The Kicker

In January, the Baltimore Banner released an investigation into the star kicker of the Baltimore Ravens, in which multiple women accused him of sexually inappropriate behavior during massages, dating back years. (The player denies the accusations.)

It was an example of a rare kind of journalism these days: hard-hitting accountability reporting on sports. Over the past several years, numerous investigative sports outlets have folded, replaced largely by soft-focused content produced by players and teams themselves.

Small, community-based publications like the Banner face the highest toll for doing this kind of work—boxed out of access from teams, they risk losing a pivotal connection they have with subscribers. But Chris Korman, the paper’s sports editor, says it’s worth it anyway.

Read more:

*The Banner’s investigation into Ravens kicker Justin Tucker

*From the CJR archives: Can sports journalism survive in the era of the athlete? (2024)

Hosted by Josh Hersh
Produced by Amanda Darrach

András Pethő is a Hungarian journalist and a cofounder of Direkt36, an independent investigative news outlet.

Over the past decade, he’s watched as the government of Viktor Orbán—the world leader whom Steve Bannon once praised as “Trump before Trump”—has systematically eroded the freedom of the press in his country, in ways that may feel familiar to Americans watching corporate news leaders succumb to pressure from the administration.

Pethő joins The Kicker to explain why he believes journalists must accept the possibility that the worst is yet to come, while resisting the temptation to turn themselves into martyrs for democracy. “For a while, I thought, This would never happen here,” he said. “The biggest mistake that I made was the failure of imagination.”

Read More:

*András’s 2022 essay on the lessons he learned from experiencing Hungary’s crackdown on a free press

*Direkt36’s latest investigation: a documentary about the secret wealth of Orbán and his allies (with English subtitles)

*The New York Times on the fall of Origo, a once-audacious newsmagazine (2018)

Jon Allsop writes and edits The Media Today, CJR’s daily newsletter. There, he’s closely watched as the American press has struggled to respond to, and cover, the barrage of news that pours out of Donald Trump.

As a frenetic new term begins, Jon joins The Kicker to share his thoughts on what the media gets wrong—and how the political press might begin to chart a new relationship with the presidency and the public.

Read More:

*Jon’s latest newsletter, on Trump’s first week back in office

*Jon’s 2020 essay on how the media handled Trump’s first term

*Chris Hayes on attention, on Ezra Klein’s podcast

*Susan Glasser on Trump’s exhausting litany of outrages

Sign up for The Media Today, CJR’s daily newsletter.

Natalia Antelava spent many years as a correspondent for the BBC, before starting her own media company, Coda Story, in 2016. She’s covered wars in the Middle East and the rise of authoritarianism across Eastern Europe and the Caucasus. For the past year, she was a Knight Fellow at Stanford, where she examined how journalism might survive in an era of AI and tech supremacy.

Antelava joins The Kicker to talk about Meta’s decision to do away with fact-checking, preparing for a second Trump administration, what mainstream reporters can learn from conservative podcasters—and why she’s still optimistic about what journalism can achieve in the year to come.

Read more:

“Noise Is the New Censorship” — Antelava on disinformation and authoritarianism

“Grieving California” — Coda’s 2018 essay on the Tubbs Fire

Hosted by Josh Hersh
Produced by Amanda Darrach

In the finale, Carlos Watson takes the stand—and the jury reaches a verdict.

“The Unraveling of Ozy Media” is a special three-part series of The Kicker, on the trial of Carlos Watson and the excesses of the digital media age, presented by the Columbia Journalism Review.

Hosted and coproduced by Josh Hersh and Susie Banikarim
Produced and edited by Amanda Darrach 

How inflating traffic data went mainstream in digital media—and a key witness takes the stand.

“The Unraveling of Ozy Media” is a special three-part series of The Kicker, on the trial of Carlos Watson and the excesses of the digital media age, presented by the Columbia Journalism Review.

Hosted and coproduced by Josh Hersh and Susie Banikarim
Produced and edited by Amanda Darrach

Carlos Watson’s media startup arrives on the scene—and insiders reveal a dark reality under its glossy veneer.

“The Unraveling of Ozy Media” is a special three-part series of The Kicker, on the trial of Carlos Watson and the excesses of the digital media age, presented by the Columbia Journalism Review.

Hosted and coproduced by Josh Hersh and Susie Banikarim
Produced and edited by Amanda Darrach 

Starting on December 9, the Columbia Journalism Review presents a special three-part series of The Kicker: “The Unraveling of Ozy Media,” on the dramatic rise and fall of Carlos Watson, the cofounder of the digital media company Ozy. In 2023, Watson was charged with fraud after it was revealed that one of his partners had masqueraded as a YouTube executive, during a call with potential investors. 

But Ozy’s failure is about more than one man. It’s a story about an era of profligate growth and overpromises in digital media that have left many wondering whether there’s any business model that will work for journalism today.

Join hosts Josh Hersh and Susie Banikarim as they follow Watson’s trial and ask how much of digital media was built on a lie.

Nearly half of all Latino voters put their support behind former president Donald Trump this week, according to exit polls—a 14 percent increase from 2020.

Those results surprised many, but not Jack Herrera, who has been reporting on the shifting voting habits of Latino communities across the country for years.

Herrera joins The Kicker to talk about what he’s learned from his journalism in Pennsylvania, Iowa, and the border counties of Texas. 

Read More:

Herrera’s article for CJR’s Election Issue on Lorena López, the editor of Iowa’s La Prensa

Herrera’s 2024 reporting on Latino voting in Pennsylvania, Texas, and Iowa

Martin Baron was the executive editor of the Washington Post from 2013 until his retirement, in 2021—which meant he was there for the arrival of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos as owner and publisher of the paper.

He’s long praised Bezos for taking a firm line against any interference with the paper’s journalism, but Bezos’s sudden decision, announced last week, to torpedo the paper’s planned endorsement of Kamala Harris was a bridge too far. In a post on X, Baron described the move as an act of “cowardice” and “spinelessness.”

Baron joins The Kicker to speak about his intense reaction to the decision, what he thinks has changed with Bezos—and whether it might be time for papers to retire the presidential endorsement anyway.

Read more:

Baron’s original statement on the Post’s decision

Bezos’s op-ed explaining why he pushed to deep-six the endorsement

A Post news team article investigating the ties Bezos’s companies have to the government—and to a potential second Trump administration


Hosted by Josh Hersh
Produced by Amanda Darrach