Wesley Morris—Four hundred years in one line of music
As journalists cover the intersection of racist police riots, our president’s instability, and the coronavirus pandemic, we struggle to break the old mold of objective reporting. Wesley Morris, a crit...
8 Juni 202042min
Black deaths, Black protest
Police murders of Black Americans, and the resulting protests, are once more at the forefront of the news cycle. The focus constitutes an important opportunity, but journalists who don’t have a nuance...
29 Maj 202020min
MSNBC’s identity crisis
When Adam Piore set out to profile MSNBC, he discovered a community of viewers who feel that, just by watching cable news, they are participating in our democracy.On this week’s Kicker, Kyle Pope, edi...
22 Maj 202021min
Indian Country: Behind the monolith
As COVID-19 death rates in some native communities soar, and federal care package payments to Indigenous tribes lag behind those to state and municipal governments, why does the US trail so far behind...
15 Maj 202022min
A break from the pandemic: the bizarre invasion of Venezuela
Investigative journalist Giancarlo Fiorella was watching when the Associated Press reported a plot to overthrow Nicolás Maduro, the president of Venezuela. What Fiorella could not believe was that, af...
8 Maj 202024min
How did medical masks become a signal?
As tens of thousands of Americans die of COVID-19, fear and uncertainty devolve into paranoid tribalism. At our most extreme, one side believes science is sacrosanct, and the other claims the pandemic...
1 Maj 202027min
The hunger for COVID-19 and climate crisis coverage
The intersection of conflict, climate, and disease has never been more apparent, and neither has public need for “journalistic rigor and urgency.”On this week’s Kicker, E. Tammy Kim, a freelance repor...
24 Apr 202020min
Liz Bruenig on covering spirituality and death in a plague year
Religion is difficult for journalists to cover, in part because it lies beyond observation and resists narrative. On this week’s Kicker, Elizabeth Bruenig, an opinion writer for the New York Times, sp...
17 Apr 202018min
