The Kicker

In March, the digital literary magazine Guernica published a personal essay by a British Israeli writer and translator, about her experiences in the aftermath of the October 7 Hamas terror attacks.

It was raw and honest and painful to read. The writer, Joanna Chen, had spent years before the attacks and subsequent war on Gaza volunteering for an organization that transported Palestinian children into Israeli territory for medical care; after October 7, she found it hard to connect with the work.

After the piece was initially published, in March, a number of Guernica staffers—all of them volunteers—expressed outrage that the magazine had published an essay centered on the internal moral agonies of an Israeli, at a time when Palestinians were being brutally killed.

The publisher of Guernica pulled the essay; within a month, Jina Moore Ngarambe, the editor in chief, resigned.

Today on The Kicker: a conversation with Jina about what she learned from the experience, and why she believes so strongly in journalism’s responsibility to present uncomfortable perspectives.

Read more:

Joanna Chen’s essay, “From the edges of a broken world” (as republished by Washington Monthly)

Guernica founder Michael Archer’s explanation for why the essay was taken down

Jina’s interview with Semafor

Hosted by Josh Hersh
Produced by Amanda Darrach
Audio Mix by William Flynn


Episode website

In late May, Kyle Clark went viral after he moderated a debate featuring six Republican candidates for Colorado’s Fourth Congressional District, including Rep. Lauren Boebert.

He refused to allow the candidates to evade his direct questions with waffling, rambly answers, instead repeatedly cutting them off: “You didn’t make any attempt to answer the actual question,” he said at one point.

Over the next few weeks, his management of the debate was hailed by everyone from the Poynter Institute to Jimmy Kimmel, who told his national audience, “That’s how you run a debate, right there, like a drill sergeant!”

A few months on, Clark has mixed feelings about all the social media fanfare—but he’s happy that his no-nonsense approach to interviewing politicians has caught on.

He joins The Kicker ahead of the upcoming presidential debate, between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, to talk about the importance of the media calling out falsehoods, and why local news is central to restoring public trust in the media.

Watch the full 9News debate, from May, here.

Hosted by Josh Hersh
Produced by Amanda Darrach
Research by Kevin Lind

Episode Website

In early 2023, Patrick Lohmann, a reporter for the nonprofit Source NM, moved to the small town of Las Vegas, New Mexico, to learn how residents were coping with the aftermath of the largest wildfire in state history.

What he learned there was that the destruction brought on by wildfires doesn’t end when the fire itself goes out. It can take years for people to extract benefits from the federal bureaucracy, and for communities to fully recover—if they ever do. Wildfires leave behind debris that can be swept up in devastating flash floods, and in many parts of the country, the “fire season” encompasses most of the year.

Pat spoke to The Kicker about the new reality of wildfires, and why all reporters living in fire-prone areas may eventually find themselves covering wildfires.

Read more of Patrick Lohmann’s reporting at Source NM

Patrick moved to Las Vegas, New Mexico to cover the aftermath of the Hermit's Peak/Calf Canyon Fire

How wildfires led to flash flooding in Ruidoso (NYT)


Hosted by Josh Hersh
Produced by Amanda Darrach
Research by Kevin Lind

Episode Website

The Democrats are gathering in Chicago next week, and the sitting president has dropped out of the race. But as the guests on today’s podcast remind us, that doesn’t mean history is repeating itself.

In 1968, Ted Koppel was just back from a tour covering the war in Vietnam, and assigned to the comparatively tame—if, as he reminds us, not without its moments—presidential campaign of Republican Richard Nixon.

Over on the Democratic side, as historian Heather Hendershot writes in her recent book, When the News Broke: 1968 and the Polarizing of America, the media were about to get a rough introduction to how much audience appetites for news were shifting.

For more reminiscences on the politics of ‘68—and its present-day lessons for the news media—in CJR’s special report, reported by Kevin Lind.

Hosted by Josh Hersh
Produced by Amanda Darrach
Research by Kevin Lind

Episode Website

Eugene Daniels is a White House reporter for Politico, with a special focus on Kamala Harris. That’s put him front and center for a month of news that few people in politics saw coming.

On this episode of The Kicker, Daniels shares what he’s learned from nearly four years of covering the vice president, how her relationship with the press will differ from the president’s, and why you can’t blame the media for Biden’s decision to drop out of the race.

Produced by Emily Russell

Hosted by Josh Hersh

Lorena Lopez came to the United States from her home country of Nicaragua, where she was an investigative reporter, in 1992. But it wasn’t until 2016 that she managed to return to her passion, as the founding editor of La Prensa, a Spanish-language newspaper serving Western Iowa.

On this week’s Kicker, Lopez talks about her long journey back to journalism, why reliable, trusted information available for Spanish-speaking Americans is so hard to come by—and why so many of her readers are leaning towards voting for Donald Trump.

You can read more about Lopez’s work in Jack Herrera’s profile, which was part of CJR’s Election Issue. (A Spanish-language version of the article is available here.)

Hosted by Josh Hersh
Produced by Amanda Darrach
Research by Kevin Lind

Episode Website

Alex Thompson, a national political correspondent for Axios, first reported that President Biden had started wearing special sneakers, in part to reduce the risk of tripping, last fall.

But until the debate last week, he was still one of a small handful of reporters who was aggressively pursuing direct evidence that Biden’s age – regular fodder for political talk shows – was actually having an impact.

He joins the Kicker to talk about what it’s like to do that kind of journalism, how the White House pushed back, and why so many people had a hard time accepting what was happening in front of their eyes.

Read Alex’s report from last fall about concerns inside the White House about Biden losing his footing.

And his coverage after the debate, when he revealed why the White House limited Biden’s public engagements before 10am and after 4pm.

The Wall Street Journal’s months-long investigation into signs of Biden’s mental decline, from early June, is here.

Hosted by Josh Hersh
Produced by Amanda Darrach
Research by Kevin Lind

Episode Website

Paul Farhi was a media reporter for the Washington Post until the end of last year. But instead of retiring, he’s been busier than ever, chronicling the seemingly endless stream of bad news stories about the media business, for outlets like The Atlantic and here at CJR.

He joins The Kicker to talk about traditional journalism’s struggles to stay relevant amid the boundless other means companies and high-profile individuals have to communicate with the public—and the growing number of people who say they avoid the news entirely.

You can read more about journalism’s apathy problem in CJR’s Election Issue here.

And read Farhi’s reporting on how some companies no longer feel the need to give any comment to a reporter, even when they think the story is wrong.

Hosted by Josh Hersh
Produced by Amanda Darrach
Research by Kevin Lind

Episode Website

Steve Herman was the White House correspondent for Voice of America during the Trump administration. He joins The Kicker to talk about his new book on what it was like to cover a deeply unpredictable president—and why he believes it’s essential, even under extreme circumstances, for reporters to stay out of the political fray.

This podcast is part of “Covering the Election,” CJR’s spring special issue on news and politics in 2024. Read the whole issue here.

You can find Herman’s Behind the White House Curtain here.

Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for a second Trump term, includes a chapter on remaking VOA.


Hosted by Josh Hersh

Produced by Amanda Darrach

Research by Kevin Lind

Haaretz is one of Israel’s most respected newspapers. It’s also one of the few willing to openly criticize the government for its treatment of Palestinians. The Kicker speaks with Hagar Shezaf and Omer Benjakob, two journalists with the paper, about what it’s like to do accountability journalism in Israel these days—especially in the aftermath of the devastating Hamas attacks of October 7th. 

Read more:

Hagar Shezaf on violence against Palestinians in the West Bank since October 7

And on the prison camp at Sde Teiman

Omer Benjakob on Israeli influence operations against Hamas and UNRWA