Clayton, McMorris-Santoro dish in Philly.
Philadelphia — As renowned political reporters raced to get Democratic National Convention hot takes recorded in the annals of Twitter, another set of reporters kicked off their own political entertainment show — with a shot of whiskey.
Half a dozen miles north of the main convention frenzy, at the Trocadero Theater in Philadelphia Monday night, BuzzFeed podcast hosts Tracy Clayton of “Another Round” and Evan McMorris-Santoro of “No One Knows Anything” skipped out on the convention to drink liberally with a few dozen guests and find an arguably lighter side to politics.
As social media becomes more influential in making and breaking news, and turning national politicians into celebrities, these podcasters are using similar platforms to make politics more accessible to a younger crowd, and boost the voices of groups that could end up deciding the fate of the country’s next four years. Their presence at the convention reflects the explosive growth of podcasts over the past year, as well as a broadening of who gets to inform Americans about politics and influence the national debate.
At the session Monday night in Philly and in an interview afterwards, the two podcasters discussed — and showed — how they’re doing it.
These Independent reporters are regular followers of Clayton, one of two cohosts of “Another Round,” a culture and politics podcast that speaks directly to young black women, at BuzzFeed, an outlet with a significant white readership. (Clayton’s co-host Heben Nigatu left BuzzFeed full-time for “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” and could not make Monday’s live event.) Episodes are recorded and heavily produced weekly by a full audio staff.
The two invite tastemakers in politics and culture — often, but not always, black — to come on the show for a fun, tipsy conversation as though no one is listening. Except, hundreds of thousands are listening per month. And important people are taking note.
Markeshia Ricks Photo
Clayton of “Another Round” at Philly event.
Presumed Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton joined Nigatu and Clayton for a drink on Another Round last October in an episode called “Madam Secretary, What’s Good?” The two interviewers joked with Clinton about her thoughts on squirrels and opinions on popular television shows. In the same interview, they also joined many young black voices demanding Clinton answer for her husband Bill Clinton’s drug criminalization policies as president in the ‘90s, which disproportionally imprisoned black men.
Clinton was the secretary of state at the time. not necessarily a shoo-in for the party candidate, against contender U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Now, over Sanders’ supporters’ vocal protests, she has won the nomination, which she is to accept officially Thursday night.
Did the interview with “Another Round,” listened to by many people in a key part of her base, inform her campaign at all?
At Monday night’s discussion, Clayton said it did. “I think it made them more aware of the fact that black people want some sort of closure when it comes to her prior stances, when it comes to black youth, black men … mass incarceration. We want her to take some kind of accountability and responsibility. I honestly don’t feel like in the interview, we got that,” she said.
But the interviewers were at least able to ask her directly, reducing the degrees of separation between the average person and the potential future president. Clayton and Nigatu feel like our friends, and we want to hear them talk to the influential and powerful.
“A politician is still human. And I feel like political reporting so often overlooks the human side of people,” Clayton told the Independent Monday.
McMorris-Santoro.
McMorris-Santoro recently started hosting new BuzzFeed podcast “No One Knows Anything,” which, as he told the audience, is a politics show for people who are not deep into politics.
“A real problem with modern political reporting is that reporters like to talk to each other. We spend a lot of time doing political stories that for people who just know everything about politics already. They know all the details, they know all the players, they know how everything works,” he said. “That makes no sense.”
How do you get people to vote? Actually engage them in the political process, he argued.
Democratic leaders have to contend with conversations that were not in the open 20 years ago, including their history of “fearmongering about black and brown people in inner cities,” he said. “The Democratic Party has not reconciled with that as much as it should have.”
And mainstream media has not always been effective at forcing them to talk about it, he argued.
Castro.
He and Clayton combined their approaches to political reporting when interviewing Democratic U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, from Texas, at Monday night’s event. Clayton asked the personal questions that got Castro talking about his relationship with his family in inner-city San Antonio; he asked wonkier questions about whether Democrats should worry about divisions rending their party.
Both resulted in meaty answers that provided context for the week’s events, and the upcoming national election.
Clayton leaned on her Southern roots — she’s originally from Kentucky — to draw Castro into a conversation about being a brown person from a perpetually red state in that region.
Castro pointed out that Texas has not elected a Democrat to statewide office since 1994. He didn’t attribute that to Texas being a Republican-leaning state; he attributed it to Texas being a non-voting state. Only 32 percent of Texans voted in the last statewide election, he said. He also pointed out that only 27 percent of Latinos voted.
“Republicans represent most voters, but not most Texans,” he said.
McMorris-Santoro pointedly asked whether Castro believes Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s supporters are racist.
“Some of them,” he said. “Yeah.”
He said Trump’s ascendence to the head of the Republican presidential ticket and the tactics he used — namely maligning Mexican immigrants and Muslims — have brought fear and resentment to the surface.
“My grandmother was 6 years old when she came to the U.S. as an orphan with her sister,” Castro said. “To hear anybody say that about the millions of people — certainly there are people who have done bad things. But they didn’t do them because they’re immigrants, but because they are a bad person.”
Clayton acknowledged that she tends to go for the more personal details in interviews. She asked the questions that made Castro, who along with his twin brother Julian, are rising young stars in the Democratic Party, seem more like a regular guy from San Antonio. Castro talked about how he and his brother going off to Stanford University together was the first time they’d ever left home.
McMorris-Santoro probed Castro on his thoughts about Sanders being booed by supporters Monday, when he asked them to throw their weight behind Clinton. The host wanted to know if Democrats should be freaked out.
Castro said no. He said he believes that Sanders supporters will ultimately support Clinton.
“We got off to a rocky start today, but in the long term, I think Hillary Clinton is going to win the presidency in November and this will turnout to be a good week for Democrats. It’s a unity week. Once we get past the first day, we’ll be OK.”
Click below for more of the Independent’s interview with Clayton and McMorris-Santoro after the show.