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Articles by Amanda Darrach
Catch Up on the Journalism 2050 podcast.
Last month, Emily Bell and Heather Chaplin launched the Journalism 2050 podcast as part of a CJR special issue on the monumental shifts in journalism that have brought us to this very uncertain moment, and where we might all be headed in the next twenty-five years. Bell is the founding director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism, and Chaplin is the director of Journalism + Design at the New School.
Michael Grynbaum on the High-Flying Days at Condé Nast
Sign up for The Media Today, CJR’s daily newsletter. By the late twentieth century, few institutions influenced culture with the punch—or the expense account—of Condé Nast. But decades earlier, in 1975, when publishing heir Si Newhouse took over as chairman, Condé Nast was just a mid-tier magazine house where properties like Vogue, Glamour, and House Beautiful were all struggling for relevance. Newhouse soon realized his gift for hiring the right people and then getting out of their way.
Q&A: Meg Kissinger on investigating her family’s history with mental health and discrimination
For over three decades, Meg Kissinger’s investigations of the American mental health system for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel sparked national conversations and meaningful local changes in housing policy for people with chronic mental illness.
Q&A: Fred Ritchin on AI and the threat to photojournalism no one is talking about
In recent years, artificial intelligence engineers have used millions of real photographs—taken by journalists all over the world, and without those journalists’ permission—to train new imaging software to create synthetic photojournalism. Now anyone can prompt AI software like OpenAI’s DALL-E to generate convincing images of people or places that never existed, and of events that never occurred. In turn, those synthetic images continue to update AI software training.
Who or Whom? One weird trick melts away YEARS of confusion
By Amanda Darrach, CJR December 14, 2022 Red Pen: A Grammar Podcast Episode 1 To whom or not to whom, that is the question. The word’s going the way of the northern white rhino, but is it ever wrong to use “who” in its place? Will your fancy dinner party guests think you’re a troglodyte? And what if you overcorrect and stick a “whom” where it doesn’t belong?
Rebecca Traister: Abortion, a case study in media disinterest
On this week’s Kicker, Rebecca Traister, a writer-at-large for New York Magazine and the Cut, and the author of “Good and Mad,” a book about the history and political power of women’s anger, sits down with Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR. They discuss why the press seemed only willing to cover “medically chilling” abortion stories, and how to protect sources as abortion’s legal loopholes disappear. SHOW NOTES Rebecca Traister, The Cut Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now?
Justin Worland: Raising diverse voices on the climate crisis beat
Should climate crisis coverage focus on the danger at hand, or on optimism and solutions at work? On what individuals can do, or industrial changes? As newsrooms struggle to reach a consensus, the Covering Climate Now Journalism Awards provide a model for impactful work. Justin Worland, senior correspondent at TIME, was just named CCN’s 2022 Journalist of the Year.
Nina Totenberg: ‘They don’t have to follow Supreme Court precedent anymore’
Podcast By Amanda Darrach, CJR May 31, 2022 Nina Totenberg has covered the Supreme Court for five decades. On this week’s Kicker, the NPR reporter sits down with Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR, to discuss a court she says is more conservative than it has been since the late 1920s and early 1930s, and what happens next in light of the leak of the Roe v. Wade decision. Totenberg is NPR’s legal affairs correspondent.
Columbia’s Jelani Cobb: ‘Everything is on the table.’
The Columbia Graduate School of Journalism announced today that Jelani Cobb will be its new dean. Cobb is a professor at the school, a staff writer at The New Yorker, an author, a documentary producer, and the director of the Ira A. Lipman Center for Journalism and Civil and Human Rights.
Bidens to attend next White House Correspondents' dinner
This story, plus lawmakers urge Meta to curb Spanish-language disinformation on conflict in Ukraine, a look at the impact of acquisitions of local news companies and more, all in today’s media headlines. Top Stories Apr 20, 2022 Apr 20, 2022 Apr 20, 2022 Media Business Apr 21, 2022 Apr 21, 2022 Apr 20, 2022 Press & Government Apr 20, 2022 Apr 20, 2022 Media Ethics Apr 21, 2022 Apr 20, 2022 Research International
Dean Baquet & Joe Kahn: What’s next for the New York Times?
Last week, after years of public speculation on the matter, the New York Times named Joe Kahn as Dean Baquet’s successor to the position of executive editor. How did that process play out behind closed doors? And, as the midterms draw near, how does Kahn plan to cover the threat to American democracy? Baquet and Kahn sat down with Kyle Pope to discuss objectivity, the evolution of the paper from a news outlet to something we’ve never seen before, and—inevitably—Wordle.
Al Roker: The weather paradigm shift
Al Roker, weathercaster for the Today show, is one of the most recognizable and trusted names in media. He has led efforts to educate the American public on the ties between weather and the climate crisis. On this week’s Kicker, Roker and Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR, discuss the evolution of weather coverage, from lighthearted entertainment to reporting on the front lines of the biggest story of our time.
Jane Lytvynenko: Ukraine’s great ‘prebunk’
Over the past week, Ukrainians have used social media to document Russia’s attacks on civilians. Those efforts have been more effective at blunting the Russian propaganda machine than anything that has come out of the technology companies themselves. On this week’s Kicker, Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR, speaks with Jane Lytvynenko, a senior research fellow in the Technology and Social Change Project at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy.
Eleanor Beardsley & Igor Kossov: The road out of Ukraine
Podcast By Amanda Darrach, CJR February 28, 2022 In the five days since Russia declared war on Ukraine, invading troops have drawn ever closer and their attacks have grown more deadly. Domestic and foreign reporters on the ground are struggling to determine how much danger is too much, and where they can most effectively cover the conflict. On this week’s Kicker, NPR’s Eleanor Beardsley and Igor Kossov, a journalist at the Kyiv Independent, speak with Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR.
Stuart Karle: Money and the politicization of press freedom
While Sarah Palin may have lost her defamation lawsuit against the New York Times, the legal climate for journalists nevertheless seems to be getting worse. Stuart Karle is a media lawyer who has served as chief operating officer of Reuters News and as general counsel to the Wall Street Journal. On this week’s Kicker, he and Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR, discuss the Palin case and why privacy law may prove to be the next frontier in the war against the press.
Eleanor Beardsley: Putin and Biden summon the Cold War
Podcast By Amanda Darrach, CJR February 11, 2022 The Biden administration on Friday warned that a Russian invasion of Ukraine could happen within days, and again advised Americans to leave Ukraine “now.” The advice is strangely at odds with what day-to-day life feels like in the country. How do Putin and Biden’s age—and Cold War experience—shape the current crisis Eleanor Beardsley, Paris correspondent for NPR, recently traveled to Ukraine.
George Packer: A dishonorable ending in Afghanistan Original
As last summer’s efforts to aid evacuations from Afghanistan grew desperate, media debated who was to blame for the crisis. In his landmark piece “The Betrayal” for The Atlantic, George Packer reframes how to think about the fall of Kabul. On this week’s Kicker, Packer joins Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR, to discuss the impact of Biden’s experience with Vietnam, and how the media should approach moral questions in a divided, partisan era.
Tonga: Not for sale
Typical disaster journalism follows a transactional track. Survivors give the press their stories to package and sell. In turn, the media validates the horror and solicits aid. But when Tonga faced a volcanic eruption and tsunami earlier this month, the island nation neither wanted nor needed Western coverage. In fact, our intrusion presented more of a threat than the crisis itself.
Russia, Ukraine, and the front lines of information warfare
Podcast By Amanda Darrach, CJR January 24, 2022 Despite Ukraine’s efforts to downplay the threat, hybrid warfare between Russia and the west has already begun. Christo Grozev is the lead Russia investigator with Bellingcat, focusing on security threats, extraterritorial clandestine operations, and the weaponization of information. On this week’s Kicker, he and Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR, discuss how the press should cover a conflict that will put information warfare at the forefront.
The Chicago ed beat: Why do politicians fight back when teachers want to feel safe?
Podcast By Amanda Darrach, CJR January 14, 2022 Education reporters cover one of the most emotional facets of the covid-19 pandemic. The political obsession with keeping public schools open during the latest surge does not match the desires of parents. In fact, a recent poll shows that the less income a child’s household has, the more caution the parents express about in-person schooling.
Julie K. Brown, Lucia Osbourne-Crowley, and coverage of the Ghislaine Maxwell trial
Podcast By Amanda Darrach, CJR January 7, 2022 The Ghislaine Maxwell trial has highlighted the court system’s bullying of sexual assault victims—those who take the stand, those who come to bear witness, and even those who sit on the jury. On this week’s Kicker, Julie K.
“I want to go to the Ghislaine Maxwell trial”
By Amanda Darrach, CJR December 22, 2021 At 3:55am in downtown Manhattan, on the tenth day of the United States of America v. Ghislaine Maxwell trial, a man lay diagonally on a folding chair, zipped into a hooded sleeping bag. He was a paid line-sitter—physical insurance that his client would get in first. The man’s companion paced back and forth on the flagstones outside the federal courthouse. He was moving to stay warm, but he, too, was on lookout. “This is a job.
Twitter on a tightrope
Podcast By Amanda Darrach, CJR December 13, 2021 Journalists on Twitter are faced with an impossible task, a choice between building their following or avoiding harassment. More often than not, they face those risks without the support of their editors and newsrooms. On this week’s Kicker, Jacob L.
Ian Urbina on Libya, the Outlaw Ocean Project, and the rules of engagement
Podcast By Amanda Darrach, CJR December 3, 2021 As Ian Urbina’s investigative work uncovered human rights abuses and climate destruction across the world’s oceans, he realized he needed to diversify his audience—beyond even the reach of legacy outlets like the New York Times. On this week’s Kicker, Urbina and Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR, discuss this week’s story on Libya’s migrant prisons, and the journalism model Urbina built to change the rules of global engagement.
The persistence of the Saturday Evening Post
By Amanda Darrach, CJR November 19, 2021 When George Horace Lorimer took over as editor of the Saturday Evening Post, America was a patchwork of expat communities. Memories of the Civil War still cleft the nation; European Jews, Irish, Italians, and Chinese immigrants lived in separate enclaves. The Germans and Scandinavians were already out farming the Midwest. There was no real sense of nation or unity.
Deep on the Steele beat: Erik Wemple & Marcy Wheeler
Podcast By Amanda Darrach, CJR November 19, 2021 On this week’s Kicker, Marcy Wheeler, an independent journalist, and Erik Wemple, a media critic at the Washington Post, speak with Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR, about media accountability and where press discussion of the Steele dossier fell short.
COP26: Who do we edit out of the climate crisis?
Podcast By Amanda Darrach, CJR November 12, 2021 Most reporters in the developing world can’t afford to attend high stakes climate conferences like the COP26 held in Glasgow this month. Neither can most climate activists. What is lost? Jon Allsop, author of CJR’s newsletter “The Media Today,” spent the past week at COP26.
Climate crisis coverage in the first person
The winner of the Environmental Photo of the Year 2021 competition was announced this weekend in Glasgow. The work entered in the competition, by professionals and some amateurs, documents saltwater intrusion in Bangladesh, the compound effect of forest fires and Covid-19 in Yamuna Ghatm, India, and climate impact on polar bear populations in the Arctic Ocean. Increasingly though, the US has its own climate disasters to document.
What does the Facebook data dump mean?
As journalists struggle to cover the latest revelations in the Facebook story, they also endeavor to write stories that land with the general public. How much context is sacrificed for the sensation of something new?
On the trail of ‘pink slime’
The network of websites that pose as local news outlets but aren’t has grown exponentially in the run up to next year’s midterm elections. Who funds the sites, and how can we track them? And why are they called “pink slime”?
Balls and Strikes: How to cover the Supreme Court’s super-majority
This week, the most conservative Supreme Court since the Great Depression convened. The 6-3 “super-majority” is poised to roll back decades of law. On our latest episode of the Kicker, Jay Willis, the editor in chief of Balls and Strikes, a site that launched last month promising “progressive, bullshit-free commentary” about the legal system, joins Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR.
Jon Allsop on Mehdi Hasan’s transatlantic rise
Medhi Hasan has built a global reputation on devastating interviews. Now on MSNBC and Peacock, is he a corrective to the equivocal tendencies of the American press? Jon Allsop profiled Hasan for our latest issue. On this week’s Kicker, he sits down with Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR, to detail how Hasan’s approach can be seen as “an explicit rebuke to outdated journalistic norms.” SHOW NOTES The Debater, Jon Allsop, CJR Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now?
The Wall Street Journal’s stubborn conservatism
Adam Piore spoke to fifty current and former staffers at the Wall Street Journal on how the paper’s editors limit subject matter and political coverage in an effort to hold on to their traditional audience. On this week’s Kicker, Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR, and Piore discuss his findings, the Journal’s obsession with the New York Times, and what it all means for the journalists who work there.
Larry Fink: Vulgarity and Anna Wintour’s Met Gala
In his five-plus decades of photographing performative wealth and celebrity at events like the Vanity Fair Oscar Party and the Met Gala, Larry Fink perfected the art of taking “candid pictures of very non-candid people.” On this week’s Kicker, Fink joins Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR, to discuss coverage of last week’s Met Gala, how journalism can learn from his ability to capture the space between posed photo ops, and why now, against the backdrop of a global pandemic and extreme...
September 11: “Inflection Point”
For CJR, Jon Allsop followed the weekend’s deluge of September 11 anniversary coverage—where it excelled, and when it lacked self-awareness. On today’s Kicker, he joins Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR, on what the media got right and what it didn’t. SHOW NOTES Hindsight and the 9/11 anniversary coverage, Jon Allsop, CJR 8:46am to 11:02am, September 11, 2001, Dunstan Prial, CJR Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today.
Special Report: Inside the toxic mediasphere of Black exceptionalism
Podcast By Amanda Darrach, CJR July 16, 2021 When Samuel Getachew was a sixth grader in the Oakland public school system, Akintunde Ahmad was a “hometown hero,” headed to Yale. On this week’s Kicker, Ahmad, now a CJR contributor and Ida B. Wells fellow, and Getachew, a rising first year at Yale, discuss the media’s misuse of successful Black students.
Nikole Hannah-Jones on the use of power
How do we report and contextualize the January 6 insurrection—or the greatest effort to suppress the vote since the Voting Rights Act was passed, in 1965, or the way political power is wielded in the US—without understanding the racial history of our country?
Errol Louis: Inside City Hall for the New York City primaries
The pandemic’s limits on primary candidates and the journalists who cover them; a drastically shorter campaign season; and all but absent public polling thanks to the new ranked choice voting. This has been a New York City primary season like no other.
Carole Cadwalladr, COVID-19, and the fight against collective amnesia
At the start of the pandemic, the UK government’s suppression of data prompted Carole Cadwalladr and her colleagues at All the Citizens to found Independent sage, a group of scientists who shadow official government scientists. Now, as the UK hurtles toward a June 21 reopening that appears unlikely to happen, the group’s findings are more concerning than ever.
The Tokyo Olympics, Naomi Osaka, and the death of sports access
With over ten thousand athletes from more than two hundred countries, the Olympics are typically a sports writer’s dream. But with Covid protocols in Tokyo this summer, and heightened awareness that players no longer need the press to connect with their fans, is spontaneous sports access also obsolete? On this week’s Kicker, Andrew Keh, a sports reporter for the New York Times, and Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR, discuss the shift of power from press to athletes.
“Photographers are the ones who see everything”
By May 12, authorities in India reported that an unexpected second surge of covid-19 in the country had caused 23 million infections and roughly 250,000 deaths. These were the official numbers—epidemiologists say the actual number of deaths, so far clustered in urban centers like Mumbai and Delhi, is two to five times the government estimates. In April, the positivity rate was 36 percent. For photojournalists, tragedy is visible everywhere.
How to cover abortion
As the Supreme Court prepares to hear Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a Mississippi case that outlaws abortion after 15 weeks gestation, the media’s coverage of abortion, and the language used to describe it, will be back in the spotlight. On this week’s Kicker, Maria Clark, a Louisiana-based healthcare reporter with USA Today’s American South team, and Jessica Mason Pieklo, senior vice president and executive editor at Rewire News Group, join Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR.
The view from Tel Aviv
Ruth Margalit is an Israeli journalist living in Tel Aviv. By day, she covers the crisis there for the New Yorker. By night, her young family shelters in their building’s stairwell. On this week’s Kicker, how American framing of this week’s violence conflicts with the rest of the world’s; how Israeli military censors lost control of the narrative; and why Netanyahu’s downfall could be related to his obsession with the media. Margalit in conversation with Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR.
Jessica Bruder talks Nomadland
“Nomadland,” a film inspired by and featuring non-actor sources from journalist Jessica Bruder’s 2017 nonfiction book of the same name, just swept the Academy Awards. Both book and film explore the life of America’s “new nomads,” who live without traditional housing since losing their savings in the Great Recession.
From the Existential Issue: The Pirate Radio Capital
In 2018, David Goren, a radio producer and audio archivist, created the Brooklyn Pirate Radio Sound Map to collect the sounds of dozens of pirated broadcasts from across the borough. Pirate stations earn their name by hitching a ride on already licensed radio frequencies that typically cost commercial stations millions of dollars to acquire and set up. Nowhere in the country are there more pirate radio stations than in New York, where they provide a vital service to immigrant populations.
‘Survival and science’-our fight against climate silence
In 2019, in an effort to combat climate silence, CJR and The Nation, in partnership with The Guardian, founded Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaborative aimed at strengthening coverage of the climate emergency. Two years later, Covering Climate Now partners publish coverage of the climate crisis to 2 billion readers.
Q&A: Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder‘s Mel Reeves on the Chauvin verdict
Q and A By Amanda Darrach, CJR April 26, 2021 Mel Reeves is editor of the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder, the state’s oldest Black-owned newspaper. The newspaper’s office is located a few blocks from where George Floyd was murdered, in the community Reeves has belonged to for 30 years.
The narrative the Twin Cities tried to build for the national press
In the wake of the Derek Chauvin verdict, Mel Reeves, the editor of the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder, and a 30-year member of the community where George Floyd was murdered, tells Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR, how he watched police and city authorities depict his home as inherently violent for the national press.
Jelani Cobb on the killing of Daunte Wright, the Derek Chauvin trial, and how to tell the whole story
Reporters were in Minneapolis covering the trial of Derek Chauvin when news broke about the police shooting of Daunte Wright. On this week’s Kicker, Jelani Cobb, a staff writer at the New Yorker and the author of “The Substance of Hope: Barack Obama and the Paradox of Progress,” joins Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR, to discuss his work in Minneapolis over the past week, the ways reporters can contextualize so many deaths, and how he will approach next week’s expected verdict.
“They forget about you”: The media advice Parkland parents give to mass shooting survivors
Joaquin Oliver was murdered in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting. His parents, Manuel and Patricia Oliver, recognize a pattern, both in how the US media covers mass shootings by rote, and in how Americans are able to look away once the news cycle ends.
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