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.
Episode 16: Farewell to The Messenger's Legal Crew
I’m Darren Samuelsohn, and thanks for listening to The love, journalism Show. This is the second installment of my series of podcasts featuring former employees of The Messenger, the media startup where I worked until it imploded last week after a nine-month run.
