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“It’s easy, at a time of rolling scandals and hourly push alerts, to lose sight of how extraordinary this moment is,” CJR Editor and Publisher Kyle Pope writes in the opening pages of our new print issue. The past year has been unlike any the US political world has ever seen. Donald Trump’s rise from reality-TV celebrity to reality-TV president challenged and changed journalism in myriad ways. CJR’s fall magazine looks at the people, moments, and news organizations Trump’s presidency has affected.
From Ivanka to “the dossier” to a moment of reckoning for the political press, the issue tackles some of the biggest personalities and existential questions that have become part of the daily conversation in Washington.
In the days to come, we’ll be posting great pieces, including CJR’s Pope on his time as editor of The New York Observer under Jared Kushner (which publishes on cjr.org at noon today), McKay Coppins on the threat posed by right-wing media, Collier Meyerson on covering a country where race is everywhere, and many more. So keep checking in as we roll out the new issue, and if you’re not already a member, we’d be grateful for your support—$50 gets you a year of access to exclusive content, four issues of the print magazine, and invitations to CJR events.
Below, the first few pieces we’ve already made available online.
- Best press he’s ever had: In perhaps my favorite piece in the issue, former New York Daily News gossip columnist Lloyd Grove looks at Trump’s complicated and profitable relationship with tabloid journalism.
- Trump and the Watergate effect: The Washington Post’s Margaret Sullivan wonders whether the work being done by journalists today will inspire the next generation of Woodwards and Bernsteins.
- Can the First Amendment save us?: Columbia University President and First Amendment scholar Lee C. Bollinger writes about battles over press freedom and trust in the Trump era.
- When all the news that fits is Trump: Former New York Times Executive Editor Jill Abramson praises the work that journalists have done in the first year of the new presidency, but warns of the pitfalls of the Trump bump.
Other notable stories
- Huge props to New York Times reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey for the months of reporting that went into their investigation of harassment allegations against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein.
- BuzzFeed’s Joseph Bernstein digs into the connections between Breitbart, Milo, and white nationalists.
- Michael Grimm, the former Staten Island congressman who once threatened to throw a reporter over a Capitol building balcony, is attempting a comeback. CJR’s Jon Allsop looks at the nascent campaign of a press-bashing pol.
- On Wednesday, CJR hosted a conference in Atlanta to gauge how the election of 2016 transformed the media, the voters, and the presidency.
- I missed this a couple days ago, but HuffPost reports that the neo-Nazis are back online.
- Weekend read: The LA Times is doing a cool thing with these multi-part stories rolled out over the course of several days. This week, it’s Christopher Goffard with the story of Dirty John.
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