Dear Colleagues,

Happy fall! We hope you had a fantastic end to your summer. As we gear up for the cooler weather and start pulling out our autumn wardrobe, we’d like to give you a rundown of what the team has been up to the past few months.

Welcoming New Colleagues

“The Daily” team has the excitement of welcoming our newest Senior Editor, Brendan Klinkenberg. He joins us from Gimlet Media, where he was most recently its Executive Editor. Brendan had a wide array of experience as an editor on the shows “Mogul,” “Resistance,” “Conviction,” and “The Journal.”

Before working in Audio, Brendan worked in print media at publications such as Complex, BuzzFeed and Wired. He was also a Senior Editor at Rolling Stone, where he led hip-hop coverage.

The Audio team is also delighted to welcome in our newest Audio Engineer, Daniel Ramirez, who will be working across the entire Newsroom portfolio to mix our daily/weekly shows, provide technical support, and give additional engineering flexibility. Daniel is currently based in Los Angeles and joins us from Spotify x Gimlet, where he worked as an engineer on scripted fiction and new show development. He has over 15 years of experience in recording arts and was vital to his previous teams, including Marketplace and Crooked Media.Fires in Hawaii

The devastating and catastrophic fires in Hawaii over the summer, which claimed the lives of almost 100 people, were emblematic of the way many communities are stretched thin for resources to address the rise in extreme weather events.

“The Daily” took us inward for a personal look at how the deadliest U.S fire in recent history impacted Lahaina residents. In one episode, Host Sabrina Tavernise speaks with Ydriss, a young hotel manager, who gives a powerful and heartrending recount of what he experienced the day the fires spread, taking us through the scene of residents fleeing to the water to escape the flames. Later, Tavernise has a conversation with Mike Baker, NYT reporter and Seattle bureau chief, on human error and its role in the tragic chain of events.

In another episode, Tavernise talks with Anela Rosa, a Maui resident who walks us through the significant loss of Maui’s first church, which was pivotal to the Lahaina community. Her anecdote reminds listeners of the many ways these disasters disrupt a community’s social fabric.

Recent Episodes

“The Daily” team is dedicated to keeping our listeners informed and aware of pressing issues, especially through individual stories that help us see a larger narrative. Recently, we interviewed Eli Saslow, a NYT writer at large, on his story about a man who was charged with murder after his friend died of a fentanyl overdose while they were using together. Despite Joshua Askins’ best efforts to save his friend, harsher fentanyl laws allowed a harsher sentence. We hear directly from Saslow’s interviews with Askins, getting a glimpse into the realities of addiction and the impact these laws have on public health and addiction treatment.

Another episode shared the story of a Shanghai woman whose husband was arrested and convicted for crimes against the Chinese government. In her attempt to repair the disarray, she uncovers that her husband was likely behind one of the most mysterious blogs on the Chinese internet, which for 12 years had ridiculed the ruling Communist Party from within the country. NYT China Correspondent Vivian Wang takes us through Bei Zhenying’s story and how this discovery impacted not only her marriage and herself, but the way she saw her country and its censorship laws.

Until next time,

-The Daily Team