The Kicker

Public housing is one of the most undercovered stories in New York. But every day, Monica Morales of PIX11 News answers calls from residents of city-owned buildings and fixes their problems. Kyle Pope, the editor and publisher of CJR, speaks with Morales and Emma Whitford, who profiled her this week. They discuss the difference a dedicated reporter makes and how her beat bridges the divide between city officials and the public housing system’s 400,000 residents.

Two days before Hurricane Dorian hit, Eugene Duffy, the managing editor of The Tribune in Nassau, sent a reporter and a photographer to Marsh Harbour in the Abacos. As the town endured the largest storm on modern record, Duffy lost touch with his team. On this week’s episode, CJR Editor and Publisher Kyle Pope hears how social media has changed coverage of natural disasters and how vital local headlines can be in driving sustained relief efforts from NGOs and wealthier countries.

Swe Win, the editor of Myanmar Now, a bilingual investigative-news website, was sued for defamation in Mandalay two years ago. His crime? Posting on Facebook about his site’s coverage of an extremist monk’s support of an assasination. This week, Kyle Pope, CJR’s editor and publisher, and E. Tammy Kim, a freelance reporter and essayist, discuss the effect of the high-profile imprisonment of Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo on cases like Swe Win’s.

“Slippery,” but “charming.” “Magnetic,” but “useless.” And “utterly unapologetic.” Convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein invited New York Times columnist James Stewart to his Manhattan home last August. Following Epstein’s apparent suicide last week, as he awaited trial for sex trafficking and conspiracy to traffic minors for sex, Stewart and the Times made the decision to publish details of their interview, though Epstein spoke with Stewart on background. Here CJR Editor and Publisher Kyle Pope and Stewart discuss the ethical questions behind that decision, and the moral imperative to publish facts quickly.

John Temple was the editor of the Rocky Mountain News when the Columbine massacre changed America’s perception of safety forever. CJR Editor and Publisher Kyle Pope speaks with Temple about the media’s sanitation of mass shootings, Temple’s disbelief that more did not change after Columbine, and why the way we cover the violence has not worked.

On this week’s episode, CJR Editor and Publisher Kyle Pope speaks with Marie J. French and Danielle Muoio, the authors of POLITICO’S “New York Energy” newsletter. They report from the intersection of politics, policy, and the climate crisis, and discuss why it’s time for newsrooms everywhere to embrace the energy beat.

On this week’s episode, CJR Editor and Publisher Kyle Pope speaks with Bob Garfield, the co-host of WNYC’s “On the Media” and co-founder of the Purple Project for Democracy, on his plan to rebuild American faith in its press and in democracy. They discuss the fragmentation of the media and the loss of civic education, as well as Garfield’s blueprint for November 2019, when he urges outlets to feature non-partisan, apolitical reports on democracy.

On this week’s episode, CJR Editor and Publisher Kyle Pope speaks with Lauren Villagran and Aaron Montes, both reporters at the El Paso Times, about their paper’s recent collaboration with The New York Times. They discuss their discovery of the Border Patrol station in Clint, Texas and the climate of fear in El Paso after the Trump administration’s unique decision to announce raids ahead of time.

On this week’s episode, CJR Editor and Publisher Kyle Pope speaks with Maria Bustillo, CJR’s public editor for MSNBC, on the first round of Democratic debates. They discuss Kamala Harris’s small-screen evolution into a challenger for Joe Biden, why one weak debate won’t finish him, and how Bustillo plans to cover MSNBC in the run-up to 2020.

On this week’s episode, CJR Editor and Publisher Kyle Pope speaks with Azeen Ghorayshi and Rachel Sanders, members of the Buzzfeed News union organizing committee. BuzzFeed’s newsroom voted to unionize in February, a month after a devastating round of layoffs that left some 200 employees out of work. Ghorayshi, an investigative reporter, and Sanders, the deputy culture editor, describe life in the newsroom as negotiations with management drag on, and why unionizing should not have to be an adversarial process.