Shows / The Kicker
The Kicker
The Kicker is a podcast on the media and the world today. It comes out twice a month, hosted by Megan Greenwell and produced by Amanda Darrach for the Columbia Journalism Review. It is available wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.
Episodes
The KickerHow We Got Here: Unwelcome to America, host Prof. Nina Alvarez
The American Dream is often portrayed as the hook that pulls people to the United States. What is usually left out of the story is the hell many flee…
The KickerHow We Got Here: Class, host Prof. Dale Maharidge
Steel produced in Youngstown, Ohio, helped America win World War II, and it was used to build the bridges that we cross and the buildings in which we live. But…
The KickerHow We Got Here: Empire, host Prof. Sheila Coronel
There is a long tradition of imperial denial in the United States. After all, Americans fought the British Empire and have always thought of themselves as…
The KickerHow We Got Here: Whiteness, host Prof. Samuel G. Freedman
Whiteness in America isn’t just the neutral norm against which racial minorities, particularly Black people, are measured. Whiteness in America means having…
The KickerHow We Got Here: The Half-Life of Democracy, host Prof. Jelani Cobb
The issue of police violence and racism is a familiar one. It’s been present in the United States since the Republic's beginnings. And the stories of George…
The KickerHow We Got Here: Trailer
How We Got Here is a podcast for journalists about how history and identity shape narrative. As journalists, we like to say we’re writing the first draft of…
The KickerSpecial Report: Inside the toxic mediasphere of Black exceptionalism
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…
The KickerNikole Hannah-Jones on the use of power
How do we report and contextualize the January 6 insurrection, or the largest efforts to suppress the vote since the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965, or…
The KickerErrol 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…
The KickerCarole 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…
The KickerThe 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…
The KickerAlden and Tribune: ‘A crash course in capitalism’
About half of daily local newspaper circulation in the US is now controlled by hedge funds. On this week’s Kicker, Rebecca Lurye, a reporter for the Hartford…
The KickerHow 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…
The KickerThe 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…
The KickerSpecial Report: Post-truth and the press
Recently, Maria Bustillos had the opportunity to discuss “post truth,” press manipulation, and right-wing media lies with Joan Donovan, the research director…
The KickerJessica 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…
The KickerSpecial Report: Digital journalism didn’t have to be this way
A discussion on algorithmic design, data discrimination, social media manipulation, and how racism is baked in. The conversation is led by Nehal El-Hadi, a…
The KickerSpecial Report: The Pirate Radio Capital
Special Report: In 2018, David Goren, a radio producer and audio archivist, created the Brooklyn Pirate Radio Sound Map to collect the sounds of dozens of…
The Kicker‘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…
The Kicker‘Violence bait’ —the narrative the Twin Cities tried to build in the mainstream 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…
The KickerJelani Cobb on the murder 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…
The Kicker“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…
The KickerAmerica does not know what a mass shooting looks like
In August 2019, days after 32 people died in the El Paso and Dayton mass shootings, our host Kyle Pope spoke with John Temple. Temple was the editor of…
The KickerRacism, Atlanta, and the race for a narrative
In the wake of the shootings in Atlanta this week, the media has focused on the killer’s story and struggled to explain why the attacks were racist. The…
The KickerPandemic: Why is it so hard to say there’s hope?
Since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, most media coverage has focused on the ongoing physical health disaster and the need to convince readers and…
The KickerToxic: A break in the Cuomo fever dream
Refusing to learn female reporters’ names, to speak on the record, to refrain from embarrassing comments. The Andrew Cuomo that political reporters know is…
The KickerMichael Tubbs on the politics of disinformation, racism, and news deserts
Last year, Michael Tubbs was the focus of an HBO documentary, "Stockton On My Mind," that followed his experience trying to reinvent Stockton, California as…
The KickerMyanmar Now: How to run a paper in the middle of a coup
Burmese journalist Swe Win has survived an assasination attempt and detention by his own government. Now he leads his Yangon-based news outlet Myanmar Now from…
The KickerKathleen Belew and the white power groundswell
On this week’s Kicker, Kathleen Belew, a historian at the University of Chicago and author of Bring The War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary…
The KickerGameStop, Reddit, and who hacked the system
GameStop, Reddit, and who hacked the system by Columbia Journalism Review
The KickerA White House correspondent charts the changing of the guard
Shirish Dáte had a front row seat to the chaos of Trump’s presidency and famously asked Trump whether he regretted having lied so many times to the American…
The KickerWhat Covid reporters can learn from Hiroshima
In the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, journalists struggled to cover the devastation in a way that resonated, much as they do with the Covid-19 pandemic…
The KickerHow will Trump’s followers fight for air time?
When Trump gave the go-ahead for his mob to storm the Capitol last week, it manifested more as a media event than an organized political coup. As Trump loses…
The KickerA New York City principal sick with COVID-19 for the second time, and the story the press is missing
Lisa Edmiston, a middle school principal in Queens who is sick for the second time this year, talks to CJR Editor Kyle Pope about urgent inequities within the…
The KickerCan unions make newsrooms inclusive?
The media’s diversity efforts have been underway for decades, but very little has changed, and diversity rhetoric often becomes dehumanizing. As new union…
The KickerPublic Editors: Why even good reporting no longer impacts the vote
The media did better work covering Trump than in 2016, but did that reporting have any impact on the real world?On this week’s Kicker, Kyle Pope, editor and…
The KickerMasha Gessen on Trump's bid for autocracy
Trump told us, ahead of time, he would claim victory in the election regardless of how America voted. On this week's Kicker, Masha Gessen, a New Yorker…
The KickerDavid Remnick and the View from Trump’s Fifth Avenue
In 2016, Donald Trump told rally attendees that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue without losing voters. Since then, disqualifying pieces of investigative…
The KickerElection 2020 — Why the idea of a return to normal is so dangerous
Jon Allsop and Pete Vernon have written the CJR newsletter, “The Media Today,” since its inception in the wake of the 2016 election. On this week’s Kicker…
The KickerE Jean Carroll puts Trump’s survivors in charge
Most sexual assault coverage in America is told from the attacker’s perspective. Survivors’ physical appearance is described in detail, and the actual assault…
The KickerPhysicians on the air
The president has COVID-19, but the White House has failed to provide reliable information about his condition. To fill the gap, journalists have turned to…
The KickerCOVID at the White House, voter disinformation, and how to report around the propaganda
As a result of an aggressive disinformation campaign, about half of Republicans believe voter fraud is a major problem. Now that Trump has tested positive for…
The KickerWhat was the Notorious RBG like as a source?
How did Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg view the press? And how far did the mythology we built around the “Great Dissenter” stray from reality?On…
The Kicker“Eugenics” in Georgia
The forcible sterilizations of female detainees at an immigration detention center in Georgia comprise a new level of cruelty. But ICE health care systems are…
The KickerWe were all raised here: Rochester, Daniel Prude, and a terrible breach of trust
Editor Sheila Rayam and reporter Georgie Silvarole both grew up in Rochester, New York. So did the city’s former Police Chief La'Ron Singletary and Mayor…
The Kicker“Like shooting a gun in the dark” — a New York City principal and the education beat
As long-time middle school principal and COVID survivor Lisa Edmiston prepares to reopen her middle school in Astoria, she has worked to manage the fear shared…
The KickerWhen did we separate politics and the mail?
On this week’s Kicker, Professor Richard R. John, a historian and author of “Spreading the News: The American Postal System from Franklin to Morse,” speaks…
The KickerHow to cover an election that isn’t there
Radio rallies in church parking lots, candidates in their basements, and voters stuck in hibernation. When all that’s left to cover are the talking points, how…
The KickerStephen Sackur and Interviewing Trump
Stephen Sackur and Interviewing Trump by Columbia Journalism Review
The KickerImagining a new world
The uprising to abolish the police asks our country, and the press, to envision a new world. But the news business is not built to accommodate ideas that would…
The KickerGreat escape: Nicholson Baker lets YouTube take the wheel
When Nicholson Baker first fell in love with YouTube, it was for its “outpouring of human miscellany” and “first person journalism.” But when CJR asked him to…
The KickerWhy police defunding is not an election story
On this week’s Kicker, journalist Jack Herrera and Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR, discuss the gaps in newsroom’s coverage of the defunding debate, and…
The KickerEd Yong on COVID-19 and American fatalism
Ed Yong on COVID-19 and American fatalism by Columbia Journalism Review
The KickerImperfect victims: Mental illness & police brutality
People with untreated mental illnesses are 16 times more likely to be killed by police. Studies show they make up close to half of all police shooting victims…
The KickerWesley 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…
The KickerBlack 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…
The KickerMSNBC’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…
The KickerIndian 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…