Audie Cornish sits in her office at CNN’s Washington, D.C., bureau, reflecting. In a few hours she’ll appear on Inside Politics to share her thoughts on a recent Supreme Court ruling with a national television audience.
It’s a typically busy morning. After that TV spot, Cornish is planning to edit a rare episode of her podcast with a celebrity guest, the writer and comedian Larry Wilmore.
“That’s frequently my day: hair and makeup. TV hit. Pod recording, pod interview, writing, then TV again,” she says. “It’s actually a cool mix.”
Cornish, a 44-year-old Takoma Park resident, has a voice for radio, a face for TV, and a brain for everything. First nationally at NPR as co-host of All Things Considered and now at CNN, where she hosts the podcast The Assignment and appears on shows including The Lead, CNN Tonight and AC360, Cornish has contextualized the most important political, social and cultural stories of our time, always with the same person in mind: you. It’s an approach that has made her one of America’s most revered journalists.
She’s come a long way from her first job as a cub reporter for the Associated Press in Boston. The daughter of Jamaican immigrants, Cornish grew up in Randolph, Massachusetts, about 30 minutes south of Boston. Over the course of her career she’s covered everything from September 11 to January 6 and interviewed everyone from professors to presidents.
Cornish surprised some observers when she left NPR in 2022 to join CNN+, the network’s ill-fated streaming service. It hasn’t been all smooth sailing. A blockbuster article detailing problems at the network came out in The Atlantic last June, describing Cornish as having “quizzed” then-CEO Chris Licht during a Q&A session on the “culture and morale” of the company and the confusion over his plans. Five days later, Licht departed from the network, but Cornish has stayed—and is thriving. The Assignment was named “Best Interview Podcast” at the 2023 Ambies Awards. In October, it began dropping two episodes per week.
We spoke with Cornish in her office. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
It’s a little unnerving to interview someone who interviews people for a living, so I thought I’d start by asking you how you like to begin an interview when you’re asking the questions, not answering them.
That’s a good question. It’s changed over time. Right now I start by trying to make the person feel comfortable. Asking them a very casual question about themselves or a question that will better help me understand how they started doing the thing they do. You’d be surprised; I think a lot of times in interviews everyone’s like, “OK, we know who we are, so let’s just start.” Whereas I like to say, “Introduce yourself the way you like to be introduced.” You often learn that people may think of themselves as [doing] one kind of job, but really they actually believe themselves to have another kind of identity. I call that time teaching each other what the interview will be like. They learn that I’m going to interrupt them. We learn from each other what our dialogue will be like in those first few minutes. Really establishing the ground rules in the most comfortable way possible. I don’t pretend we’re friends having a conversation that happened to be taped. I feel strongly that an interview is a piece of journalism, and everyone should be aware of the ground rules.
When did you become interested in journalism?
I came to journalism through practicing journalism, meaning I didn’t take a newswriting and reporting class—that wasn’t the first way I understood the work. I started working for the college radio station, and we just started doing stories right away. So I got this very hands-on experience in doing it. I think that had a profound effect on how I saw it as a profession or as a calling, because I experienced it in a very visceral way, very early.
You also interned at NPR while you were in college. Was there something about radio in particular that attracted you?
It just happened to be the thing. It’s really cool, which is why so many people got into podcasting. It has a low bar of entry and a high bar of mastery. It’s kind of like golf in that way. Once people start doing it, they get really into it. It’s all in your hands. There’s not a camera guy, a light guy, a whole other infrastructure. It’s you, your microphone, your notebook and just going out into the world and convincing people to talk to you in a very intimate way. It’s a very rich reporting experience and I think I got addicted to it.
Did you cover the 9/11 attacks?
I was [at the Associated Press], but I was literally three months out of college, so they were not exactly like, “Hey, kid, go to the airport.” What I ended up doing were all the stories that weren’t getting done because the other reporters were poring over police reports out of Logan Airport. So I was covering small elections that were continuing. I remember covering Stephen Lynch, who’s still in Congress. I went to a ton of memorials. And so it was another moment that introduces you to journalism as a calling, meaning: Are you going to go in the direction of the disaster and the first responders? You don’t have any of the stuff the first responders have. You have no gear; people don’t value you the same way. But you’re going in that direction because you’re telling the story. Or are you going to say, This is not for me? That is a good inflection moment for every journalist to have. … I covered the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, a lot of people who had lost their loved ones in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and I just felt like there’s a way to do that that feels very vampiric—the bad part of how people think about journalism, kind of picking over people’s pain—but there also is a way to do it that is going to someone and saying, “I want you to share the memory of your loved one so people don’t forget what happened here.” I’ve found that people respond to that.
How did you land your first job at NPR?
I worked in Boston for several years covering a lot of national stories, including presidential races. Then a job opened up to be the Southern bureau correspondent. I had been a Massachusetts girl my whole life. I really felt like I needed to leave. So I went to the South. It was the best thing I ever did, and it was the hardest thing I ever did. I was super homesick, I was 25, I had just gotten married, and all of a sudden I was going down to Louisiana and the Gulf Coast, which was still in horrendous condition [from Hurricane Katrina].
Where did you live?
I went to Nashville. That was my base, but I would go all over the South. I spent a lot of time in western Tennessee, Memphis, Mississippi, South Carolina, Birmingham, northern Georgia. For someone who had come from a really parochial background, it was incredibly eye-opening.
In what way? What did you learn about the fabric of the country during that time?
I don’t think you can understand America without understanding the South and how the South has processed America’s history. I covered a lot of politics down there, and politics is such an interesting way of meeting and understanding [people], because if you do it right, you’re quite literally asking, “What do you believe and why do you believe it?” That’s such a profound question to engage in on a street corner or in a diner. It was this de Tocqueville experience of a different part of the country.
What makes NPR a unique place to be a journalist?
Time. The length of stories and the depth is really unmatched. It’s really only print magazines that take that same kind of time profiling someone or understanding someone.
You’ve also interviewed the boldest of bold names (such as Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen). How do you prepare for an interview with someone who’s been interviewed a million times?
Panic. Fear. Internal second-guessing. I read a lot in order to figure out what not to ask. And I read sometimes to understand how to best structure a question. I’m very interested in the architecture of a question. There are certain questions that need to be a yes or no question, depending on the person. There are certain questions that absolutely cannot be yes or no. There are certain questions, especially with politicians, where you want to get to their talking point before they do so that they have nothing else to do but think. So I’ve become a real student of how people ask questions.
So now you’re at CNN during what is certainly an interesting time to be there. When you read the Atlantic piece, were you surprised to see your name in it?
I would say everyone was surprised in general.
What was the level of knowledge among people working here about the story?
A lot. I don’t speak to press off the record, so I was not participating. I think that whole experience was the culmination of many months of work, both by the writer, Tim Alberta, but also in the experience it was portraying. By the time it reached that point, a lot had gone on here. I’ve been introduced to corporate media in a very fascinating time.
Let’s talk about The Assignment. Where did the idea for the podcast come from?
I’m not sure (laughs). I knew I wanted it to be an interview show, and I knew I didn’t want to compete with famous people interviewing other famous people. And then I thought, All the stories I had done at NPR that I really enjoyed involved groups. I remember doing this series on faith and politics where we would gather together a room full of Catholics, a room full of Muslims…disparate voices from within those communities. They would talk about how their faith had informed their understanding of American politics. And over and over again I would look back on experiences where I realized I had had the most fun in a room full of people, and I wanted to re-create that feeling. We have this tip line where people can call in and send us story ideas, and I go through and listen, and everyone starts, “Hi, Audie,” like they’re talking directly to me. Coming from NPR, I didn’t have that. There’s something about podcasting where people feel really connected to you.
You feature such a wide array of topics. Back-to-back podcasts (in June) discussed Roe v. Wade a year after it was overturned and tipping in restaurants. What are you looking for in a topic?
I start with people. I have my guide here (points to a dry-erase board hanging on her office wall). Who has a unique perspective? Can they share it? How does it illuminate a specific angle of the story? The other metric we have is zeitgeist. You just have to have your antenna up in a way that I think journalists are very good at. It’s my job to go out and hear what people are talking about. I think that’s different from gatekeeping, which is how people have come to criticize journalism. What I’m doing now is really helping people sort through information and surfacing the things that will help inform them in ways that they can make decisions about their lives.
Working in journalism, how do you avoid becoming cynical?
I don’t. I have cynical days all the time. I also have little kids, and I don’t want to look at them and say, “The world is torched. Here’s a copy of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.” As corny as it is, I want them to understand that they are not passive travelers in the world. But I’m cynical all the time. Especially covering politics. There are sometimes where I’m like, I can’t be on air because I have nothing to say here that will sound positive, and I don’t want to be a barstool cynic. That’s not helpful to anyone.
What’s it like being married to a fellow reporter?
It’s awesome. We talk about the news every day. We still get papers. There are magazines everywhere. Our kids like to write books because Daddy’s a book editor. What it means is that you’re constantly engaged in ideas. New ideas keep you young.
Why do you choose to make Takoma Park your home?
I have to be honest. My husband has become a Takoma Park cultist. It’s a thing. When I came to Washington, I was like, Capitol Hill looks cool, Petworth looks cool. We lived in Takoma Park for a little bit in an apartment, and after that he was done. Maybe it reminds us of Massachusetts—it’s walkable, the Metro system is right there. I think in some ways it felt familiar to us. There’s a strong faith community. It’s very civic-minded. I’m putting this on him in print: I know we can never leave because he loves it so much.
What are a few of your favorite spots in Montgomery County?
Wheaton Regional Park is the bomb. My kids love it. The carousel, the train. I pretend it’s a hidden gem, but everyone knows about it and it’s fantastic. I love to go to Brookside Gardens and walk around. Those are the moments when I’m like, I guess I don’t mind the taxes, because Montgomery County’s got it all. I love Kaldi’s Social House, which is a coffee place in Silver Spring. There’s a little place called The Girl & The Vine, which I always shout to the rooftops. We like Quarry [House] Tavern. That’s our dive bar. After the last White House Correspondents’ Dinner, we went there in our formal clothes and had burgers and tater tots. What I like about all of this is everyone has a real respect for the community. There’s a sense that they want to do something that will become part of the landscape of the place. I think that’s really sweet.
Mike Unger is a writer and editor who grew up in Montgomery County and lives in Baltimore.
This story appears in the January/February issue of Bethesda Magazine.