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.On this week’s Kicker, Damien Cave, the New York Times bureau chief in Sydney, Australia, and Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR, discuss the island’s dismissal of the global press, and the Western media’s boundless assumption that we can help.

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.

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 Covid-19 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. On this week’s Kicker, Tracy Swartz, who covers Chicago Public Schools for the Chicago Tribune, and Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR, discuss how so many districts failed to create better safety measures and a plan for temporary remote learning this winter.

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. Brown, an investigative reporter with the Miami Herald whose work led to Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein’s arrests, and Lucia Osborne-Crowley, a lawyer and a reporter for Law360 who broke the story that a Maxwell juror was a victim of sexual assault, join Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR. They discuss how the press can hold the court system to account.

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. Nelson, an assistant professor at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University, and Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR, discuss Nelson’s latest report, published by the Tow Center for Digital Journalism, on journalists’ experiences with and views of newsroom social media policies.

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.

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.

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. On this week’s Kicker, he sits down with two conference attendees, Disha Shetty, a public health journalist from India, and Mark Hertsgaard, co-founder and executive director of Covering Climate Now and the environment correspondent for The Nation, to discuss how global north editors dismiss important reporting from the developing world.

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 this week’s Kicker, Renee DiResta, who is the technical research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory and an ideas contributor at Wired and The Atlantic, and Mathew Ingram, our chief digital writer, speak with Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR, on how to connect the dots when the story gets this big.

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”?On this week’s Kicker, Priyanjana Bengani, a senior research fellow at Columbia Journalism School's Tow Center for Digital Journalism, sits down with Kyle Pope, editor and publisher of CJR, to discuss her study of these op-up sites, how to find and follow them, and what the phenomenon means in the face of ever-dwindling local news.