Journalism in a world of more media and less freedom
This is my latest piece for The Conversation, reflecting on journalism’s enduring importance in a world where it is increasingly under attack. You can read the version on The Conversation website here. On December 10, the year 2025 reached a murderous milestone. In 2024, the Committee to Protect Journalists...
The Jacket for My New Book: ‘The Return of Russia’
The jacket for my next book ‘The Return of Russia: From Yeltsin to Putin, the Story of a Vengeful Kremlin’ is ready.My thanks to the Yale University Press design team, and to Terry Stiastny, Andrei Soldatov, Precious N. Chatterje-Doody, and Professor Robert Service for reading advance copies, and for...
New Book ‘The Return of Russia’: Now Available for Pre-order At Special Price
MY NEXT BOOK The Return of Russia: From Lenin to Putin, the Story of a Vengeful Kremlin is currently available to pre-order. In the UK, Waterstones has a special offer until 23:59 on Friday 17 October: 25% off the cover price of £20. The Return of Russia by James...
Review of New Book: Don’t Shoot The Journalists
This post is my review of Don’t Shoot the Journalists: Migrating to Stay Alive as published in the academic journal ‘Journalism’. You can see the online version of the article here Book Review: Don’t Shoot the Journalists: Migrating to Stay Alive – James Rodgers, 2025 . On Sunday 10...
Our Dear Friends in Moscow: A Story of Russia And A Warning to the West
This post reviews Our Dear Friends in Moscow: The Inside Story of a Broken Generation by Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan (Public Affairs, 2025) RIGHT FROM THE DAWN OF THIS CENTURY, in the early days of their careers as journalists, Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan saw where power was...
New Books Network Podcast on ‘Assignment Moscow’
On 18 August, I spoke to Paul Starobin for his ‘America and Beyond’ podcast (part of the New Books Network). Paul and I spoke for almost an hour about Assignment Moscow, and more. We talked about the experiences of foreign correspondents in Russia during Russia’s revolutionary year of 1917,...
The Story My Journalist Friend From Gaza Never Wanted to Write: Their Family Is Starving
Rafah, southern Gaza, October 2003. Photo © James Rodgers THE PICTURE ABOVE is from Gaza. It was taken more than 20 years ago. The world’s shame at what is happening there now will last much longer than that. There are still small ways in which we can help. This...
Simple And Moving: In Ukraine, A Story of Deaths, Not Degrees
CHANGING KREMLIN POLICY SHAPED MY EDUCATION. In the fall of 1984, I went to university in England to study Modern Languages: Russian and French. The Cold War was in its most terrifying stage since the Cuban Missile crisis of 1962. The United States and Soviet Union were engaged in...
New publication ‘The Cold War’ from History Today
Illustration from the History Today website HISTORY TODAY magazine, where I am a member of the editorial advisory board, has just published a special edition, ‘The Cold War’. In the words of the editors, the special edition is, ‘a selection of articles taken from the archive of a magazine...
New Book: ‘The Return of Russia’ out January 2026
MY NEXT BOOK, The Return of Russia: from Yeltsin to Putin, the Story of a Vengeful Kremlin, will be published by Yale University Press in January 2026. It is the result of four years’ work in the sense that I first proposed the idea in January 2022, the month...