"I think about it all the time. I want people to have a similar feeling listening to my podcast as I do after I listen to Bill Simmons, which is I feel like I learned something, I feel like I laughed at something, I didn't feel like I wasted my time. But I felt like I enjoyed myself."
"The problem with politics today is that some of the topics aren't very enjoyable, and I do worry about depressing people too much. My mother's a pretty good check on that. She'll be like, 'Well, that was a dark episode.' God bless my mother, but you know, the glass barely has condensation on it in her house sometimes. The glass isn't just half empty. It has been shattered. But I'm mindful of that."
"I miss the pre-Trump era, when you could have a little bit of fun with politics. I feel like we've punished fun. And in some ways, Trump sucked the fun out of it, which is ... innocence is lost sometimes, right? And it just is what it is. But I am mindful of that. It's also why I think the best way to reach these people that want to tune out, is to go back and cover stories that help them live their lives."
Chuck Todd left NBC News earlier this year and is focusing on podcasting and new media work. He aims to make listeners feel they learned something, laughed, and did not waste their time. He worries that modern politics can be overly depressing and that audiences are tuning out. He misses a time when politics allowed more levity and believes partisan upheaval reduced the enjoyment of political coverage. He proposes reaching disengaged audiences by covering practical, local stories — including local sports — as a way to help sustain journalism and reconnect with communities.
Read at Poynter
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