February 4, 2020 – Last week, Lyz Lenz, a journalist and writer who lives in Iowa, predicted that the state’s caucuses “are going to be a f*cking nightmare.” In a piece for Gen, Lenz (who also contributes regularly to CJR) wrote that the caucuses are inaccessible at the best of times, and that state Democrats’ […]
Columbia Journalism Review
Posted inLife
The reverberations of Kobe Bryant
January 27, 2020 – Yesterday afternoon, amid a busy news Sunday on multiple fronts, the basketball legend Kobe Bryant died in California, and our media took a sharp collective breath. Bryant, who was 41, was killed in a helicopter crash near Calabasas, close to LA. Eight other people died, including Bryant’s daughter Gianna, who was […]
Posted inUS
Recurring narratives and characters link the Clinton and Trump impeachments
December 9, 2019 – Throughout Donald Trump’s presidency, comparisons to Richard Nixon and Watergate have proliferated in our media. Trump’s firings of James Comey and Jeff Sessions were “a slow-motion Saturday Night Massacre”; multiple of his officials were, or could have been, John Dean. In recent weeks, as the House has marched inexorably toward Trump’s […]
Posted inOp-Ed
CJR: Local elections aren’t all about Trump, no matter what he says
November 6, 2019 – Ahead of important elections yesterday in several states—most notably Kentucky, Virginia, and Mississippi—President Trump did what he does best: made the story about himself. His media boosters did what they do best and rowed in behind. Trump’s Monday night rally in Kentucky—where Matt Bevin, the unpopular Republican governor, faced a tough […]
Posted inWorld
A deadly year for Mexico’s journalists
August 27, 2019 – On Saturday, the body of Nevith Condés Jaramillo, the director of Observatorio del Sur, a local news site in Mexico, was found in the Tejupilco municipality, riddled with stab wounds. It’s not yet clear whether his death was linked to his journalism. If it was, organized crime could be to blame; […]
Posted inUS
The Trump administration is suppressing climate science
August 7, 2019 – On Friday, Lewis Ziska, a climate scientist who specializes in plant physiology, left his job at the US Department of Agriculture after more than 20 years. On Monday, Helena Bottemiller Evich, a food and agriculture reporter at Politico, explained why. Ziska had worked on a groundbreaking study that found rising atmospheric […]
Posted inUS
The first Democratic debate: Too many candidates, too little time
June 27, 2019 – There were plenty of issues with the first round of Democratic debates. NBC had live-streaming lag issues and a hot mic problem involving two of the debate moderators meant they could be heard talking after they left the stage, a gaffe that repeatedly interrupted Chuck Todd when he was trying to ask […]
Posted inOp-Ed
Jon Allsop: After two inglorious years, Sarah Huckabee Sanders will leave the White House
June 14, 2019 – Last June, CBS News reported that Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, and Raj Shah, her deputy, were planning to quit the Trump administration. They stuck it out longer than expected. Shah left in January. Yesterday—exactly a year after the original CBS report—we learned that Sanders will depart at […]
Posted inUS
In Virginia Beach, a sickeningly familiar story
June 3, 2019 – On Friday afternoon, a gunman opened fire at a municipal center in Virginia Beach. He killed 11 city employees and a contractor and critically wounded four other people. As news of the shooting—the deadliest in America in 2019—filtered through, cable news shows cut in with a sickeningly familiar breaking-news update. Not […]
Posted inUS
Espionage charges against Assange are a ‘terrifying’ threat to press freedom
May 24, 2019 – Last month, shortly after police dragged Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, out of Ecuador’s embassy in London, the United States said it would seek his extradition. Journalists and press-freedom watchers—many of whom dislike Assange—waited anxiously for details of the charges; the Justice Department, they feared, was prepared to indict Assange […]
Posted inUS
White House revokes press passes for dozens of journalists
May 9, 2019 – In what appears to be an unprecedented move, the White House revoked the press passes of a significant chunk of the Washington press corps because they didn’t meet a new standard, according to Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank. Under the new rules, rolled out earlier this year, in order to qualify for […]
Posted inUS
Another Times scoop puts Trump’s taxes—and losses—front and center
May 8, 2019 – In early October, David Barstow, Susanne Craig, and Russ Buettner, of The New York Times, unloaded an astonishing story on the dubious business and tax affairs of Donald Trump and his family. The piece took 18 months of reporting and ran to nearly 15,000 words. Last month, the reporters behind it […]
Posted inOp-Ed
CJR: A mosque massacre is livestreamed
March 15, 2019 – Yesterday, in New Zealand, an Australian man in his late twenties logged on Twitter and 8chan, an online message board, to post photos of ammunition and a far-right manifesto. He also linked to a Facebook page, where he promised that he would livestream an impending mass shooting. The man then relayed […]