NY Times debuts weekly interview franchise

The following excerpt was sent out from The New York Times’ Sam Dolnick, Jake Silverstein and Paula Szuchman:

We are excited to announce the creation of a new weekly New York Times interview franchise that will provide readers and listeners with intimate, in-depth conversations with notable people from all realms of public life. It will be co-hosted by David Marchese, the Magazine’s Talk interviewer, and Lulu Garcia-Navarro, a veteran and well-known audio journalist who hosted “First Person,” an interview show for Opinion Audio, after 17 years at NPR.

We’ll publish this new franchise as a podcast for those who want to listen to the interviews, and also as a text Q. and A. for those who prefer to read. It will launch next year and be based at the Magazine.

The creation of this new franchise stems from our belief that rich interviews that engage with public figures in their own words are central to helping our audience understand the world. It will build on the success of David’s Talk column, which has been one of the most popular features on our site over the past five years.

We’re excited to bring together two master interviewers for this new venture. Lulu joined The Times in 2021 from NPR, where she held one of the most prominent jobs in audio journalism, as one of the hosts of “Weekend Edition.”

David took over the Magazine’s Talk column in 2018. Since then he has conducted more than 130 interviews, with figures including Jane Goodall, Yo-Yo Ma, Rosie Perez, Paul Ryan, Bono and Tom Hanks. This new franchise has been conceived and developed as a partnership between the Magazine and the Audio team. It will be overseen by Allison Benedikt, formerly the editorial director at Opinion. Allison joined The Times last year from Slate, where she was executive editor. Audio editor Anabel Bacon and producer Wyatt Orme will be part of the team, which we’ll continue building in the coming months.