Speaking of which …
The latest from Politico’s Michael Kruse: “Trump’s Most Important Relationship Is Ending. And the Break-Up Isn’t Pretty.”
Kruse writes, “Trump used to court the AP. Today he’s in court with the AP — key members of Trump’s administration are defendants in a lawsuit filed by the flagship wire service after he booted its reporters from the Oval Office and Air Force One for not following his order to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. It might sound like some farcical sitcom plot, but it’s also the deadly serious front line of what’s become Trump’s all-out war on the mainstream media. And in his long, hyper-public life, this marks in Trump’s means of ascent nothing short of a massive shift.”
It’s true. Trump has gone from craving media coverage to now having an, as Kruse aptly put it, “all-out war on mainstream media.”
Kruse’s story is an excellent look into the whys and hows of Trump’s relationship with the media, going back to the 1980s, and where it is headed now.
Big name in journalism out at CJR
Sewell Chan has one of the more respected names in the journalism business. He has been a senior editor at places such as The New York Times and Los Angeles Times. He was the editor-in-chief of The Texas Tribune. He was elected to the Pulitzer Prize Board in 2022. And just last September, he became executive editor of the Columbia Journalism Review — another prestigious title in the journalism world.
But his tenure at CJR came to an abrupt end late last week when he was fired as a result of staff complaints.
In a lengthy post on X on Friday, Chan wrote, “This was the first time in a 25-year career that I’ve ever been subjected to discipline in a job — much less terminated from one.” He said that the decision to terminate him was “hasty, ill-considered and quite frankly baffling.”
So what happened?
Well, officially, Chan said he was made aware of complaints from staff over the way they said he treated them. Chan called them “pointed interactions in which I provided fair and critical feedback rooted in editorial rigor.”
He admitted there were three of those interactions in recent weeks. He wrote, “These are normal workplace interactions and I did exactly what I was hired to do, which was provide rigorous, fair, careful editorial oversight and raise the metabolism and impact of a publication that’s supposed to monitor the media.”
Chan said he offered to meet with staff and requested a coach to help him “navigate” his role.
“Instead,” he wrote, “I was fired.”
On Friday, Ravi Somaiya, a former editor at CJR, wrote an essay describing his workplace perspective on Chan. Somaiya claimed Chan yelled at him in a “a state of profound agitation. Near violence.”
Chan was a member of Poynter’s National Advisory Board, but that was well before I joined Poynter in 2019. He has since been at Poynter for various events and I know him to say hello, but haven’t had much interaction with him.
However, I would say the same thing that Dan Kennedy, a professor at Northeastern University’s School of Journalism, wrote for MediaNation: “I've never heard anyone say a bad word about either Chan or Columbia Journalism School dean Jelani Cobb, who fired him.”
There’s no question, and certainly no surprise, that CJR has done some excellent journalism with Chan in charge. But how that journalism came about is at the center of this controversy. Washington Post media reporter Jeremy Barr, in a tweet on X, had a quote from Cobb that certainly hints at some issues: “We are most grateful to the CJR staff for their resilience and dedication.”
It feels as if there is much more to uncover about this story.
The New York Times’ Katie Robertson and Benjamin Mullin wrote, “Mr. Chan’s departure comes at an inopportune time for CJR. The magazine, which has been running under tight budgetary constraints, was beginning a fund-raising campaign, two people familiar with it said. Now, the magazine is without a permanent editor to spearhead that effort.”
Betsy Morais, previously the managing editor of CJR, has been named interim editor.
Happy Easter
Sunday was Easter — one of the holiest and most joyful days of the year for Christians. So, naturally, President Donald Trump took to social media to send a wish of goodwill and celebration to the American people, right?
At 8:46 a.m. Eastern on Sunday, he posted on Truth Social a happy Easter to all, “including the Radical Left Lunatics who are fighting and scheming so hard to bring Murderers, Drug Lords, Dangerous Prisoners, the Mentally Insane, and well known MS-13 Gang Members and Wife Beaters, back into our Country. Happy Easter also to the WEAK and INEFFECTIVE Judges and Law Enforcement Officials who are allowing this sinister attack on our Nation to continue, an attack so violent that it will never be forgotten!”
Also in his Easter warm wishes, he criticized former President Joe Biden and once again complained that the 2020 election was stolen.
Media tidbits
