Gothamist interviews Rachel Maddow (great interview with bonus filmclips!)

[NYCGirl]

http://gothamist.com/2009/04/24/rachel_maddow_talk_show_host.php

Is it harder to do the show with President Obama than it was with President Bush? Actually, it's not. I think it was sort of the common wisdom that cable would change so dramatically, and that liberals in media would have to change so dramatically after the election, but it just doesn't feel like that. I read all the same sources, I come up with five times as many stories than we can put on the show every day, and we still pick what's going to be on the show based on what is the most important thing, the story that can best be told on television, and about which we can get the best guests booked.

None of the day-to-day formula of how you get a show on the air, and how hard it is or how easy it is has changed at all. I also feel like I don't have any responsibility to any particular politician. I don't feel like I have to make things good or bad for Obama; I didn't feel like I had to make things good or bad for Bush. You take the stories when they come.

When you're plotting out how to do the day's show, how do you select what you run with for air when you have so many great ideas to choose from? It's the best part of the day, the most intellectually satisfying part of the day. What happens is the senior staffers for the show meet earlier before I'm here. They essentially anticipate what the big stories of the day are, and what they think I will want to talk about, what they think will be on the show. Sometimes that's easy to do, because we've got guests booked in advance, or because we have one obvious story to do. Obviously the Carl Levin report today is something that is quite clearly going to be on the show .

They meet ahead of me, because it's time to get started on booking, to try to get people on the show. And that happens before I'm even here. Then I arrive, and by noon I'm reading. I do this very un-ecofriendly thing, which is that I print out all the stories that I'm potentially interested in talking about on the show that day. I get down on the floor with all my paper, and I make this big grid which is very embarrassing, but this is how I've been doing it since my very first job in radio.

Then I come up with a list of all the things I think we could possibly do, so the senior producers have got their anticipatory rundown of everything they think we could do, and then I've got my list, and we sit down and hash it out, we factor in important stories, what points we think could break over the rest of the day, who got booked, what else we know is happening on the network, if some is blowing up, you know, we do factor that in.

It's a very hard discussion, and we try to go fast, because time is of the essence at that point, but we work it out, and it's very satisfying. That's the thing that, I think, if I ever had to give up this job, that's the thing that I know I would miss.


MUCH more at link

[shireen]

1. good interview! thanks for posting.

it was interesting to hear about the behind-the-scenes production stuff.

Rachel cracks me up, she is so funny. I love her wit. Her sense of loyalty to AAR is admirable.

I hope she does not burn out ... she works really long hours. You have to be very disciplined to maintain that schedule, make sure you're eating right, getting enough sleep, etc..

Rachel, you and Susan need to get a bigger apartment! Your current place is smaller than Paris Hilton's closet!

And .. :yourock: