The Daily: Making the Show Without a Studio

March 13, 2020

By Michael Barbaro

Michael’s work-from-home desk.Michael Barbaro/The New York Times

By the middle of this week, The Times had made it official: It wanted employees to begin working from home by Friday to limit potential exposure to the coronavirus.

It was a big change for everybody, including “The Daily.” How would we make the show without being in the office?

By Tuesday we had put in place an experiment in which we tried producing the show remotely. Our morning meeting was held over a Google Hangout. Many of our conversations were conducted via Slack messages. We brainstormed about scripts in conference calls.

Michael and his cat Felix star in a Google Hangout with the team.Stella Tan/The New York Times

The audio engineer Dan Powell in his home studio.Dan Powell/The New York Times

The trickiest part: conducting the interviews themselves, the heart of the show. On Tuesday, when we spoke with the investigative reporter Sheri Fink about shortcomings in the U.S. coronavirus testing system, she was in the office with the producer Robert Jimison, who volunteered to run the studio session. Everybody else on our team was working remotely.

It worked. We tried it again for Thursday’s conversation with Donald G. McNeil Jr., about the different ways that countries around the world are confronting the pandemic, a conversation that began with Donald disinfecting our studio.

Donald wipes down the studio.Robert Jimison/The New York Times

By Friday, Donald himself was working from home, a slightly new challenge. We decided to connect to him via Google Hangout so he could hear me and the producers working remotely. The producer Clare Toeniskoetter, who lives near Donald, biked to his house with a recorder to capture the scene, including her own hand-washing routine, and to record Donald’s side of the interview in high-quality audio.

Day 2 with Donald – captured on the couch at his home.Clare Toeniskoetter/The New York Times

Times reporters and “Daily” producers will continue to report on the coronavirus from the field, taking every possible precaution to limit their exposure and staying in close consultation with leaders of The Times.

We’re not entirely sure what the next few weeks will bring in this fast-evolving situation. But we’re determined to keep covering the story of this pandemic, a story of enormous consequence that requires as much information and perspective as possible.

And we want to hear from you. At the end of Friday’s show, we asked for your questions about the virus and how to navigate this new reality. Leave us a voice message at 646-598-6012. And be sure to tell us your name and where you’re calling from.

You can find the latest updates on coronavirus here.

Talk to Michael on Twitter: @mikiebarb.

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‘I’m glad she’s still my senator’

For Tuesday’s episode of “The Field,” our producers Jessica Cheung and Austin Mitchell traveled to Massachusetts with Astead Herndon, a political reporter for The Times. The team wanted to understand how Elizabeth Warren’s campaign unraveled, and broadly, how a contest that started with “historic diversity” has come down to a race between “two men, 70 plus, both white.”

Jessica shared why they were driven to make this episode, and how they found one of the voters that you heard from:

“After seeing Warren drop out of the race outside her house – the same place she announced her bid for the presidency – we wondered how she went from front-runner status to finishing so behind, not only in the early state races, but also in her home state.

So we did a statewide search for a voter who could articulate their love for Warren, and how they felt when she dropped out of the race. I spoke to about a dozen voters, but when I read an old Boston Globe article, I knew I wanted to talk to one named Lyn Licciardello.

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Lyn was quoted in the article as someone who showed up to the polls to vote for Warren in her first Senate run. How did she, a Warren supporter from the beginning, feel now?

Lyn began to cry on the phone when she talked about watching Warren drop out. ‘I cried through the whole thing,’ Lyn said. ‘It was horrible to see. But I’m glad she’s still my senator. She’s the best senator there is.’”

You can listen to the story here or by searching for “The Field” wherever you get your podcasts.

And below, some photos from Massachusetts:

Jessica and Astead speak with Lyn Licciardello at her home.Austin Mitchell/The New York Times

Notes of gratitude surround Elizabeth Warren’s portrait at Harvard Law School, where the senator used to teach.Austin Mitchell/The New York Times

On ‘The Daily’ this week

Monday: A case before the Supreme Court is testing reproductive rights in Louisiana, where there are three abortion clinics left. Adam Liptak visits the clinic at the center of the case.

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Tuesday: “I’m left to wonder, how did we get here?” On an episode of “The Field,” Astead Herndon travels to Massachusetts to understand how Elizabeth Warren went from once leading in the polls to dropping out of the race.

Wednesday: Developing a strategy for testing was supposed to be a relatively simple part of preparing for the coronavirus in the United States. Sheri Fink explains what went wrong.

Thursday: Donald G. McNeil Jr. on the countries that have been successful in bringing the pandemic under control: “They’ve done something that nobody else has ever done before.”

Friday: How long can a person expect to be sick once diagnosed with coronavirus? Are trips to the movies, grocery stores and gyms OK? Donald G. McNeil Jr. answers our questions about how to live safely amid the pandemic.