Most Recent   |   Special Issues   |   The Kicker Podcast Join us
Columbia Journalism Review
Join us
Lesson Learned

How the Times Lost a Defamation Trial

An anonymous source, a “hillbilly ambulance chaser” text message, and the newsroom’s first defamation defeat in this country in more than fifty years.
By Bill Grueskin
Podcast

A Victim of the ‘Elon Musk Playbook’

Alison Gerber, a longtime editor at the Chattanooga Times Free Press, on losing her job after twenty-three years.
By Megan Greenwell

Two Crowns

As David Ellison prepares to take charge of CNN, Donald Trump tests the limits of his power.
By Jem Bartholomew

The Full Color of Joe Sacco

A new book of cartoon journalism, Requiem for Gaza, is the latest chapter in his vivid, visceral depictions of humanity.
By Amos Barshad

Following the Political Money

Illuminating campaign finance reporting from LAist on the city’s mayoral race. Plus: A poor choice of words in the Cornell case, and the value of five-dollar obituaries.
By S. Mitra Kalita

Recent

See all recent

Is My Chatbot Poisoned by Disinformation?

How to keep AI from killing us with fake news.
By Anika Collier Navaroli

‘It’s as If They Are Creating Space to Legitimize the Targeting of Their Own Colleagues’

Assal Rad on how the mainstream press has failed in its coverage of Gaza.
By Amos Barshad

Losing Control

“I’m really fucking busy being the real Chris Hansen,” and other thoughts about Primetime.
By Susie Banikarim
Sign up for CJR’s daily email

Reporting from Inside

The new book from Evan Gershkovich is not just a prison memoir.
By Joel Simon

The New Boss at the Chattanooga Times Free Press

The paper has let go of most staff and implemented drastic changes. Craig Fuller, now at the helm, loves what he sees. Just don’t chew gum in front of him.
By Riddhi Setty

Richard LA’s Impossible Beat

Independent creator-journalists such as Carlitos Ricardo Parias, known as Richard LA, are especially vulnerable to retaliation—and deportation.
By Carolina Abbott Galvão

How Should We Cover the Climate Story?

Speaking with climate reporters about staying on the beat—because, as Bill McKibben put it, “for better or for worse, by this time next year, there’s no doubt in my mind that climate coverage will be at the forefront.”
By Carolina Abbott Galvão, Ivan L. Nagy, Riddhi Setty

Done and Dusted

With the collapse of the California-led challenge to Paramount’s takeover of Warner Bros., the future of an independent CNN hangs in the balance.
By Amos Barshad

I Don’t Want My Trump TV

A day in the life of the booted White House press and the twenty-four-seven propaganda people.
By Betsy Morais

The Access Issue

Inside and Out

Our new special issue on the restrictions, workarounds, glories, and trade-offs of journalistic access.

The Blade’s Shocking, Inevitable News

When I joined as a political writer, Toledo’s famed daily was known for its ambitious local newsroom. Now it’s preparing to publish its final issue.
By Liz Skalka

Collateral Damage

Almost no one has seen NAZA, a chilling new documentary. That hasn’t stopped Israel from condemning it.
By Amos Barshad

McClatchy’s Post-Layoff Future

“AI is clearly part of the plan moving forward,” Ariane Lange, an investigative reporter at the Sacramento Bee, said. “It’s been part of the plan for quite some time.”
By Riddhi Setty

Keeping Journalism in Russia’s Orbit

Guerrilla reporters, data journalism, and VPNs.
By Ivan L. Nagy

Premium (Inbox) Glossy

The Knowing introduces an all-digital reimagining of classic Black magazines.
By Feven Merid

The Future of Visual Investigations, If We Can’t Trust Our Eyes

Journalists and other experts tell us how, in the age of AI, technology is transforming the work of visual forensics. “We might have to be a little bit more imaginative,” Emily Tripp, of Airwars, says.
By Emily Goligoski, Marisa Mazria Katz, Jake Charles Rees

Reboot

Transformations

How technology is changing journalism.

My 9/11 Job Interview

Just out of journalism school, I entered a new reality—for the press and everything else.
By Nicholas Boston

Continuing Furies

A new book by Rozina Ali asks us to reckon with decades of Islamophobia in the United States and the media’s role in it.
By Aida Alami

What Happened in Lancaster?

The saga of a public radio station, a regional newspaper, the Pennsylvania family that funded them, and an NPR host turned nonprofit executive.
By Carolina Abbott Galvão

Why ABC Self-Censored

In a lawsuit, the network cops to making coverage decisions based on government pressure. It’s a striking admission—and an untested legal strategy.
By Joel Simon

Notes from the Non-League

The Non-League Paper, devoted to the lowest tiers of English soccer, reports on more than a hundred games each week—and has earned a fan base of its own.
By Amos Barshad

Stars and Stripes and Lawsuits

More than six months after the United States and Israel attacked Iran, the Pentagon is waging a concurrent war on the American press.
By Ivan L. Nagy

Politics

Survival Guide

How to keep your head above water as Trump floods the zone.

Should the Press ‘Run Toward’ AI?

A new book argues that news organizations should enthusiastically adopt AI to improve their journalism. Critics aren’t so sure.
By Jem Bartholomew

The Shipping News Stars

With the Strait of Hormuz crisis raging, experts in commercial maritime traffic are having a moment.
By Amos Barshad

Karen Attiah Is Ready to Go Back to the Washington Post

“If there’s anybody that should feel awkward, it’s going to be the people involved in making this decision,” she says. If the situation doesn’t work out, she may become a martial-arts influencer or a “warrior priestess of some kind for the digital age.” 
By Riddhi Setty

How a Summer of Protests Upended India’s Media

“Celebrity anchors are being replaced by celebrity YouTubers,” Kaushik Raj, an independent journalist, says.
By Tannu Jain

Pangram Dreams of a Slop-Free Future

Max Spero—a cofounder of Pangram, an AI detection tool popular among journalists—asks, “If you’re not going to bother writing your newsletter, why should I read it?”
By Carolina Abbott Galvão

Walking Targets

Movement journalism has been a source of hope. But political attacks and funders’ retrenchment have put it at serious risk.
By Uyiosa Elegon

The Journalism 2050 Issue

Forecasting

Where the wind is blowing the media industry and habits of news consumption.

The 69-Year-Old Rookie

I was a fifty-year newspaper veteran and a journalism professor. Then I joined the Salt Lake Tribune as a junior editor.
By Bill Grueskin

Axios Wants to Save Local News with AI 

“At the end of the day, if someone’s going to pay you for content, you say: Well, how much are you going to pay me?” Jim VandeHei, the chief executive, said of his company’s deal with OpenAI. “If that payment feels like it’s a fair transaction price, you say yes.”
By Issie Lapowsky

Almost Persuaded

Kathleen Kingsbury of the New York Times on Nicholas Kristof and Gaza, her big bet on video, and what makes an opinion piece.
By Kyle Paoletta

Insider Outsider

“If a story is important in another part of the world,” Foreign Policy’s Ravi Agrawal says, “it is important in and of itself.”
By Maurice Oniang’o

Striking Out

The founders of the Pittsburgh Progress want to inject their community-centric publication with a spirit of labor solidarity.
By Riddhi Setty

Feeling It, Big Time

How Tom Cibrowski, the president and executive editor of CBS News, navigates the Bari Weiss era.
By Adam Piore

International

The Story of Gaza

Journalism confronts a crisis—Israeli attacks, starving children, hostages, mass death—that won’t let up.

Revising the Ethics Code

The Society of Professional Journalists is taking a red pencil to its ethics guidelines—the first update since 2014.
By Liz Skalka

All the News While Doing the Dishes

News organizations have embraced AI narrators. But how does artificial mediation change our relationship to a piece of writing?
By Jem Bartholomew

Defusing Misinformation Through Humor

Dave Jorgenson, cofounder of Local News International, on the post-Post life.
By Susie Banikarim

‘The Most Accurate Truth’

After CBS News hit the brakes on a 60 Minutes story about CECOT prison, the League of Latin American Citizens decided it was time to start their own newsroom. Within months, El Grito Media has become a definitive resource.
By Carolina Abbott Galvão

Brand Buying

The battered Sports Illustrated has seen a rising ticket reseller profit off its storied name.
By Amos Barshad

I Tried Investigating a Mysterious Media Company. A Police Report Was Filed Against Me.

Who was in charge—Pleroma, the International Business Times, or something else?
By Riddhi Setty

Synthetic Media

Artificial Intelligence

Productivity, parlor tricks, and persuading people that the truth still matters.

In a Fast-Moving Crisis, What Is the Role of Journalism?

Community news organizations, enmeshed in an information ecosystem on social media and messaging apps, can verify, clarify, and connect.
By Irene Romulo, Nina Weingrill

How Transparent Should I Be About AI?

Clearing up confusion about how and why to disclose AI use in writing.
By Anika Collier Navaroli

How a Network of Pink-Slime News Sites and Conservative Activists Went After Campus DEI

Using FOIA requests and hidden-camera videos, the groups targeted universities, leading to the firing of faculty and staff.
By Miranda Green

If They Can’t Block This Merger, Can Anyone?

State attorneys general are trying to stop Paramount Skydance from merging with Warner Bros. Discovery. It’s the best shot left at preventing—or at least stalling—what seems inevitable.
By Amos Barshad

‘I Promised People I Would Do Something’

When Antonio Sánchez lost his job—and Oregon lost its only Spanish news station—he started his own daily YouTube broadcast. The show now reaches tens of thousands.
By Grace Benninghoff

How to Develop AI Guidelines

Speaking with newsroom leaders and policy experts to think through the rules for journalists—and how to make them work for your organization.
By Emily Goligoski

Standards and Practices

A New Look at Journalism Ethics

Our series in collaboration with the Craig Newmark Center for Journalism Ethics and Security.

Exposure to Risk

Freelance photographers are organizing against a new contract at the Wall Street Journal that they say opens their work up to AI training.
By Daniella Zalcman

Reporting the Platner Allegations

In Me Too coverage, timing is everything.
By Betsy Morais

‘A Mega-Disaster in a Hollowed-Out State’

After a historic earthquake, Tony Frangie Mawad was among the Venezuelan journalists who connected people in need to those who could help.
By Ivan L. Nagy

‘All I Have Is the Power to Talk and Be Heard’

Tucker Carlson on pitying Donald Trump, never listening to podcasts, and planning a new political party—while selling you nicotine pouches. 
By Amos Barshad

Who Counts?

The Committee to Protect Journalists’ role documenting members of the press killed in the Israel-Gaza war has made it a target.
By Jem Bartholomew

Agenda Journalism

The Baltimore Sun swipes at Wes Moore, and a seasoned reporter resigns. Plus: Holding the police accountable, and the grim reality of wellness treatments.
By Susie Banikarim

Remembering

Lessons Learned (Or Not)

Have journalists gotten better at covering Trump?

They’ve Got Bite

Coyote, a new media collective in the Bay Area, is irreverent, human, and unabashedly political.
By Lucy Schiller

Pitched Battle

Coverage of the 2026 World Cup promises to bring politics off the sidelines.
By Amos Barshad

How Does Access Work Now?

Journalists, podcasters, and news influencers on the erosion of access—what it’s worth, and what it isn’t.
By Carolina Abbott Galvão, Riddhi Setty, Ivan L. Nagy

Subversion of Reality

The Faustian bargain of embedding with the Israeli military in Gaza.  
By Gerry Shih

Restraint and Fecklessness

The White House Correspondents’ Association has been working hard to maintain diplomacy with Donald Trump. To what end?
By Liz Skalka

Out of State

How Graham Platner’s Senate campaign vexed the national press.
By Vanessa M. Gezari
Advertisement

Magazine

Recent Issues

From the Archive

Corridor of Mirrors

The Democratic Convention in Chicago, in August 1968, was surrounded by protesters and made bloody by police violence. Whiteside was on the scene, following along with CBS News.
By Thomas Whiteside