Chloe Craft is an independent freelance journalist from Boston who started out covering protests, from the 2020 Black Lives Matter marches to Dublin, where she interned at Hot Press magazine and told her editors she was going to a war zone. She joins me from Boston while I am in Kyiv.

Chloe talks about buying her own protective gear as a freelancer, seeing USAID stickers at Station Kharkiv and what the aid cutoff meant for frontline groups, arriving in Kyiv during an 11-hour bombardment, and a children's violin class at a Ukrainian music school patched up after a missile hit its roof.

We also cover her investigation into Flock security cameras, protecting sources and files, her podcast with laid-off Washington Post journalists, and why independent reporters and Substack matter now.

Chapters

0:00 Opening in our vyshyvankas

3:57 Journalism from the Bush era to now

4:34 Chloe's start: protests, Boston and Dublin

7:25 Freelancing and buying your own body armor

9:43 Press freedom indicators and the United States

11:04 USAID cuts and Station Kharkiv

14:40 Protests in America, Dublin and Ukraine

18:13 Flock cameras and the surveillance state

25:04 Conferences, donations and who gets attention

29:32 Telling numbers versus telling people

33:21 Arriving in Kyiv during an 11-hour attack

38:31 Audiences, fatigue and contempt

44:11 A children's violin class after a missile strike

49:40 Children giving advice on surviving war

53:05 Objectivity and what ought to be

59:50 The founders and press history

1:02:31 Laid-off Washington Post journalists and zines

1:12:02 "No one is reporting on this"

1:21:48 Source protection and digital security

1:29:45 No days off

1:33:55 Spreading archives into reliable hands

1:39:18 Maidan, a lost wallet and first chair violin

1:42:15 Closing and Chris's radio roots

Watch on YouTube: Freelance journalist Chloe Craft on reporting in Ukraine, USAID cuts and press freedom

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Chloe Craft on reporting Ukraine as a…