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This week, Wired announced that it will drop its paywall for any reporting based on the Freedom of Information Act, following the lead of outlets like 404 Media that also make their FOIA-based reporting available for free. The Freedom of the Press Foundation (where Katie Drummond, Wired’s global editorial director, serves on the board) urged other publications to follow suit. “Some may argue that, from a business standpoint, not charging for stories primarily relying on public records automatically means fewer subscriptions and therefore less revenue. We disagree,” the foundation wrote in a statement. “It’s just as possible that readers will recognize this sacrifice and reward these outlets with more traffic and subscriptions in the long run.”
Given the apparent efforts by the Elon Musk–run Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to evade scrutiny under FOIA, moves that enable important accountability journalism based on records requests to reach more readers can only be welcomed. (A judge ruled last week that DOGE is likely subject to FOIA, as Sarah Grevy Gotfredsen reported for CJR.) And if crucial investigations by Wired—which has done some of the best reporting on Musk and DOGE over the past few months, an exciting pivot for a publication traditionally focused on tech—can be read paywall-free, it could bring more attention to Wired itself, as well as encourage other outlets to copy its move. In the words of Michael Scott from The Office, that would truly be a win-win-win situation for all involved. Except, perhaps,for DOGE. —Meghnad Bose
Listen, it’s not a job most of us would want: decoding the many, many, exhaustingly many signs and symbols and endlessly ironized memey brainrot of the far right. That’s what makes Molly Conger and her Weird Little Guys podcast all the more vital. It’s hard to imagine anyone more uniquely suited to the task. Her most recent tour de 4chan sees her answer the question What’s Trump even talking about with South Africa? by taking us through some Tucker Carlson–assisted “white genocide” nonsense, into the very real mass shooters who have invoked it (Anders Breivik, Dylann Roof), all the way back to a bombing in heckin Bologna in 1980 and how apartheid was actually too woke for certain Afrikaners. And that’s just been in the first two parts of this particular weird little miniseries. It’s more, uh, fun than it sounds. Weird, right? —Mike Laws
In the aftermath of the recent Columbia graduate Mahmoud Khalil’s arrest by immigration authorities, some of the most critical reporting came not from legacy media but from independent, recently established outlets. One has been Zeteo, which was founded just over a year ago by Mehdi Hasan, a broadcast journalist and bestselling author, and has quickly built a reputation for sharp, document-driven scoops and a commitment to holding power to account.
Recently, reporter Prem Thakker has distinguished himself with his coverage of the Khalil case, including a major scoop, based on internal emails, revealing that just one day before his arrest, Khalil had written to the Columbia University administration requesting legal protection out of fear that he would soon be detained and deported—an outcome that materialized within hours. Thakker is a former politics reporter at The Intercept and an associate writer for the New Republic, and has earned a reputation for incisive political coverage, often digging into under-the-radar developments with national implications. His meticulous, document-driven reporting reflects a broader commitment to accountability journalism and underscores Zeteo’s growing role in defending democracy and human rights. Here’s to more scoops that challenge power and demand transparency. —Sacha Biazzo
Earlier this week, Israel resumed air strikes on Gaza, killing hundreds of Palestinians. Politico posted an article about the strikes that upset Martin Varsavsky, a tech entrepreneur who sits on the board of Axel Springer, the German media behemoth that owns Politico. “I consider this article one-sided Hamas support,” Varsavsky raged on X. “It fails to mention that the airstrikes were aimed at eliminating top Hamas military and that Israel was successful at doing so. It also quotes casualty figures given by Hamas that are not believed to be accurate.” He went on to decry Politico reporters as “woke” and the outlet’s leaders as timid, before suggesting that he was “working on” some form of action in response.
Varsavsky’s intervention would have raised sharp questions about the interference of corporate board members in journalism regardless—but it didn’t help matters that the article in question wasn’t written by a Politico journalist at all; it was wire copy taken from the Associated Press, as the “By ASSOCIATED PRESS” wording at the top of the page clearly indicated. When the dogged media reporter Oliver Darcy pointed this out to Varsavsky, the latter said that he hadn’t realized. Some of his posts taking aim at Politico’s reporters have been deleted, but his initial screed was still live at time of writing. According to Darcy, the episode “did not sit well with many of the outlet’s journalists.” No kidding. —Jon Allsop
As we reported on Monday and Tuesday, the Trump administration has turned its scythe on the US Agency for Global Media, functionally silencing Voice of America and slashing funding for other overseas broadcasters like Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (which is now suing to get its congressionally appropriated cash). The broadcasters were set up as tools of US soft power and have retained that function—but they perform it by exporting independent journalism, free of political meddling, to countries that don’t have it.
Not that you’d know that from listening to Rob Finnerty, of Newsmax, interview Kari Lake, the news anchor turned election denier turned Trump-appointed special adviser to USAGM, about the cuts this week. Saying the increasingly-not-so-quiet part out loud, Finnerty criticized a VOA reporter for asking the leader of Ireland about Trump’s plan to expel Palestinians from Gaza in the Oval Office—“She’s supposed to be giving an American spin to stories,” Finnerty said, and her line of inquiry was “not the question, in that moment”—before asking Lake, “Why not use taxpayer money to make Voice of America into a true MAGA messaging network overseas?”
Finnerty ended by referring to VOA’s World War II origins: it was founded to fight Nazi propaganda and, at least according to Finnerty, to “spread what was a more MAGA message back then, an ‘America First’ message.” —Jon Allsop.
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