Earlier this month, The New York Times hired a full-time director of photography—primarily for podcasts. It might sound like a surprising move for a podcast, unless you’ve clocked what’s been happening at The Ezra Klein Show. Klein, once a disembodied voice, is now a bona fide millennial onscreen hottie, staring straight into the camera and engaging a new kind of audience. The message is clear, and in this case, the medium really is the message: Podcasts aren’t just going visual; they’re becoming television. And YouTube is the network where it’s all happening.
This phenomenon is playing out across the news media. The Atlantic just rolled out a YouTube podcast hosted by writer David Frum. Shows from upstarts like MeidasTouch, The Bulwark, Crooked Media, and The Free Press are already fixtures on the platform. When political reporter Tara Palmeri exited Puck last month, she set up shop on YouTube. Former TV news stars, from Megyn Kelly to Tucker Carlson, Jim Acosta, and Chris Cillizza are there too. So is Chuck Todd, who is planning to grow a podcast and video network. Even Michelle Obama launched a “video podcast” and YouTube channel in March.
YouTube, which just turned 20, has surpassed Spotify and Apple to become the top podcast platform, commanding over 1 billion hours of average daily watch time on TVs, according to the company. In fact, YouTube is now the most-watched service in America, outpacing both Netflix and Prime Video. As YouTube CEO Neal Mohan recently put it, “For more and more people, watching TV means watching YouTube.” And it’s not just reshaping entertainment—it’s transforming politics too. Presidential campaigns have always mirrored the dominant medium of their moment: FDR had radio, JFK mastered television, and 2024 was dubbed the “podcast election.” Donald Trump reached voters—especially young male ones—through shows like The Joe Rogan Experience and This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von, while Kamala Harris made a campaign stop on Call Her Daddy.
That shift caught the attention of Ezra Klein Show supervising editor Claire Gordon. Last summer, she and Klein came across an NBC poll showing just how much news sources influence voter behavior. Americans who relied on legacy media leaned toward Joe Biden, while YouTube viewers skewed in favor of Trump. “What’s happening on YouTube? What’s the news environment like [there]?” she recalls them asking themselves. “It felt like we were ceding an audience,” Gordon tells me. “There’s a big conversation happening there, and we should be part of it.”
Gordon, who joined The New York Times in 2023, had previously served as showrunner for Netflix’s Explained, a Vox Media show cocreated by Klein, and was a producer on Last Week Tonight With John Oliver. She first turned to the Times’ video studio to film Klein’s podcast. Inside a cavernous set, they experimented with three- and five-camera setups, prime-time lighting, and a full crew of producers and fact-checkers just off camera. But something felt off. The high-gloss look clashed with the show’s core appeal: vulnerability and depth.
“Ultimately, what we’re shooting now is in one of the podcast studios, where it just feels very intimate,” Gordon says. “It’s easier to forget about the cameras. And [for Ezra, who wants] to produce the best conversation, the space where we shoot [needs] to be conducive to that.”
Still cut for audio-first, the show now speaks a new syntax—one shaped by a postpandemic media landscape. With studios closed and meetings streamed from bedrooms, audiences got used to seeing CEOs, experts, and hosts in raw, imperfect spaces. TikTok took off. Personality replaced polish. Viewers didn’t just accept this new visual vernacular—they craved it.
That desire for authenticity reflects a deeper cultural shift. “Younger audiences have a huge distrust of not just media institutions—but any institution,” Liz Kelly Nelson, founder of Project C, a platform that supports journalists in the creator economy, told me recently. “They build trust by seeing their sources as human beings.”
Kelly Nelson, former vice president of audio at Vox, when The Ezra Klein Show was an audio-only podcast (and where I also worked as an audio producer), has evolved with the medium. Her focus now is on how Gen Z and Gen Alpha consume news—and she believes they won’t simply adopt traditional media habits as they age.
“So then what are the things that we need to do, to not try to change the direction that things are going, but at least add some of the layers that make journalism rigorous, that make our credibility shine through?” she asks. “So when my [14-year-old] son looks at a news reader or Ezra Klein on TikTok and sees things—that may be subconscious, but they are signals—that this is credible journalism. And then he sees Andrew Tate, and he knows that’s not right.”
That push for credibility and authenticity in the new media landscape is something Mediaite founder, owner, and publisher Dan Abrams is also watching closely—and capitalizing on. His company recently announced a strategic expansion into YouTube-first content, partnering with a slate of broadcast stars to build individual channels under the Mediaite umbrella.
“It is television,” Abrams declares. “Anyone who still thinks of YouTube as something for your phone or computer isn’t paying attention.” By 2028, he predicts, Mediaite (and likely others) will stream live election coverage directly to YouTube, just like any major outlet.
