Audie Cornish, Reconsidered

Audie Cornish has had quite the year.

The All Things Considered host left NPR in January to join CNN, where she was slated to develop a new flagship podcast for the cable-news channel as well as a streaming program for CNN+, which was still on the verge of launching at the time. Cornish had characterized her choice as driven by an interest in trying something new, but the move nevertheless sparked a round of headlines about NPR’s inability to retain POC talent. This owed, in part, to the fact that Cornish’s departure was part of a broader wave of prominent exits from the public-radio mothership that included two other hosts who were women of color: Noel King and Lulu Garcia-Navarro.

Then, in April, turbulence struck CNN. Once heralded as the key to the news organization’s future, CNN+ was shuttered barely a month into its existence as a flashy show-of-force by the nascent David Zaslav administration. Many of the high-profile talent recruited for the service ended up staying with the company but not without considerable adjustment to their circumstances. For Cornish, those changes were somewhat contained: Sure, she wouldn’t be leading a streaming show anymore, but the veteran journalist remains slated to make appearances on the television side of the operation (including on the newly launched CNN This Morning), and she was still attached to host the new flagship podcast for CNN, which continues to build out a position in the audio space.

That podcast comes out this week. Called The Assignment, the weekly show sees Cornish conducting interviews and convening panels with “everyday people at the center of debates� bouncing around the headlines. The premise of the first episode pretty much communicates the concept: Cornish sits down with two parent activists turned elected school-board officials about their pathways to political power and what they intend to do with it. In many ways, it’s an old-school longform-interview program — you know, the ones they used to make without a Hollywood celebrity doing all the interviewing.

On the occasion of the launch, we spoke with Cornish about her new show, her year so far, the nature of her public presence, and the curious state of the longform interview.

What have the past few months been like for you?

Oh my God. It’s been exciting, fun, brutal, and intriguing in equal measure, which, I think, was the point of trying something new.

The piloting process has been fun, but it’s complex when you’re navigating an incredibly interesting moment in our business. Even if CNN wasn’t having its own moment, podcasting is going through some growing pains, and I made my leap in the middle of all that.

Why did you leave NPR?

A handful of other hosts had left before I did. There is a way those jobs are isolated because of the workload, and the pandemic was isolating. I had a baby. Like other people, I was thinking about work-life balance, about all the ways that I had tried to stretch creatively and how hard that was. I didn’t know if there’s going to be an interest in someone with my skill set as high as that interest is right now. Should I try something new? And for all the joking people did about CNN+, it was something new.

I had watched the podcasting boom from the outside and felt that I had missed it. Then I saw streaming and thought, Hey, this is another industry that’s changing, and that was another opportunity to try something.

The thing about trying stuff is that there’s a risk it won’t work out. That’s necessary. We’re going to get there, wherever there is — whether it’s the movies or TV or radio. Change is coming for us all. It’s important to be trying things before we can land on what the official answer is.

I imagine a lot of people viewed your old NPR job as a form of tenure, and as exciting as trying something new might be, there’s comfort in stability. You chose chaos, basically. What drove that?

There were glimmers of that itch prior to me leaving NPR. I had done a show at BuzzFeed, where former editor-in-chief Ben Smith was like, “Hey, do you wanna do this thing? It’s on Facebook.� Everyone thought I was crazy for doing that, but to me, it was a no-brainer. It was a sit-down longform-interview show where people my age can see it.

When I was at NPR, I was like, “We should have a live-events business.� If people are watching other podcasts live onstage, why wouldn’t they watch us do that? And I did that for two years. NPR acquiesced, and they begrudgingly let me do the BuzzFeed show, but it was not their first choice. I was participating in Pop Culture Happy Hour, which came completely out of my friendship with its hosts, Linda Holmes, Glen Weldon, and Steve Thompson. Why not be where people are? It felt out of step not to do that.

I wanted to be in all those spaces. That made the most sense to me. So I kept pushing, pushing, pushing, and maybe I was frustrating them and myself in the process. So I finally thought, Well, what if I just tried to be a multimedia journalist? And here at CNN, I’m still trying to do TV in the ways that I can, but I’m working on the podcast. It was always going to be a multipronged thing.

Do you consider yourself an entrepreneurial person?

No. Absolutely not.

Really?

Listen, I have two kids, so I’m already building two small companies.

I am very envious of my friends and my cohort — David Greene, for example. Tonya Mosley. They started their own shops. Lots of my friends have hung up shingles as consultants. It’s been wildly awe-inspiring to see people I’ve worked with over the years who are now audio executives in various places. As much as people thought podcasting was divorced from NPR, our paws and footprints are all over the thing.

It has always been striking to me how there’s a generation of public-radio types occupying a sizable chunk of positions of power in the podcast world. 

Because the skill set is so specific. When I was coming up, there weren’t many places to work in the audio business. Even the things that were “on the outside� — they were still distributed by public-radio stations. The fact that this ecosystem has come to exist in the past ten years is pretty amazing, and people forget that it’s still in its infancy. Radio is not in its infancy, but there’s something particular to podcasting, and that still feels new.

I’m fascinated by how you speak about it with optimism, because the vibe I get from podcast folks these days tends to be a little depressed given all the consolidation.

Here’s how I look at it: When I got out of college, it was about blogs. Same thing. “This is so exciting. This is so amazing. This is not what the olds do. It’s the new thing!� What happens? That withers.

It’s not me being optimistic. It’s just a sign of things growing up. It was overdue. It wasn’t going to be all beanbag chairs, free pizza, money being thrown around forever, legacy media organizations getting into the game without knowing anything about how the product is made. There was always going to be an adjustment. Winter’s here. It’s reality-check time, and that’s not a bad thing. It’s necessary for growth. Not enough people have talked about unionization in New York media and how that hit the podcast world.

I’m thinking about what you said earlier about missing the podcasting boom. Could you talk more about that?

What I’ll say is that in the early part of the boom, when it felt like it was just a handful of comedians and shows that had gone from radio to podcasts, there was a real exciting air of freedom and creativity — people really toying with what’s possible.

A lot of people think Serial was a big deal, because it was so big and was a cultural moment. In the audio world, what we were excited about was, like, Oh wait, you can do that? The craft of it. The things we could be doing. In the same way, TV creators looked at streaming and felt, You can make a bunch of episodes, and you don’t need to recap at the start of each? You could have new theories about how things were made. You could write them differently, and maybe length didn’t matter.

All the rules we had to fit ourselves into to make sure things were good for terrestrial radio … suddenly there was a whole different set of factors that could be so fun to play with. If you want to make a podcast about a missing Richard Simmons, well, there’s an audience for that. There’s no feeling of “that seems a little niche,� because niche was the name of the game.

We’re in a different mode now. It’s not so clear those kinds of things hit the same way. That’s what I meant when I said I missed the podcast boom. I was at NPR growing my career, but it was not a career of experimentation. So I didn’t get to do that, and now I’m jumping into an extremely crowded pool and trying to figure out what I personally bring into it.

And look, I don’t think I have any presumption about my reputation because of all the media and press from the past year. Honestly, it’s just very new to me. Check Google Trends: There was no “Audie Cornish� clickin’ happening before 2020. I don’t assume there’s a guaranteed audience waiting for me nor do I feel entitled to that. Going into podcasting, it’s like, “Hey, I can’t wait to earn a new relationship with people.�

It’s interesting you say that, because, sure, the nature of celebrity is significantly more tenuous today than ever before, but at the same time, I’ve always felt the Audie Cornish name does mean something to quite a few people — even if it’s just the tote bag–slinging public-radio nerd. In any case, you seem to have a complicated relationship with being a public figure. Could you tell me more about that?

Sure? I guess I’m a public figure in the sense that all journalists are. You’re doing a kind of work that is for the public in public. I consider myself someone who is in public service, because I grew up in public-service journalism. It may sound silly to say that now from a corporate setting, but for me, that’s how I started in this line of work.

I hear the distinction you’re making, but you could do public-service journalism and be a celebrity journalist, right? CNN is stocked with celebrity journalists. You’re sitting there with Anderson Cooper. 

Totally. Maybe it’s a Gen-X thing. I’m not sure. I came up in public media, and the people I sat alongside as a baby host were people like Robert Siegel and Susan Stamberg. Her face was on tote bags! Those people are celebrities to me. I wasn’t that, and to my mind, I didn’t reach that. At CNN, Don Lemon is a celebrity. Anderson Cooper is a celebrity. I’m not that. I’m happy to be in my own lane. I just don’t think I occupy the same space as those folks.

I’m not gonna lie. It was certainly shocking when people had a reaction to my transition. It’s a happy accident. It’s kind of nice for people to look up and say, “Hey, I respect you.� That’s a good feeling, you know? Because to me, as a journalist, you’re only as good as your last story. I beat myself up a lot with my work. I have very high standards — for better or worse. As a result, I don’t have a lot of time to think about myself as a brand. I wouldn’t know what that was or how to capitalize on it, which is probably a real problem, especially now.

First of all, that sounds like a really healthy way to live. It’s interesting, because the response to your departure, I thought, was a response to you as a regular public presence in people’s lives, but it was a response to you as a symbol of whatever’s happening with NPR and its relationship to institutional diversity, right? I was going back through your Twitter thread from the time.

[Laughs.] The series of GIFs, yes.

The GIFs were very important. So two things can be true at the same time: First, you left completely for your own reasons and your experience there could be very different from the experiences that were being expressed in response to your departure. And second, those experiences are still a huge hurdle for NPR to retain POC talent. How did you feel about your portrayal in that response?

As a journalist looking at the situation objectively, I understand how stories catch, so to speak. I was at the nexus of a couple of conversations, and that sparked it. There was a reckoning going on in newsrooms around race, right? That reckoning was very much going through public-media newsrooms, and there was this dialogue, business-wise, going on about podcasting in general and, like, “What’s going on here?�

There’s always a dialogue going on around what NPR is doing wrong or right — who does it serve and is it serving well? And three makes a trend, you know? Two other hosts had left, and they happened to be women of color, and I realized pretty quickly that, “Oh, this isn’t just about me.� I was the jumping-off point for the conversation, but I’m not the center of the conversation.

I didn’t want to say, “Look, folks, none of that happened to me.� I didn’t want to dismiss people’s concerns out of hand, because if you ever get the chance to have your hands on a spotlight, that’s not what you do. You don’t turn it on yourself. It’s like, “Hey, there is a story to be done here. Here are all the folks you should be looking for to talk about it more.� That’s what I was trying to do. It’s exactly what you said: Two things can be true at the same time, and for any other questions about how NPR has gone with that conversation since, you should definitely call a host there and ask. Because even I’m curious about how their life has changed as a result.

But how did you feel?

I don’t know. I’m a mom. It was the pandemic.

Look, I’ll cop to leaving quickly. That was probably jarring for people. I just did not realize how personal … I didn’t realize the depth of connection people felt they had with me. Because in my experience at NPR, there was always the sense that the brand was bigger than any of us.

I’m curious about the CNN+ show you were developing. What was it supposed to be?

No matter what, I wanted to sit down with people. So that was going to be an interview show. The podcast I’m doing now? Also an interview show.

That’s what I do. Will interview for food. I like talking to people. It’s my form of journalism — the one I feel the most comfortable and engaged in and where I can make other people feel the most comfortable and engaged.

The TV show was very early in its development when the company shifted gears, so I’m glad I’m getting another bite at the apple.

You weren’t thinking about, like, Parts Unknown or Stanley Tucci in Italy, where you get to travel and make documentaries and stuff?

I mean, sure, do you want to pay me to do that? Hell yeah, I’ll do it.

No, no. I’m getting into a new medium. I really want to learn. There’s probably different ways to write a story and script and report that take advantage of visuals in a way that I’ve never gotten to do, and I really want to learn that. I wanna learn how to sit behind a desk and read a prompter. I wanna learn how to be in a big space and command it and just embrace all of that. I actually didn’t come in saying, “This is the show I want! Make it!� I really did have a posture of “my learning isn’t over yet.� I’m not retiring.

You wanted to try something new.

Why not? It’s all one big medium anyway. You’ve got prime-time anchors and late-night hosts becoming podcasters, right? Everyone’s getting all the skills. Why shouldn’t we?

What’s your role on the television side now?

I’m going to be doing stuff during elections. I’m going to be participating and contributing to the new morning show, CNN This Morning, which is honestly a great format for someone of my background. There’s a casualness to the direction they’re taking it that has somewhat podcasting-audio vibes. It’s not an old-school “anchor behind the big desk� type thing. I’ve had a really fun time being in rehearsals and helping out.

Tell me about what drove the concept behind The Assignment.

One of the things I’ve found that I’ve always enjoyed is talking to more than one person at a time. I love longform interviewing. When you bring another person into the mix, there’s an interesting dynamic where they can gang up on you a little bit. They feel empowered, and they talk to each other, and you can get inside of their world instead of the other way around. I’ve done that many times over the years, and I’ve always thought, This is one of my favorite parts of my work.

We are in this moment where any one of us at any time could be the center of The Story, right? You are one post away from being viral and the center of the conversation. A lot of the big interesting conversations that happen online swirl in this haze of hot takes, essays, columns, and social-media back-and-forth, and I always wanted to find a way to capture it in interview form.

To give an example, we’re talking with parents who became activists during the pandemic (usually conservative) and ended up running for school board, and now they’re in charge. Typically, your headline is “Parents Screaming at a School Board.� Cut to clip. Then you might not hear about it for a while — maybe not until an election. But the question remains: What happened to those people? What was that really about? They’re in charge now? And all these schools are sitting on more money? And they can pull all these levers of power now? How do you feel about it? How did they get there? I just have 100 questions.

The show is not thematic. It’s me finding these stories that fall between the cracks and beats of the newsrooms and finding actual people. That doesn’t mean people of “status,� though that doesn’t mean celebrities or people of power won’t be on the show. It’s just that the rubric of deciding who’s the guest really has to do with whether they have primary experience in the discussion we’re having. Do they know something that the rest of us don’t really know? Can they share it and sound like a normal person? Which might mean you may not hear that many politicians on the show, because by nature, they can’t do that. They can’t be vulnerable. But the rest of us can.

How do you feel about the state of the longform interview today?

One trend of note I’ll say is that celebrities are doing their own work for themselves now. They don’t need journalists as a pass-through to have a dialogue with the public. Tabloid journalism has abused that access, so now they just all interview themselves and give themselves final cut, and that’s it. They dictate the terms of the conversation, what’s being asked, how it’s being asked, how it’s edited — soup to nuts. And who can blame them? But there’s something lost from not being able to have a dialogue with people who have such influence on culture.

Then there’s comedians. I think a lot of comedians are thoughtful, engaged people, which is why we go to them to help us understand the world. I think there’s maybe been an overreliance on that. It’s not unusual to hear an interview that can be pretty consequential or important, and it’s handled by someone who maybe doesn’t fully have the skill set.

Thinking about any show in particular?

I’m not, I’m not. I’m just saying it’s far easier to be a professional interviewer these days if you’re already a celebrity, a comedian, or just already famous, because it’s really about a Rolodex and all that stuff. It’s not about a story or narrative. It’s just another piece of entertainment. I do think there is a kind of value in sitting down with someone who has real insight into a topic (who’s not selling something) and saying, “Hey, how do you see the world?�

I miss those shows. I’m a longtime listener of Fresh Air, which I think is probably one of the only big, real interview shows left. This is not to knock other people doing it. And that doesn’t mean I don’t listen to all this fun stuff everyone else listens to. But as an interviewer, yeah, my heart breaks a little.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.