Michael Barbaro and the success of “The Daily” | Hacker News Reader

Michael Barbaro and the success of “The Daily”

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31 pointsseventyhorses24 comments

I still like and often listen The Daily but more and more I'm annoyed by the sort of insularity or kind of NIH syndrom of this program. By that I mean almost all the guests are from the NYT and whatever the story is, few credits are given or mentions are made to outside journalists. Maybe I'm wrong and not very objective but in the end I find it too much self-centered, it's only my feeling at least.

It’s somewhat understandable. The featured journalists are not only interviewed during work hours, they are collecting audio and notes (including behind the scenes material) on company time. It’s not just the Daily being insular, but that other journalism orgs aren’t incentivized to lend their journalists and work to the NYT for the NYT to profit from.

I really think that for instance on a piece of investigative journalism whose the main author would be a journalist from say wapo, I've hard time thinking this person would decline an invitation to speak about and promote his/her article.

I'm not familiar with the newspaper industry, but I would assume the issue wouldn't be with the wapo journalist as much as with their employing paper, in a twofold way:

- It's worth assuming that the Washington Post (as an organization) wouldn't want their employees doing content for a major rival (rather than on Post Reports, their equivalent of The Daily).

- As the article mentions, the podcast is in many ways a promotional tool for the rest of the newspaper, and I can't see NYT (again, as an organization) wanting to use it to promote a competitor.

Concerning your first point, granted I'm not familiar with each internal guidelines, and overall it may very well be what you describe but just to give an example that's not totally inconceivable, I routinely observe New Yorker staffers promoting their longform pieces on Fresh Air (NPR).

For your second point, I guess it really depends on what you want, either insularity, or diversity, openness and acknowledgement of great works accomplished elsewhere.

The New Yorker (owned by Conde Nast, which is effectively 100% text publishing) doesn't really compete with NPR (which is effectively 100% radio publishing). The New Yorker also specializes in long-form written pieces, for which NPR interviews act as a sort of promotional piece. On the other hand, even a deep NYT or Wapo investigative report can probably be covered comprehensively enough for most people in 20 mins.

What I was simply trying to express is NYT would greatly enrich their reporting by linking to or mentioning or discuss others great reportings, for instance on this episode about the Aghanistan War Papers [1] it would greatly be valuable to at least have a link to the work of WaPo on the subject which was kind of lead on the matter.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/16/podcasts/the-daily/afghan...

I've tried a lot of daily pods that talk about current events. The Daily is the only one I still listen to. Yeah, there are times when I don't want to be brought down by the shitty things certain people who dominate the news have done, but even when I'm not enthusiastic about the subject, I always feel like I learned something after it is over. To me, that's the important thing.

EDIT: typo

This is petty of me, but I can't stand the Daily. Not because the content is bad, but because Michael Barbaro's cadence is grating to my ears. I can't get over it, and I tune off NPR whenever the Daily comes on.

It brings me back to third grade and reading aloud - some kids just couldn't follow the natural rhythm of a passage or breath properly. Inserting pauses where they don't need to be, stretching out words and throwing in meter where it doesn't make sense... I just can't get over it.

I don't know, maybe I'm crazy. You can notice it when he shifts from reading off a script to talking with a guest.

PocketCasts has a feature where you can trim silence and adjust playback speed without affecting pitch. I found that plus 1.2x speed strikes a balance between efficiency without feeling like a firehouse.

I had been listening to podcasts at 1.5x speed for a while, but that gets overwhelming and difficult to multitask.

I too have noticed the cadence, and it occurred to me that non-native English speakers probably benefit from his deliberate cadences. I find it to be a well designed podcast.

Nope, entirely with you. I listen to quite a few podcasts but I gave up on the daily pretty quickly. I absolutely cannot stand his delivery.

I’m the same way.

His cadence and intonation is intolerable. It’s as if he’s every every syllable needs to be as dramatic as possible. He also slips into a half-whisper sometimes that perhaps is supposed to be soothing but I just find unsettling.

Not to mention, the constant interjection of hmms, huhs, and ahs as guests are speaking.

As much as I appreciated the content, I found the delivery so incredibly grating that I had to stop listening.

The success of The Run-up is the real story behind The Daily, but his radio voice has certainly changed - quite dramatically - and back episodes highlight this:

https://rss.art19.com/episodes/80247b27-274e-4517-bdf2-428d3...

While I still listen to and enjoy The Daily, I'm 100% with you with Barbaro's cadence and the way he reads from his script. Especially with how he reads off the ending "Here's what else you need to know today" line after the main story is over. It sounds like "Here's... What else... You need... Toknowthcirbfifhskd". I always laugh to myself every time I hear that.

I also understand that teasing someone about the way they speak (even if it's just to myself, hundreds of miles away from my commute to work) especially shitty because how you speak is one of the most personal things about someone, but JEEEZE!

I don't think it's wrong to critique a radio/podcast personality on their cadence. It's a part of the act, and it's something most pros work on and do intentionally. A lot of sportscasters talk about this (on podcasts and TV, ironically) - they put on a voice like an actor puts on a character.

I just don't care for Michael Barbaro's chosen vocal persona and find it distracting. But he's doing a good job with his show, so some people must like it.

In a similar vein I really like Terry Gross and Joe Buck but a lot of people disagree with me on both those counts.

I grant that its an intentional affectation, which can make it a bit annoying, but it seems to put me at ease while hearing about the deep details of the stressful issues of the newsday. Cadences can put us in a hypnotic trance and I think his comes pretty close and it can be soothing.

Still, I don't find his cadence as objectionable (or 'intolerable') compared to what are my three pet peeves when listening to speakers: uptalk, feminine vocal fry, and the dropped final '-in' syllables (e.g., 'button', etc., practiced by a good 60%+ of Gen Z)

So I was a bit surprised to see such consensus around Barbaro's cadence, but your mileage may vary.

About the "-in" thing, I think that's just a midwestern accent.

I really like The Daily. When I first started listening to it, I found it a bit “showy” and Barbaro’s affectations amused me (they still do), but I persevered — largely to learn more about US current affairs — and I’ve found the quality of the journalism, for a podcast, to be pretty high. In my opinion, it’s much better than, for example, Today in Focus, from The Guardian; it has a similar leaning, albeit UK-centric, and while it is often very good, it is sometime a bit full-on with the identity politics. I wouldn’t say The Daily is completely dispassionate, but I think they get the balance right.

You might want to check out CBC’s frontburner for some Canadian bias.

While I do listen to the daily pretty often, it can be very drawn out and redundant at times. It's also been especially suffering by excessive impeachment coverage these last few weeks. But these are just my few criticisms, it's otherwise one of the few podcasts worth listening to every day. I also recommend checking out 'The Intelligence' by the economist. Also daily, but more concise and covers 2-3 topics.

I felt similarly about The Daily. I started listening to NPR's "Up First" podcast and like it a lot better; it's quite similar but less dramatized and personality-driven.

> He left the NewsGuild of New York, the union that represents the Times, when he started the show

Well that's a bummer, or is that a single-craft union extremely narrowly defined?

It's a patronizing podcast. He interrupts his subjects a lot. Rife with access journalistic "both sidism" which has destroyed the NYTimes.

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