The Friday Reporter

I’ve spent years learning how to prep for interviews, testimony, TV hits — the words, the pacing, the message. What I hadn’t spent much time thinking about is the split second before any of that: the photo someone sees before they ever hear you speak. That’s exactly the space my guest this week lives in. Mira Adwell is a photographer who spent years shooting fashion editorial in Charleston before...

When you live in Washington, D.C., it’s easy to think the whole city runs on politics. But spend any time here — especially in the fall, when the Capitals and the Commanders and half a dozen other teams are all playing at once — and you realize pretty quickly that sports is what actually brings people together. That’s where my conversation with Jeff Dooley starts this week. Jeff is an editor at NO...

This week I sat down with Alyssa Rosenberg — dean of the Allbritton Journalism Institute, the organization behind NOTUS — for the third episode of our month-long NOTUS takeover series. Alyssa spent more than 20 years at the Washington Post as a reporter, editor and cultural critic before taking a buyout in 2025 and doing something most journalists would never admit to out loud: going looking for a...

Some of the most interesting conversations I’ve had on this show are the ones where I’m actually talking to a peer — someone who’s been doing this work at the same time I have, in the same city, navigating the same chaos. That’s this episode. Deirdre Walsh has been covering Capitol Hill since 2006 — CNN first, then NPR, now NOTUS, where she’s helping lead a newsroom that is genuinely doing somethi...

For the next month, The Friday Reporter is in the hands of NOTUS. If you haven’t been paying close attention to what’s happening over there, now is the time to start. In a moment when most Washington newsrooms are contracting — the Washington Post went from roughly 1,000 to 400 people in three years — NOTUS is doing the opposite. It’s attracting some of the best reporters in the business, investin...

There’s a conversation I come back to every so often in this work — the kind where you walk away thinking differently about something you assumed you understood. This week’s episode was one of those. I sat down with Chad Peace, the voter advocate and attorney behind the More Choice initiative and the Independent Voter Project. If you’ve heard of California’s top-two primary — the system where the...

When I sat down with Kasia Hatcher for the latest episode of The Friday Reporter, she described every adult as having an invisible operating system — not just what we think, but how we make sense of the world. Most leadership development, she said, works on the apps. The skills, the tools, the behaviors. What she does is go deeper: to the patterns that have been running your leadership without you...

In this episode of The Friday Reporter , Lisa Camooso Miller sits down with Matthew Cutts of Dentons for a fast-moving conversation on what’s actually happening inside Washington right now—and what corporate leaders, policymakers, and the media may be missing. While the headlines suggest gridlock and dysfunction, Cutts offers a more nuanced—and surprisingly hopeful—view: much of the real work is h...

I’ve been wanting to have Kathryn Mitchell on The Friday Reporter for a while. She’s one of those people in Washington who has earned the right to have a real opinion about one of the most consequential policy debates of our time — and she’s generous enough to explain it in terms the rest of us can understand. Kathryn spent nearly a decade in government, moving from Capitol Hill to the Pentagon to...

The Axios Takeover of The Friday Reporter wraps with one of the sharpest eyes on Democratic politics in the business. Holly Otterbein covers the 2028 presidential race for Axios — and she’s here to tell us why the race is already underway, even if most people aren’t watching yet. In this conversation, Holly breaks down the fault lines fracturing the Democratic Party right now: it’s not just progre...

Madison Mills covers AI for Axios — but she came to the beat from Wall Street, and that changes everything about what she’s looking for. She spent years covering markets, interviewing Jamie Dimon and Ray Dalio, and building one of the most-read financial newsletters in the country. She knows how investors think, how they hedge, and how wide the gap is between what they say publicly and what they a...

For years, the Pentagon promised drone dominance would change everything. Then Iran shot down an American fighter jet. Colin Demarest has been covering the future of defense at Axios long enough to know the gap between Pentagon strategy and battlefield reality. As the author of the Future of Defense newsletter, he’s been inside the Iran conflict coverage since the first strike — tracking new weapo...

The Pentagon just tried to blacklist an AI company from all government work. Not because its technology failed — because the company refused to let its AI run autonomous weapons or surveil Americans at scale. That’s not a contract dispute, it’s a new kind of power struggle. And it’s reshaping the entire AI industry. Maria Curi is the AI+Government reporter at Axios and the author of the newsletter...

Local news is disappearing. And the communities left behind aren’t just losing a newspaper — they’re losing accountability, connection and a shared sense of place. Holly Moore is helping change that. As Executive Editor of Axios Local, she’s leading one of the most ambitious efforts in journalism to fill the news deserts spreading across this country — and to remind audiences that what happens at...

There are some people who spend their careers chasing titles, and others who spend their careers building communities. Judy B Lloyd is firmly in the second category. This week on The Friday Reporter , I sat down with Judy, founder of Altamont Strategies and the host behind Purple Inspiration , where she highlights women and community leaders who are quietly doing the work that actually changes pla...

I’ve spent the last five years talking to journalists about how the story gets told. But there’s another layer—the people shaping what happens before it ever becomes a headline. This week on The Friday Reporter, I sat down with Brody Mullins and Dave Tobey to talk about a new show we just launched: The Deciders. It’s not a news show — It’s about how influence actually works right now—and who’s dri...

What happens when you build one of the largest women-owned lobbying firms in the country — and then decide to rethink the entire model? This week, Lisa sits down with Jess Beeson Tocco, a seasoned strategist who helped grow one of the nation’s most successful women-owned lobbying firms before making the bold decision to sell the business and rethink what a modern lobbying practice could look like....

Elie Honig doesn’t talk like a television pundit. He talks like someone who has actually built cases. On this week’s Friday Reporter , the former Southern District of New York prosecutor drew a straight line between organized crime and modern political power. The tactics, he said, don’t really change. Create distance. Insulate the boss. Let other people take the fall. Stretch everything out. Sound...

In this episode of The Friday Reporter , I sit down with Bruce Mehlman — partner at Mehlman Consulting and the mind behind The Age of Disruption . Bruce has spent decades operating at the crossroads of technology, politics, public policy and business, and he brings a rare, genuinely bipartisan lens to how power and change actually work in Washington and beyond. We talk about why this moment feels...

Chris Cillizza is asked often about his political takes — that’s not what this show is about. Instead, we’re talking independent journalism. Newsrooms are smaller. Trust is harder to earn. The incentives are louder, quicker, and more punishing than ever. And for many of the most recognizable voices in political media, the next chapter isn’t another beat — it’s independence. On this episode of The...

The Friday Reporter opens 2026 with a conversation at the intersection of food, media and reinvention. Longtime Washington, D.C. restaurant critic Tom Sietsema joins the show to reflect on his departure from The Washington Post and the next chapter of his career. We look back at some of his most influential restaurant reviews, how food has evolved in Washington and what great dining looks like whe...

For the final episode of the year, I’m joined by John Scofield , founder and partner of S3 Group —one of Washington’s most respected government affairs firms. John’s career arc mirrors the evolution of influence in Washington. He began as a highly regarded communicator on the House Appropriations Committee , where he learned firsthand how policy, process and power intersect. He later brought that...

This week on The Friday Reporter, I’m joined by Dan Clifton, Partner and Head of Policy Research for Strategas Securities — one of the sharpest minds in Washington when it comes to understanding how policy moves markets. I learn something new every time I talk with Dan. He’s built a powerhouse research and insights operation that advises top corporate leaders, global investors, and even heads of s...

Karina Lynch has built a career at the intersection of health care, law and public policy — but it’s not the path she originally imagined. In this episode, I’m joined by Karina of DLA Piper for a conversation that spans the Senate Special Committee on Aging, health policy on (and off) Capitol Hill, and the unexpected turns that shape a life in Washington. We talk about how she once planned to go t...

This week on The Friday Reporter , I’m joined by Stephanie Strategos Polis, Vice President of Public Affairs for the Plastics Industry Association. Stephanie and I cover a lot of ground in this conversation: what it’s like to raise young kids while managing a demanding public-affairs portfolio, how her time in the Bush administration shaped her approach to service, and why she finds real purpose i...