“the new Yorker” Editor David Remnick Has a brand new Gig: Radio Host

you could have heard of the new Yorker? it can be an ideal magazine.

which is been true for decades (although it can be very true now). What’s extra remarkable is how, over the previous few years, the brand new Yorker has additionally turn out to be a super web page, app, and general social media presence. perhaps greater than any legacy journal, the brand new Yorker has weathered the storms of digital transition with aplomb, adapting to the instances whereas also maintaining and projecting its voice. Its site is averaging thirteen million guests—up 28% over closing year—even as its paid subscriber base stays sturdy, at around one million.

And now, the new Yorker is pushing forth a new shoot: “the new Yorker Radio Hour,” a radio express and podcast coproduced by way of the brand new Yorker and WNYC Studios. the first episode debuts this Saturday, featuring a lengthy interview with journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates, a private story from magazine group of workers creator Jill Lepore, and a segment by which New Yorker cartoonists chronicle the arduous technique of submitting cartoons on the journal.

Helming the journal thru this technology of transition has been David Remnick, who started out enhancing the new Yorker in 1998. Remnick may even be moving into the host’s chair for the brand new radio exhibit. fast company caught up with Remnick to analyze extra.

fast company: What can you reveal about “the brand new Yorker Radio Hour”?

David Remnick: I promise you I’m now not going to sing. I don’t wish to alienate the potential listenership. There’s a group from WNYC led by means of a guy named David Krasnow who are actual radio pros. They’re full of ideas, and so they’re working in partnership with our editorial staff. I’m the host, however I’m not the only real voice of the exhibit by using any stretch of the imagination. My position is to introduce the exhibit and do an in-depth interview with any individual. What you’re getting is the writers, editors, and artists of the brand new Yorker, however translated into radio phrases.

What’s the audio equivalent of a cartoon?

I’m now not certain that there’s one. although if you’re a ny history buff, you understand that Fiorello La Guardia, all over a newspaper strike, learn the comics to folks over the radio. Nothing made him extra standard as mayor than that move. however the motive a cool animated film works is the explosive combination of the drawing and the caption. in the event you’re now not in a visual medium, it doesn’t work, so the humor has to return from somewhere else. however humor is a giant a part of who we’re, and we wish the show to be at least in some part humorous.

in the magazine, that you could flip straight from your piece on the Charleston massacre to a Shouts and Murmurs humor piece.

It’s a atypical DNA. in the magazine, it’s completely established via the reader that in the midst of a big large piece about one thing tragic or political, there are gag cartoons. There’s a way, developed over many years, of what the new Yorker is. It’s an odd recipe—i’m hoping a magical recipe—and we’ve got to search out the precise recipe with an entirely completely different medium. In a journal, which you could skip around. but radio takes position in time.

So how do you to find that new recipe?

We’re in week one. It’s early days. i have every expectation the express will develop with time. A novelist’s first novel is regularly lovely radically completely different from his or her fifth novel. You in finding your voice over time. You hope you’re good sufficient at first that the target audience stays with you.

Most New Yorker journalists more than likely need to feel comfortable swap-hitting among mediums.

Some are extra happy with it than others. Some writers took to the net quicker. And it’s not age-based. Roger Angell is 95 years previous and writes for the net with as much power as a 25-12 months-previous blogger. I’m certain as a way to be the identical case with the radio exhibit. no one’s going to get pressured to do this. i would like people who want to dive in. one of the most great pleasures of being editor of the brand new Yorker is working with people who are as obsessed as you’re, if now not more so.

who’re radio journalists you admire?

Terry Gross is, i feel, the Willie Mays of interviews. Her questions come from different angles, and there’s a sense of surprise. I’ve been interviewed by her, and that i listen to her with an attention to her craft, which is an extraordinarily completely different interview than what I do in print.

How is print interviewing completely different from radio interviewing?

In a print interview, you may well be going for a undeniable factor, however you shouldn’t commence with it. as an example, Dexter Filkins went to Argentina not way back to put in writing in regards to the alleged suicide and that you can think of homicide of somebody who was investigating an act of terrorism there. He got an interview with the top of state, [Cristina Fernández de] Kirchner, however knew if he began his interview going right for the jugular, it would alienate her. So as an alternative he asked for a 1/2 hour about the Argentine economic system, politics, to put her at ease. Then he received to the guts of the subject and obtained the great things, the revealing stuff. but in a radio interview, you can’t spend a half hour dancing around.

I think about you also desire a kind of conversational go with the flow in a radio interview.

i feel I’ll be higher at answering this question a 12 months from now when I in fact have some experience. at this time it’s newbie hour. I’m simply learning.

individuals have already got been asking the way you be able to juggle all of your tasks, before you determined to add those of an Ira Glass to your plate. What’s your secret?

Amphetamines. I’m kidding. appear, I’m really lucky. To work with the colleagues I do, to be at the place that I’m at—it’s just crazy luck. crazy good fortune! so you must ask any individual who doesn’t like their work how they have the capacity to do it for lengthy sessions of the day. That’s difficult.

You’ve spoken earlier than concerning the importance of sitzfleisch.

Sitzfleisch! It method, basically, the flexibility to maintain your ass in a chair.

This interview has been condensed and edited.