Podcast host Kara Swisher exited The New York Times in June of last year to launch her new podcast On with Kara Swisher, in conjunction with Vox Media.
In a wide-ranging feature story with Vanity Fair, Swisher claims she simply grew restless with the bureaucracy of the Times.
“I just wanted to make what I wanted to make, and I didn’t wanna ask 86 people,” Swisher said. “They’re all really smart. They just aren’t me.”
According to the story from Vanity Fair, six staffers exited in a year or less after working on Swisher’s show with the Times, with one former employee saying “It was totally known across the Opinion audio department that this was a nightmare show to work for.”
Swisher defended herself by arguing that she wasn’t a manager of the show, simply the host, but added that she could understand that the pace she wanted to work at might not correlate with others.
“When something happens, I want to do it right away…they just didn’t wanna move that way. I totally get it, I completely respect it, but I just didn’t want to do the slower show. I wanted to do the fast-burn show. And so it was a real struggle.”
The podcast countered, however, by stating that she believed the Times failed “to hire the right people in the first place”.
“I didn’t hire them. I didn’t fire them. I didn’t do their reviews or anything like that. I wasn’t involved in anybody’s review, unfortunately,” Swisher said.
