The Love, Journalism Show

Darren Samuelsohn
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A podcast full of insights, interviews, ideas and inspiration from Darren Samuelsohn, a veteran journalist who has been reporting and editing writers for 30+ years. www.lovejournalism.com

  1. Oct 22

    Episode 39: ‘I Got Into Journalism Because I Didn’t Know Any Journalists’

    I’m Darren Samuelsohn and this is The love, journalism Show. First time visiting? Please sign up for my love letter from the beat. I love getting to know why journalists get into journalism. Here’s Beatrice Peterson, ABC News’ National Enterprise Reporter and the 2026 NABJ Journalist of the Year. “I got into journalism because I didn’t know any journalists.” Beatrice has had a great 2026. NABJ recognized her body of work including President Trump’s federal takeover of her hometown of Washington, D.C., and beat reporting about then Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. In 2020, during the pandemic, Beatrice was an embed covering Gabbard, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, Kanye West and other presidential candidates. Gabbard went on to join Trump’s second-term administration. Growing up in DC, she took the “long way” to journalism. She loved going out with her family to the city’s go-go night scene. She won music scholarships, wanted to be a musician and planned to drop out of Trinity Washington University after her first year. Instead, she stayed. She worked for Rep. Charlie Rangel, before, during and after his ethics investigation when “reporters were following me to the bathroom as an intern.” She shouts out John Bresnahan’s reporting during the Rangel affair as helping to inspire her to get into journalism. John, Beatrice and I all worked together at Politico. I didn’t know her origin story at Politico until our interview. She walked up to one of Politico’s booths at a Columbia University job fair and pitched herself: “Politico sucks and I can make it better. Hire me.” That’s money. Writing her NABJ acceptance speech, she scribbled thoughts in the back of a club while on antibiotics as friends celebrated in her honor. Her speech is fun to watch and shares the love, journalism thesis. “I think the letter from journalism to me is if you’re persistent enough and you have big dreams and you have big goals and you want to do some crazy stuff that nobody believes might happen, you know, it can happen. You know, things change in a heartbeat.” Please enjoy Beatrice’s story, and we’ll be back soon. #30# love, journalism is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lovejournalism.com/subscribe

  2. Oct 13

    Episode 38: The FedEx Box From a Source Who Said ‘Not Yet’

    I’m Darren Samuelsohn and this is The love, journalism Show. First time visiting? Please sign up for my love letter from the beat. I got my introduction to Andy Revkin when he was at The New York Times: Olympus, as my old college advisor called it. His coverage of Phil Cooney, a Bush White House aide who edited climate science, dominated the early days of my time in Washington on the energy and environmental beat. I learned back then what it meant to chase the Times, and that my work could be cited in the paper of record, too. Andy walks me through how that scoop happened. A government functionary named Rick Piltz came up to him at a White House meetup on how dangerous climate change was. Piltz said he had things to give him eventually, but not yet. A couple years later, a FedEx box arrived with Cooney’s handwritten scribbles inside. Andy calls it a lesson in patience, and a case for staying dug in on a beat. I met Andy in 2005 in Montreal, at the first climate conference I ever attended, a UN COP. I was starstruck. He wrote for a massive audience. I was in the weeds. Twenty-one years later, the world heads to Turkey for COP31, Nov. 9-20. Andy’s last day as a Times reporter came at the end of Copenhagen in 2009. His read on these summits: the treaty process reflects what countries have already decided they will do. It does not determine it. His advice to reporters is to do the reporting at home before these things. Along the way: Senator Inhofe, the chunks debate, and Pete Seeger’s red pen on a song about Arlington National Cemetery, and why Andy ignored most of it. He closes with a line from Jay Rosen: journalism is a practice, not a product. He opened with six words that make a fair thesis for this show: “I love journalism, still, despite all.” And for the first time in the history of this show, a musical performance. I asked Andy where the exit is, in a world where we’re all trying to pull back and yet speeding up so fast. He answered with “Good News from 2044,” a short song from his new album. Enjoy. love, journalism is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lovejournalism.com/subscribe

  3. Oct 7

    Episode 37: I Tried to Hire Isaac Saul. He Said No. He Built Tangle.

    I’m Darren Samuelsohn and this is The love, journalism Show. First time visiting? Please sign up for my love letter from the beat. Today: Isaac Saul, founder of Tangle. I tried to bring him onto my Insider team in 2020. He had a better idea Isaac Saul landed on my radar in early 2020. His emails on Tangle summarized the news, how journalists were covering it and ending with a neutral take on what it meant. I was a Politico reporter covering the Trump White House, about to leave two decades of full-time writing for a role at Insider where I would hire, build and lead my own team out of Washington. Isaac stood out as a great fit. We spoke in March 2020, and I pitched him on joining. He wasn’t interested in applying. I am glad. Back then, Isaac was an editor by day and a newsletter writer by night. His first issue had gone to 13 people. He stuck with it. A year or so later, he quit his day job and went all-in on Tangle. Now he has a team of a dozen journalists, and he says there are more than 600,000 people on his mailing list. On the latest episode of The love, journalism Show, I asked Isaac why he chose this noble profession. He went from sports reporter at Pitt into politics, and he saw a gap: “The media ecosystem wasn’t really working for the people that I was really close with.” I reminded him that in March 2020 he told me he was dreaming about doing this full-time. Here, he explains what happened between the dream and the decision. He asked his employer for six months and told them, “I’m trying to build this off ramp for myself.” Then, paid subscriptions turned on, and 500 people out of 3,000 signed up. Isaac helped love, journalism at its 2023 launch, too. He read some of my earliest copy. I reached out then to compare notes, since he has been at it longer and closer than I have. As I returned this year for my third tango on Substack, we talked about the 2026 landscape and what it looks like today for a journalist working on their own. His read: "an incredible saturation of the space,” and “we’re kind of approaching peak newsletter.” Tangle is a special creation. It gives you sides, and then a take. I asked how that compares to my time in the trenches of climate policy, where I took the science as given and covered the argument over whether to act. In my experience, the market settled that debate. Isaac pushed back on the two-sides frame. “It’s never two sides. It’s almost always 12.” When I asked whether that holds for January 6 or the rule of law, he said of the election fraud claims: “If the election had been stolen in 2020 and I could report that, I would have won a Pulitzer.” On Sept. 29, Isaac launched a YouTube channel under his own name. He is also starting a separate newsletter for the opinion essays that have been sitting in his drafts folder. His first target: the fear campaigns of election season, and how to decide your vote “without succumbing to fear.” And like every guest, he answers the closing question: did journalism love him back? “For me, the answer is yes. And I understand that I’m lucky to be able to say that.” love, journalism is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lovejournalism.com/subscribe

  4. Sep 24

    Episode 36: The Wisdom of Rob and Morrie

    I’m Darren Samuelsohn and this is The love, journalism Show. First time visiting? Please sign up for my love letter from the beat. This is an episode I’ve been looking forward to since my Substack started. Meet my friend, Rob Schwartz. Thirty years ago, a dying professor at Brandeis changed how the world talks about aging and death. Tuesdays with Morrie made Mitch Albom a different kind of writer. What almost nobody knew: Morrie wrote his own version first — finished before he ever got sick, rejected by mainstream publishers, and left in a drawer in his Newton, Massachusetts study for a decade after his death. His son found it there in 2002. Rob Schwartz — a journalist working in Tokyo at the time — recognized it. He’d talked to his father about it while it was being written. It took another two decades of editing, alongside his own career, before The Wisdom of Morrie finally reached print in 2023. This episode is about that manuscript, and about a friendship that started a year after Tuesdays with Morrie was published. Rob and I met at the 1998 Nagano Olympics — I introduced myself to Mitch Albom first, inquiring about Morrie’s son because I knew about him being a journalist in Japan from reading the book. Turned out Rob was right there in the media village, working as a translator and fixer for Mitch’s live radio show broadcasting on Detroit time. We became fast friends. A few months later, we traveled to Tibet: a self-made film that never got finished, a mountain we didn’t reach, a bond that’s held. I’ve been excited about taping this episode of The love, journalism Show. Over about 80 minutes, we talk about the drawer, and about my own copy of TWM — a 1997 graduation gift from grandparents who never doubted I’d win a Pulitzer (still working on that). We also talked about Morrie’s “tension of opposites,” his four questions for a meaningful life, the passage on marriage that I had read at my own wedding, and the one about the bird on your shoulder asking, every day: is today the day? And we talk about what drove Rob craziest about a father the rest of the world only knows as a saint. Thirty years on: one book the world got, one book it almost didn’t, and a friendship that’s been around for a while. love, journalism is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lovejournalism.com/subscribe

  5. Sep 19

    Episode 35: Adam Klasfeld - No Boss, Same Beat

    I’m Darren Samuelsohn and this is The love, journalism Show. First time visiting? Please sign up for my love letter from the beat. Adam Klasfeld is back for an encore visit. We last spoke when The Messenger came crashing down on both of us in 2024. I recruited Adam Klasfeld in the summer of 2023. We spent the next nine months covering every Trump court date together — Florida, New York, DC, Atlanta. Lawrence O’Donnell said our trial coverage was the best out there. We built something called the Messenger Scale to poll 80 legal experts in real time. Then the whole thing collapsed. I did an episode with Adam and two other reporters right after it happened — standing in the wreckage, trying to figure out what we’d built and what it meant that it was gone.That was almost three years ago. Adam didn’t go back into a newsroom. He built his own — All Rise News. Same beat, same courts, nobody telling him what to chase. I wanted to know what that’s actually cost him. What he’d never say to my face back when I was his editor. And whether, three years and one dead newsroom later, journalism still loves him back. love, journalism is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lovejournalism.com/subscribe

    Episode 35: Adam Klasfeld - No Boss, Same Beat

  6. Sep 15

    Episode 34: Is the Love of Truth Slipping?

    I’m Darren Samuelsohn and this is The love, journalism Show. First time visiting? Please sign up for my love letter from the beat. Today is the 118th birthday of the oldest journalism school in the world — Mizzou's, September 14, 1908. So there was only one person to call: Sandy Davidson, my law professor from the School of Journalism, and for three decades the attorney for the Columbia Missourian. Sandy Davidson taught me the Missouri Method’s core premise: students learn journalism by doing it, not by reading about it. That hasn’t changed since 1908 — except for everything around it. She was blunt about the moment we’re in: “The First Amendment is taking a battery right now.” We got into what’s actually protecting journalists today, and the honest answer might be: not much. Reporters subpoenaed within 48 hours of a leak. DOJ skipping its own guidelines. Forty states have shield laws — Missouri isn’t one of them. Then there’s the harder question underneath all of it: who even counts as a journalist anymore? The Supreme Court punted on defining it back in 1972. Sandy calls what’s happened since “asymmetrical journalism” — the same shift that let cheap drones take on billion-dollar armies has let anyone with a laptop take on billion-dollar newsrooms. Wimbledon just barred influencers after chaos at the US Open. Her take: institutions can set standards, but nobody’s found a principle that actually holds up — everyone’s just making the rules up as they go, tennis courts and political conventions alike. We talked about the New York Times’ first defamation loss in fifty years — a single anonymous source, $9.25 million — and what that should teach student reporters about single-source stories. We talked about local news deserts, and what actually disappears when nobody’s covering the city council meeting anymore. And she answered a question from one of my fellow Mizzou classmates now teaching high school journalism in South Florida — a nice full-circle moment from our pen and paper note-taking days in Gannett Hall. Sandy and I have stayed close through the years. She’s been a teacher and adviser long after my graduation. Recently, I shared the work I’ve been doing via love, journalism. “For me, it’s love truth. Is the love of truth slipping?” she replied, setting the stage well for this episode. love, journalism is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lovejournalism.com/subscribe

  7. Sep 5

    Episode 33: The Identity Underneath the Byline

    I’m Darren Samuelsohn and this is The love, journalism Show. Time to meet Taylor Six. First time visiting? Please sign up for my love letter from the beat. On the night of December 12, 2021, another bar regular looked at Taylor Six and said something that changed the trajectory of her life. What was it, and why did it land the way it did? Love, journalism readers got to meet Taylor earlier this week in our inaugural guest essay: You Are Not Alone. She’s the founder of the Journalists Recovery Network, and so it made sense to tape our podcast for National Recovery Month. Both of us hope sharing what Taylor has built can help even one person. It’s a powerful story: award-winning journalist by day, closing down the bar by night. Two versions of the same person coexisting, a fear of someone confronting her directly. We talked about battling addiction and the journalism identity, as well as the moment in recovery where identity starts loosening its grip. Taylor’s group works with journalists across the recovery spectrum - sober, sober-curious, still figuring it out. She takes solace in her views of “enmeshment” - the way the job stops being what you do and becomes who you are. “I can't overstate just like how freeing that was to know that that was actually something that was out there that explained so much of how I was feeling for years,” she said. Taylor built the Journalists Recovery Network out of the 2023-24 Poynter-Koch Media and Journalism Fellowship. She described the moment she realized journalists specifically needed something different; and what she tried before finding success leading a group that doesn’t promote any single method of sobriety. As Taylor put it near the end of our conversation: “It’s okay to share our stories to make this field better for journalists who bravely continue to come into this field.” love, journalism is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lovejournalism.com/subscribe

  8. Sep 2

    Episode 32 - Mike Allen: “Welcome to the NFL”

    I’m Darren Samuelsohn and this is The love, journalism Show. We’re talking with Mike Allen, co-founder of Axios, a Politico original and co-author of Simplify: Do 50% More With 50% Less. First time visiting? Please sign up for my love letter from the beat. I’ll never forget my first day at Politico. “Welcome to the NFL,” Mike Allen said upon spotting me. We were soon co-bylining morning newsletters as oil spilled in the gulf, building policy credibility and my boss introducing me as the “Mike Allen of energy.” We reported scoops together. Here’s a fun video of Mike nudging me to describe how U.N. climate conferences always made me come home sick and predicting how much the 2015 Paris talks would be remembered beyond Obama’s presidency. Finally, I got to interview Mike for The love, journalism Show. We covered his journey from Politico to Axios and those thousand-word-morning-inbox-stuffers that helped make him famous before launching Smart Brevity and now his new book: Simplify: Do 50% More with 50% Less. Co-authored by Axios co-founders Jim VandeHei and Roy Schwartz, this is their attempt to apply that same “do the work for the reader” instinct to life. Confront. Delete. Amplify. We covered a lot on the show. How he says “no” and tries to structure his Sundays. In Mike’s words, AI is “the greatest complexity generating machine in the history of humanity.” He shared his guide on how to make it work for you, instead of against you. We explored the three tectonic shifts he sees reshaping politics, technology, and reality itself. And whether the pre-9/11 version of journalism was simpler by default, or if 9/11 exposed a failure of imagination we still haven’t fixed. This one closes where we started. I asked Mike the question I ask everyone: has journalism loved him back? “Oh, the greatest life,” he said. Sixteen years after “welcome to the NFL” — still true. Still in love with the game. love, journalism is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lovejournalism.com/subscribe

    Episode 32 - Mike Allen: “Welcome to the NFL”
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About

A podcast full of insights, interviews, ideas and inspiration from Darren Samuelsohn, a veteran journalist who has been reporting and editing writers for 30+ years. www.lovejournalism.com

Information

  • Creator
    Darren Samuelsohn
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    38
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Darren Samuelsohn
  • Show Website
    The Love, Journalism Show