NPR’s “Planet Money” gets two new hosts

NPR’s “Planet Money” team will add new voices. Read more in this announcement from supervising senior producer Alex Goldmark.

Hello Friends,

I have news. Two new hosts are joining Planet Money: Sarah Gonzalez and Karen Duffin. This is big folks. So here are some big paragraphs about them.

Sarah Gonzalez is coming to us from WNYC where her reputation goes something like this: She is a delight to work with, incredibly smart, gets amazing tape over and over, makes people laugh on the regular, and most importantly, finds stories everywhere she looks. Some recent highlights: her reporting showed how the Department of Homeland Security was detaining unaccompanied minors on flimsy claims of gang connections. Since then, dozens of immigrant teens have been released. Then there’s her five-part investigation into New Jersey juvenile prosecutions. That one won her the 2017 Daniel Schorr Journalism Prize. She also picked up a Murrow Award, PRNDI, SPJ, ONA awards and probably some other acronyms I’ve left off. She’s also good live as a fill-in host on The Takeaway, and The Brian Lehrer Show. Prior to WNYC, Sarah covered education in Florida and was an NPR Kroc Fellow in 2010. She got her start in public radio in a public radio reporting class at Mills College in Oakland, CA. Sarah grew up on the San Diego-Tijuana, Mexico border.

Karen Duffin liked reporting on Planet Money so much, she decided to join the team. She’s a podcast star, but if you don’t know her work, she has a knack for finding characters with wild tales, blending in-depth reporting and narrative storytelling. She said she is looking forward to joining a team where she can nerd out, which bodes very well I think. She’s been on staff at This American Life (see story of the Spider Man bandit) and before that she filed for most of our favorite shows: The classic Radiolab on Nazi summer camp, the inaugural episode of More Perfect, also that time Reply All went deep on fake offices, On The Media, Pop Up Magazine and others. She was a story coach and main stage storyteller for The Moth and teaches/has thought at CUNY and Columbia Graduate Schools of Journalism. Before becoming a journalist, Karen did some serious time in the corporate world, including several years as a speechwriter, working in more than 20 countries. She’s so eager to get going she’s already working on her next story for us.

Karen will start on March 19 and Sarah joins us April 2.

Please welcome Sarah and Karen and let them know any tips, hints or other suggestions for coming up to speed at Planet Money.

Alex