaign of Republican Richard Nixon. Over on the Democratic side, as historian Heather Hendershot writes in her recent book...

15 Elo 202432min

Eugene Daniels is a White House reporter for Politico, with a special focus on Kamala Harris. That’s put him front and center for a month of news that few people in politics saw coming. On this episode of The Kicker, Daniels shares what he’s learned from nearly four years of covering the vice president, how her relationship with the press will differ from the president’s, and why you can’t blame the media for Biden’s decision to drop out of the race. Produced by Emily Russell Hosted by Josh...

25 Heinä 202431min

Lorena Lopez came to the United States from her home country of Nicaragua, where she was an investigative reporter, in 1992. But it wasn’t until 2016 that she managed to return to her passion, as the founding editor of La Prensa, a Spanish-language newspaper serving Western Iowa. On this week’s Kicker, Lopez talks about her long journey back to journalism, why reliable, trusted information available for Spanish-speaking Americans is so hard to come by—and why so many of her readers are leanin...

15 Heinä 202430min

Alex Thompson, a national political correspondent for Axios, first reported that President Biden had started wearing special sneakers, in part to reduce the risk of tripping, last fall. But until the debate last week, he was still one of a small handful of reporters who was aggressively pursuing direct evidence that Biden’s age – regular fodder for political talk shows – was actually having an impact. He joins the Kicker to talk about what it’s like to do that kind of journalism, how the Whit...

3 Heinä 202424min

Steve Herman was the White House correspondent for Voice of America during the Trump administration. He joins The Kicker to talk about his new book on what it was like to cover a deeply unpredictable president—and why he believes it’s essential, even under extreme circumstances, for reporters to stay out of the political fray. This podcast is part of “Covering the Election,” CJR’s spring special issue on news and politics in 2024. Read the whole issue here. You can find Herman’s Behind the Wh...

12 Kesä 202436min

Haaretz is one of Israel’s most respected newspapers. It’s also one of the few willing to openly criticize the government for its treatment of Palestinians. The Kicker speaks with Hagar Shezaf and Omer Benjakob, two journalists with the paper, about what it’s like to do accountability journalism in Israel these days—especially in the aftermath of the devastating Hamas attacks of October 7th. Read more: Hagar Shezaf on violence against Palestinians in the West Bank since October 7 And o...

17 Touko 202441min