Michael Barbaro made the New YorkTimespodcastThe Dailya raging success.
Or is it the other way around?
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Dana, says the voiceyou know by now, in audible all caps.
WHEN DID THE UNITED STATES START TO FEEL A SENSE OF ANXIETY … A pregnant pause.
Too much, he says.
This, as Barbaro announces every weekday morning, isThe Daily,theTimes tentpole podcast.
And thats all you really want.
Podcasting is an intimate medium, and podcasts live or die by their hosts.
In 2017,Peoplemagazine named him one of the 15 sexiest newsmen.
But most of Barbaros admirers dont see him.
The appeal is the voice and the peculiar prosody that givesThe Dailyits pulse.
That voice is a development of the show, which is not to say an affectation.
Now he doesnt put it on or take it off.
Its how he orders at Starbucks as much as how he queries his colleagues on the show.
But now when you hear him talking, he does do it, he says.
More than one person I interviewed confessed to harboring a romantic interest in Barbaro based on his voice alone.
The Dailyis the modern front page of the New YorkTimes, says Dolnick.
In fact, its bigger.
1 podcast every single month of 2019 and in the No.
2 spot for all of 2018.
)The Dailywas the most downloaded show on Apple Podcasts in 2018.
In October, theTimesthrew a party for its billionth download.
(Andy Mills, formerly ofRadiolab,filled out the original team.)
The entire room groaned in unison.)
The New YorkTimes, she told his agent, is always the prettiest girl at the party.
Barbaro had been a distinguished reporter for theTimesas well as a savvy operator in its internal politics.
Hed already been a vocal presence in the newsroom, highly regarded by himself and others.
The gatherings have only gotten more glittering.
None of this was a given.
Now Barbaro gets booked onLate Night With Seth Meyers; Liev Schreiber played him onSaturday Night Live.
(Nailed it, Dolnick says.
I think he aspires to higher.
(When people ask me what podcast they should be listening to, he adds, its my go-to.
Hes one of those people who feeds off the energy of people.
He just didnt want to leave, she says.
The rest of us left, and he was still out there.
Sereneis the word I would use, says Douthat, about this weird eminence he has gained.
That eminence can come in handy.
In a tough spot negotiating access?
Get MB as the staff refers to him to call.
People respond to Michael.
(Sanders signed on.)
Which is not to say its host has gotten drunk with power, yet.
You should pitch a fit, someone in the room joked.
Thats definitely the impression Id like to leave, he said dryly.
It never occurred to me to not be aTimesemployee, Barbaro says.
My abiding goal in life was to become a New YorkTimesreporter.
(New Yorkis a Vox Media property.)
I welcome the competition, Balcomb says, as well she might.
For the moment,The Dailytrounces it.
Still, makingThe Dailyis a huge effort.
to make it get clean sound, he has been known to burrow beneath bedcovers.
The most intense is one that no one predicted.
WhenThe Dailybegan, Barbaro was a married man.
The relationship caused some uneasiness in the building, both amongThe Dailys staff and among those higher up.
The secrecy surrounding the relationship did not do much to ease fears.
That doesnt work onThe Daily, Dolnick says.
You couldnt send one here or the other there.
But were now well over a year in, and it works.
Its independent and interrelated, he says, but its not based on the show.
Sheproduceshim, one journalist who knows them both says.
In other words, she has coaxed out a brighter, shinier Barbaro both on tape and off.
Barbaro and Tobin are understandably disinclined to discuss the more prurient details of their courtship and relationship.
He declines to define his sexual orientation or whether he considers it to have shifted.
(Gawker once dingedOutmagazine for not including him in its roundup of the gay mafia at theTimes.)
The day youreonThe Daily,you hear from your friends from elementary school, your college buddies.
My friends dont typically congratulate me when I have an A1 story aTimesism for the front page.
She pulled up a text message from a friend in London whose interest borders on the obsessive.
I am so fascinated.
There is, of course, Barbaros ASMR, and the medium brings its own intimacy.
And the daily-news format seems to work well for podcasting;Up Firstis routinely right behindThe Dailyin Podtrac rankings.
But mostly the secret seems to be access to the inner workings of the New YorkTimes.
(All of those details are real, though they can also be ersatz.
Barbaro, too, leaves much of his own thought process on display.
On Slate, Susan Matthewscalledthe episode irresponsible to the point of bordering on unethical.
(He should resign, Trump tweeted.)
The Dailywas notpart of theTimes original audio plan.
Audio itself was, until very recently, not much of a consideration.
And nothings going to happen here because thats how it netted out the last few times.
Watching tapes of the reporters doing the cable-TV rounds, Tobin was impressed by Barbaros humanity.
He seemed like a real person, she says.
My therapist just retired, so I cant answer this, he says.
You have to remember, we didnt understand thatThe Dailywas going to be this model of journalistic transparency.
Dolnick declined to discuss how lucrativeThe Dailyis to theTimesbeyond saying it is profitable.
The average CPM for podcasts, several in the industry say, is between $25 and $35.
Behind the scenes, Tobin is widely admired in the industry; Dolnick calls her a visionary.
People think they love Barbaro, one podcast executive tells me.
But I think it could have been anyone else.
Oh yeah, she says.
What kind of question is that?
Some new ones have already been developed, and more are on the way.
So for the moment,The Dailystands alone.
It has shifted the gravity of the paper and of the audio landscape, full stop.
Podcasting now, one outside executive told me, bobs in the shows wake.
Meanwhile, the audio team continues to grow; more than 10 people came onboard this month alone.
Everyone will end up working forThe Daily, Kimmie Regler, a producer at Gimlet Media, tells me.
We all will end up atThe Daily.
