Earlier this year, Newsweek and Salem Media Group reached an agreement to distribute The Josh Hammer Show.
It’s a match with great “synergy,” Newsweek’s Senior Editor-at-large, Josh Hammer, told Barrett Media.
“I’m a longtime big fan personally of Salem media properties. I’m an Orthodox Jew. I very much care deeply about authentic religious, traditional social conservatism, and trying to convey and espouse those norms.”
In fact, espousing these norms is a big part of his podcast, “trying to kind of re-anchor the American right of center at a time where a lot of things seemingly are in flux, trying to kind of re-anchor it in timeless eternal principles and eternal truths.”
Hammer, who published his first book, “Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West,” this year, noted, “None of the show is scripted,” and intends to keep it that way.
His rise to conservative stardom and editorial influence began when he was a small child reading the paper with his grandfather. “It was my grandfather’s influence, probably more than anything else, that kind of shaped my appreciation of the role of media to shape stories,” Hammer said.
His grandfather was a lawyer turned newspaper publisher who owned a few regional outlets. “I have very fun childhood memories of poring over the Sunday New York Times with him, and I remember him introducing me to the concept of the editorial newspaper.”
Hammer was so enthralled with newspapers that he’d even look for the local papers on his family vacations “just to kind of see what the local newspaper looked like, what they were reporting on.”
Constantly immersed in media plus his love of law, Hammer went to Duke University, then the University of Chicago Law School. He worked as a clerk for a federal appeals court judge and published pieces of constitutional scholarship before joining the ranks of the Daily Wire and the Blaze. Then, in 2020, he joined Newsweek.
“I was hired initially to be the op-ed editor, which was in May 2020, around the same time that I started writing a weekly syndicated column. So kind of as my whole opinion commentary was going to the next phase,” Hammer, who is the cofounder of Jews Against Soros, recalled.
By the time The Josh Hammer Show launched in February of 2022, he was a well-established member of the conservative media circuit. “We immediately knew that we had to, at some point, partner with someone who could try to take us to the next level.”
Enter Lee Habeeb, the Vice President of Content for the Salem Media Group, the founder of American Private Radio, and the creator and founder/host of Our American Stories. “We kind of had this natural connection with Lee,” Hammer noted of his colleague. Habeeb and Hammer first met when Hammer joined Newsweek years before. “[My podcast was] able to kind of get on Salem’s radar and I think our first conversation with them happened in 2024.”
Hammer, who has years of experience editing op-eds beyond his Newsweek stint, brings his writing flair to listeners via his podcast. “One is, I think the most important thing that an editor is going to look for is an interesting, innovative argument. You’re not particularly interested in just republishing something that’s been said countless times before,” he explained when asked what makes a good op-ed.
Hammer, who is also Senior Counsel for the Article Three Project, added, “If you don’t have the reader’s attention within the first two to three sentences of reading the op-ed, that’s not going to go particularly well. Then you want to quickly transition into your actual argument. You want to have the ability to back that up, whether it’s with facts or interviews or data, whatever it is there. So these are the kinds of things that we look for.”
With these basic principles in mind, it is easy to see why Hammer does not need to “pull punches” and can boldly “just say what I think, very much including when that means taking on folks on my own so-called side.”
For those looking to follow in Hammer’s footsteps, he believes all you need is conviction and a little bit of confidence. “You have to have the genuine conviction and confidence that what you’re saying is you ardently believe it to be not only true, but valuable, because there’s no point in doing the broader kind of information commentary space as a profession unless you are truly ardently convinced that what you are saying is not just your personal truth, but is the capital T truth.”
He added that this truth “therefore has deep meaning for not just you personally, or not just your family, but for some broader community at large. So I think that’s number one.”
Once you’ve hit that mark, all you need to do is get your content out there. “It’s actually easier these days than it’s probably ever been. I mean, anybody can get on social media. Anybody can open a sub-stack. Anybody can open a YouTube channel,” Hammer affirmed. “There are virtually no barriers to entry these days, which is both a blessing and a curse, by the way.”
Lastly, Hammer believes “You should try to network as much as possible.” This networking is essential. “I can’t tell you the number of ways that my career has taken a fortuitous turn simply because I had made some connection and knew someone who reached out to me or offered something at the right time,” Hammer noted. “I have more stories like that than I could possibly count, and that’s kind of just the nature of the world. So that human angle is deeply important, really, no matter what your career is.”
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Krystina Alarcon Carroll contributes features and columns for Barrett Media. She has experience in almost every facet of the industry including: digital and print news; live, streamed, and syndicated TV; documentary and film productions. Her prior employers have included NY1 and Fox News Digital and the Law & Crime Network. You can find Krystina on X (formerly twitter) @KrystinaAlaCarr.
