A few months ago, a reader asked us if we'd post about her dog, Stella, who'd just passed away. While there are plenty of places to put remembrances of humans online, there aren't too many options for people who want to memorialize their pets. So we made one. www.coyotemedia.org/bay-area-pet...

COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW: Amy Goodman’s Good Example www.cjr.org/laurels-and-... @columjournreview.bsky.social @banikarim.bsky.social @democracynow.org #journalism #journalismisnotacrime #pressfreedom

A documentary that resonates, why the press needs to pay more attention to Truth Social madness, and an impressive investigation from the Post and Courier. Read Laurels and Darts by @banikarim.bsky.social www.cjr.org/laurels-and-...

Tracy Clark-Flory went looking for her lost sister. She found a system that thrived on women’s shame. Read her interview with @banikarim.bsky.social. www.cjr.org/the-intervie...

Filming the correspondents’ dinner breach, Brendan Carr’s offensive play, and a damning investigation from the Tampa Bay Times in this week’s Laurels and Darts by @banikarim.bsky.social www.cjr.org/laurels-and-...

Powerful reporting from The Intercept on Lebanon, ghoulishness from Forbes, and the Miami Herald reveals the harms of gambling addiction, in this week's Laurels and Darts by @banikarim.bsky.social. www.cjr.org/laurels-and-...

my column this week is about the unique collaboration btwn content creators & cnn journalists that finally took swalwell down. also an absolutely wild tale about a grifter/journalist who managed to con her way into jobs at a string of local papers from @samtabachnik.bsky.social.

For more than a week, Amazon has managed to keep a death at its Troutdale, Oregon, facility out of public view. Workers I spoke to are pissed.

Tony Gonzales and the Patient Work of Local News: Impactful reporting from the San Antonio Express-News; Fargo columnists fed to the wood chipper; profiling the Big Beautiful Bill’s ugliness. Read this week's Laurels and Darts by @banikarim.bsky.social. www.cjr.org/laurels-and-...

i’m not a conspiracy theorist but this is quite a statement at a time when the administration could definitely use a distraction.

Examining “crisis pregnancy” centers in rural parts of Texas that lack maternal care. Plus: Bad AI practice and CNN’s good reporting from the West Bank. Read Laurels and Darts by @banikarim.bsky.social. www.cjr.org/laurels-and-...

Filmmaker Sebastian Walker on the journalistic benefits of a “direct conversation” with Iranian leaders, despite draconian restrictions. Read the interview with @banikarim.bsky.social www.cjr.org/the-intervie...

i talked to @ashleyharrell.bsky.social about the trump admin’s decision to blacklist her & her team at @sfgate.com for reporting about the systematic dismantling of protections for natl parks over the last 14 months. guess they touched a nerve.

SFGate’s national parks bureau makes waves. Plus: AI slop on slop at Vanity Fair, and holding Grammarly’s CEO accountable. Read this week's Laurels and Darts with @banikarim.bsky.social. www.cjr.org/laurels-and-...

the details in this piece about journalist estefany rodriguez’s detention are awful.

one of my favorite things about writing laurel & darts is getting to talk to good journalists like @leahsottile.bsky.social & @ryanjhaas.bsky.social doing cool shit. you should read their work.

Noah Shachtman lands at the Times, somehow. Plus: A strong start for a Substack looking westward, and a Banner week in Baltimore. This week's Laurels and Darts by @banikarim.bsky.social. www.cjr.org/laurels-and-...

this is hilarious: “CBS News executives ascribe some portion of the viewership results to changes tied to the recent shift to Daylight Savings Time, according to a person familiar with the matter.” daylight savings time is a thing that notoriously only impacts one network apparently.

i’ve heard a lot of media execs say wild things but referring to pieces as “story-units” is next level. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/14/b...

Afghan who fought for US forces dies in ICE custody as Trump on track for grim record www.independent.co.uk/news/world/a...

ProPublica’s Payoff, plus, why we should let Trump go to voicemail, and great work from Charleston’s Post and Courier. This week's Laurels and Darts by @banikarim.bsky.social. www.cjr.org/laurels-and-...

"It was a striking example of something that happens more than the public sees: rigorous investigative reporting often arms lawmakers with facts that help them hold officials to account." Love this point from @banikarim.bsky.social @columjournreview.bsky.social www.cjr.org/laurels-and-...

there is grave concern for the journalists, dissidents and political prisoners in Iran who were already unjustly incarcerated before this war began and are now trapped as Iran is bombarded.

BREAKING: The Justice Department just posted online three FBI interviews that had been missing from the massive trove of Epstein files initially released. They're related to unsubstantiated sexual assault allegations against Donald Trump. DOC 1: www.justice.gov/epstein/file...

this man must have a humiliation kink. there is no other explanation for this.

EXCLUSIVE: At more than 30 installations, U.S. commanders told troops the war on Iran is a Christian war. The Military Religious Freedom Foundation has been “inundated” with more than 110 complaints. One NCO said they were told the U.S. war is to bring about Armageddon and the return of Jesus…

this is so unserious

if you believe the primary goal of these bombs is to help the iranian people, you have not been paying attention. i hope it does lead to some relief for them. they desperately need it. but many more will die first. war is hell.

i’ll never understand this inability to match his foundation to the actual skin color on his face or hand? this is a skill i mastered in middle school.

is he handing out presidential medals like a game show host? they don’t usually do this right?

they somehow managed to make the hockey thing so weird and awkward.

what the actual fuck? this is actually deranged.

manly is not how i’d describe this.

three people have died in idaho after the state cut a medicaid mental health service. the governor’s response? “hindsight’s a great thing.” idahocapitalsun.com/2026/02/20/a...

The confusion around the Atlantic measles' piece could have been avoided with "acknowledging that it was imagined," @columjournreview.bsky.social's @banikarim.bsky.social writes. It'd have maintained its "power and effectiveness" -- and avoided a distraction from its "fundamental message."

Ann Curry reports from Sudan. Plus: Second-person scenarios, and AI mayhem. Read this week's Laurels and Darts by @banikarim.bsky.social. www.cjr.org/laurels-and-...

jmail.world is such a brilliant project & public service. i talked to @igel.bsky.social who came up w the idea last wk. everyone working on it is volunteering their time & they’ve had more than 450m views just since the latest epstein release a few wks ago. if you haven’t checked it out, you should.

In Laurels and Darts, a tool for parsing the Epstein dumps. Plus: Papers clash in the Deep South; a decades-long Florida waitlist. Read @banikarim.bsky.social. www.cjr.org/laurels-and-...

it’s so interesting that everyone who appears in the epstein files only ever met him that one documented time and knew he was a demon but never said anything.

A desperate plea sent to me by a Minneapolis resident who's been on the front lines since the beginning of the ICE occupation:

My favorite dart this week goes to Axios for its bizarre and lazy AI-generated “New Yorker-style” review of Josh Shapiro’s book. Who is it for? Who knows!

A laurel for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which obtained exclusive body cam footage of an FBI raid on an election center in Georgia. Read all the latest Laurels and Darts by @banikarim.bsky.social.

Must’ve had an open bar

should we start a will lewis watch to see how long it takes him to show his face at the company he in theory runs during an actual crisis?

The DA of Santa Clara County, California, is the only prosecutor in the country to try a felony case against pro-Palestine student protesters since campus demonstrations began. The trial began last month and a verdict is expected soon.

“the feeling in the newsroom is that the way they’ve handled this is like some kind of sick psychological warfare," a washington post reporter tells cjr. www.cjr.org/news/layoffs...

all of this is stupid but i’m told that the post reports podcast has hundreds of thousands of subscribers which makes cutting it particularly weird given that podcasts are considered a huge revenue growth opportunity in most newsrooms.

A lot of people cannot just start a paid newsletter or become freelancers to sustain their careers. The sports, metro, and international desks did work that requires *team* resources, like legal checks, documents, access to archives, and long-term beat experience.

I just got off the phone with Elizabeth's dad...she and her mom were freed tonight! Updated story: sahanjournal.com/education/co...

The next reporter's question was on ... healthcare savings accounts.