The Kicker

Keeping the faith by Columbia Journalism Review

What do we miss when we obsess about Trump? The answer, it turns out, includes some of the most important stories of our time. On this week’s Kicker, Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR, speaks with David Begnaud, lead national correspondent for “CBS This Morning” and anchor of CBS News Radio's “Reporter's Notebook,” Steven Greenhouse, a veteran New York Times labor and workplace reporter, and Tali Woodward, deputy editor of The Trace, to ask what stories we left untold in 2019, and how we can avoid making the same mistakes this election year.

In 2013, Dexter Filkins wrote the definitive profile of Major General Qassem Soleimani, the architect of Iran’s “Axis of Resistance,” whom the US assassinated last week. On this week’s Kicker, Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR, speaks with Filkins about the nuances of Iranian public opinion that the Western press has missed, and why Iran’s response may be far from over.

Facebook, Google, and Twitter are going to be used to facilitate disinformation and racism in the 2020 US presidential election, and Carole Cadwalladr says we need to tell that story better. At the recent “Disinfo 2020: Prepping the Press” conference, Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR, and Cadwalladr, a feature writer for the Observer who helped expose the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal in 2018, discussed her work and the connection between the Brexit referendum and the election of Donald Trump.

Democracy is reliant on facts, but fact-checking no longer seem to dispel misleading information. As a prelude to next week’s Disinfo 2020: Prepping the Press conference, Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR, discusses disinformation and the failings of the fact-checking industry with Emily Bell, the director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia, and media literacy expert Whitney Phillips, an assistant professor at Syracuse University.

The Kayopo, an indiginous tribe in the Brazilian rainforest, have lost over 200,000 acres of their preserve to the illegal gold mining encouraged by Jair Bolsonnaro. On this week’s Kicker, Jon Lee Anderson, a staff writer at the New Yorker, tells Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR, how he embedded with the Kayopo, who had no regular contact with the outside world until the 1950s. Anderson describes the tactics used by gold prospectors to sow discord among the Kayopo, and tells of the heartbreak some feel as they accept work that they know will destroy the environment.

Rodney Reed is scheduled for execution on November 20, and the first federal executions in 16 years begin December 9. On this week’s Kicker, Robert Dunham, executive director at the Death Penalty Information Center, and Kyle Pope, editor and pulisher of CJR, discuss the mistakes national and local reporters make in their coverage of the death penalty. Dunham explains the culture of fear that sustained American execution at its peak, and the importance of reporting policy over politics.

CJR public editors: One year out from 2020 by Columbia Journalism Review

Anna Wintour says Vogue magazine is the world’s greatest influencer, though the numbers don’t agree. A job at Condé Nast used to mean a magazine journalist had arrived. but in the wake of S.I. Newhouse’s death, it’s hard to imagine who might have the passion to save his magazines. For New York Magazine, journalist Reeves Wiedeman profiled Condé Nast, Wintour, and new CEO, Roger Lynch. This week, CJR’s Editor and Publisher Kyle Pope sits down with Wiedeman to discuss Condé Nast’s new strategy, and whether its newsstand presence could become disposable.

Jon Allsop, who writes CJR’s daily newsletter “The Media Today” from his flat in London, talks to Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR, about Boris Johnson’s obsession with the American presidency, Trump’s impeachment strategy, and how the instinct to oversimplify stories like Ukraine and Brexit opens the door to misinformation.

Carlotta Gall, Istanbul bureau chief for the New York Times, spent her summer reporting on whether Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey’s president, would invade Syria. This week, Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR, talks to Gall about how she and her colleagues have covered Turkey and Syria as the conflict has unfolded. The Turks bombed a convoy with journalists in northern Syria; ISIS fighters are escaping and threaten to regroup; new Syrian checkpoints arrest American journalists; and the PKK offers only propaganda and a cult of personality. Gall, one of the most experienced war correspondents working today, explains what likely comes next.

When longtime residents of Washington State’s Long Beach Peninsula began to disappear, journalist McKenzie Funk set out to reverse-engineer ICE officers’ use of domestic-surveillance data. Last week, he published his findings in the New York Times Magazine. Kyle Pope, the editor and publisher of CJR, speaks with Funk to learn why the more American an immigrant’s life is, the more vulnerable they become, and why ICE blames that vulnerability on sanctuary policy.

Joe Lockhart was named White House press secretary in 1998, three days before the House voted to impeach President Clinton. This week, Lockhart speaks with Kyle Pope, the editor and publisher of CJR, about the argument to end live coverage of the White House, and why he thinks this is the golden age of journalism.

Among readers, the demand for climate crisis coverage is high. Until recently, however, financial reporters have stayed largely silent on the subject. On this week’s episode, Kyle Pope, the editor and publisher of CJR, speaks with Gillian Tett, editor-at-large for the Financial Times, on how her doctoral work in cultural anthropology and her years as a war reporter have lead her to start a newsletter on the climate crisis, “Moral Money.”

There is a climate angle to every beat, no matter how small the newsroom; collaboration pays; and climate coverage is no more political than failure to cover the climate crisis. On this week’s episode, Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR, speaks with Mark Hertsgaard, the environmental correspondent for The Nation, on what they’ve learned so far from their Covering Climate Now initiative with The Guardian.